Cast Iron: Cookware or Weapon

We tried to carry this frying pan onto our flight when we last went to our short term rental. We are trying to make the kitchen almost as equipped as our home kitchen and a good cast iron frying pan is one such piece of making that happen. It did not make it, though, because TSA sees a frying pan as a weapon. It is not that I cannot see that a frying pan of this heft could harm someone. I definitely get that. What I don't understand is how these decisions are made. It is likely to be based more on convenience than safety alone. A laptop can definitely be a weapon--when there have been issues with passengers over the past 20 years, the weapon weilded most is laptops. So much more effective than hand to hand combat for the majority of us. It is just impractical to have everyone check their laptop, and a weight limit is also going to slow things down at security checkpoints. So we will need to bring it when we are checking luggage, but oh that we would treat guns in our communities with the same scrutiny we give to frying pans going on airplanes.