There are plenty of terrorist bombs that screening stopped (search the famous El Al case), or alternatively that terrorists were able to successfully bypass which led to stronger rules in the first place (e.g. the shoe bomber), or which they planned (e.g. the Bojinka Plot).
I can easily buy the argument that a lot of other commenters are making that a lot of the specific rules can be improved, or that there are other targeted approaches that could work better. What I absolutely don't buy, because there are plenty of examples to the contrary, is that screening itself is unnecessary.
We don't do any screening at FBOs/private terminals so long as the plane has less than some number of passengers. Every flight out of Oakland on JSX has zero screening whatsoever, you just walk on and those are 30-seat Embraers. Larger than some of the stuff going out of the regional gates at the main concourse. It's even in their marketing material under "bye bye hassle." [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_airliner_bombing_a...
So, in other words, airline bombings have gone way down as screening procedures have increased?
Isn’t it far more likely that the reinforced cockpit doors made it pretty futile to try and hijack anything?
You’re asking for examples that indicate screening isn’t necessary and I provided one - all private flights are exempt and haven’t ever (?) been involved in such incidents. If they just “love” blowing up planes why wouldn’t they try and do so out of the private aviation terminals which have no security?
There were very few plane bombings even when bombing was popular (Oklahoma city, wtc, etc). Planes are only interesting to terrorists as a weapon, not a target.
Pre-9/11 the assumption was most nut job with guns on a plane wanted to hijack it as part of some heist, etc. 9/11 changed that assumption, locks went on cockpit doors, a few protocols were tweaked, and that actually solved the problem. The naked scanners on the ground were for theater of “being secure”.