The assault on general aviation continues:

SMALL AIRPORTS A SECURITY CONCERN

WASHINGTON - Much has been done to improve security at America's commercial airports, but gaps remain in the nation's aviation system.

Tens of thousands of small private planes are vulnerable to the kind of incident that occurred Sunday in Germany, where a man stole a motorized glider and threatened to crash it into Frankfurt's financial center before landing without incident.

That is analogous to someone stealing a car and threatening to crash it into a Wal-mart full of people. Sure, it can happen, but what are you going to do to prevent it? Ban cars?

To date, no one has been murdered with a small airplane in a terrorist attack. The same cannot be said for rental trucks, which have been used in two separate terror attacks on U.S. soil.

The AP makes it sound like money is the only hurdle:

It's unlikely that small planes will ever receive the kind of protection given to commercial airliners. It would take billions of dollars to hire security guards and install special locks, fencing and metal detectors at each of the 5,000 U.S. airports that don't have scheduled service.

Even if we could install metal detectors at every airport, what good would they be? How will keeping people from taking nail clippers, knives, or even firearms onto their own private airplanes make anyone more secure? You could argue that it may prevent someone from commandeering someone's plane, but that really isn't much of a problem. The fact is, a small plane simply cannot do much damage. You couldn't even load them up with enough chemicals to make them an effective weapon of mass destruction. Certainly no more effective than any station wagon or van.