Gosh Danny, you jumped on my 'Israeli' comment pretty quickly...!
You make a good point about the 'whole' picture regarding the intelligence aspects as well as the sky marshals, but I do detect a bit of 'NIVH' here syndrome when I hear Brits drone on about the 'obsessive US gun culture' and our 'bullying' demand to put onboard sky marshals...etc. Before you accuse me of being just another paranoid 'yank', I was born and raised in the UK for my first 20 years before immigrating to the US. It never ceases to amaze me how ill-informed other nationalities are about the USA and its people. The stereotypical branding and xenephobic outlook against the US is a constant source of amazement to me. Before anyone criticises the 'US gun culture', perhaps you could refer to the Economist magazines supplement on Crime, published about 3 years ago. It showed statistically that , EXCLUDING INNER CITY CRIME (...isolated areas where certain ethnic groups congregate) crime levels were LESS in the USA than EVERY other western nation. Yes, I am sure many of you will immediately be deeply offended at this....but perhaps you could review the Economist article first before slagging off this information. New York now has a lower crime rate than London, Paris and any other major city you wish to name. Perhaps it is time to wake up to the fact that the insular culture of the UK to guns is no longer sustainable.
Sky marshals are HIGHLY trained, and in the event of a major terrorist attempt to commandeer an aircraft will be your greatest asset. If I was commanding an aircraft and an attempt was being made to breach the cockpit door, the knowledge that a sky marshal was concealed in the passenger cabin would be of GREAT comfort. Time to accept that the Americans are setting the new standard of security....at least on any aircraft flying over MY head.