Close the borders to foreigners, open the skies to citizens, yes.

Maybe there is an informative comparison of border policy to airspace policy, but it has yet to be written here. Otherwise it seems the two aren't very related

The point I was trying to make is that the gov't has no clear principles on what is dangerous; just politics and money. Deregulating drone operation seems to me like something you could choose to make very frightening, if you were in that business.

Engaging your argument... domestic terrorism / mass murder of citizens by citizens is quite real.

Of course domestic terrorism exists, but it isn't frequent and it doesn't seem that more ability for any given citizen to carry out a specific terrorist attack correlates with more domestic terrorists attacks in general.

The fear around borders is different, as with borders, even when everything is working as intended, there is still a constant threat of people who want to cross the border illegally. With a secured border they will try and fail to cross (ideally), without border security, they will cross.

With drones, regulations like these only better outline how law-abiding citizens should act. The threat of terrorism isn't dealt with with regulation like this, it already is very illegal to do anything terrorizing on purpose with a drone, so a regulation about flying at night doesn't protect from that. With the border I mentioned how its an ever present threat, well, with drones it isn't. It can become a major threat if society was less stable perhaps, but as is, not enough people want to commit terrorism via drones for it to be a threat in the public mind.

All this said, it absolutely can become a fear campaign with drones. I can't remember specifics, but I know I've witnessed a handful of incidents where someone was injured at a park or similar location and subsequently got regulation to ban/limit drone use at the park or similar location. Incidents like that would only need to be a bit more numerous and a nationwide anti-drone campaign could work. Even already if it was made a partisan issue, many would pick a side with strong confidence.

An FAA regulation isn't going to stop a domestic terrorist.

When you take something from "permitted" to "restricted", you turn actions from "normal" to "suspicious", and that definitely acts as a signal for observers and a deterrent.

The FAA requires airline doors to be secured. Why would you assume that does nothing to stop a domestic terrorist? I can't imagine why you'd even say such a thing.