When you say heavily regulated it has nothing to do with their potential use as weapons. The stated intent of the "kill switch" was for that purpose. The fact t

When you say heavily regulated it has nothing to do with their potential use as weapons. The stated intent of the "kill switch" was for that purpose. The fact that the kill switch can't generally be used until after an attack is over, and that 2 way radios can be easily be used as a substitute means that it's not particular effective--there were likely ulterior motives for pushing for this ability. The 2013 shutdown of the BART network during protests shows that the government is at least as interested in suppressing protests are they are in stopping bombs from detonating. Either way the ability for the government to shutdown cell towers is irrelevant. Cell phones themselves aren't "regulated like weapons". I don't need to pass a background check to buy one. I don't need to be licensed to own one. We don't require owners to prove they have a legitimate need to own them, and we don't require owners to lock them up and report thefts the way we do with explosives. The reason we don't do these things is that the cost actually implementing all of that wouldn't be worth the benefit. You'd have to implement restrictions on anything with a radio, or anything that could be easily turned into a radio to have any meaningful impact on terrorism. The same is true of drones. You'd need to tightly restrict so many electronic components to actually deter determined attackers that it's not worth it.