Do you have a source for that?
I have performed the training in non-English, not sure I can quote it from somewhere online unfortunately. It is internal training material.
Second, I also doubt people waiting in lines at the airport will be anything but rational the moment someone take out a gun and or a bomb. At least on a plane, nobody can run anywhere. In the airport check in, there will be shoving and yelling and stepping on each other to get out faster.
Also, it is harder to smuggle a rifle onto a plane. It isn't difficult to bring something extremely destructive to the check in gate.
The closed nature of the aircraft induced twice as more fear than in a crowded open area.
Also, even if we assume everyone is rational, the person holding the prohibited object is not guaranteed to be rational.
The difficulty of bringing a rifle is exactly the security check(also mocked as security theatre here), and anyone willing to risk a destructive object has zero incentive to bring it through security checks because they are discouraged by the security theatre, finally the risk is well worth in the air or blowing up something close to a massively valuable(i.e an aircraft).