Except that flashlights are easy to find in any gas station, and NEMA inlets are not.
Yeah, it's dangerous because some kid might take that double-male cord and plug it in somewhere problematic, but given the lack of obvious alternatives, I can understand why someone would do this. If we want to discourage it, we should make the correct solution more obvious and widely available.
Looking at my local Home Depot's website, they do have a few different options for NEMA inlets in stock, but the options are pretty limited, and they're all larger connectors, not your standard 3-prong connector onto which you could shove the female end of an extension cord (which is what I really wanted for my power-strip-with-detachable-cord projects; I can't really speak to why others might want a male-to-male cable).
Yeah, it's dangerous because some kid might take that double-male cord and plug it in somewhere problematic, but given the lack of obvious alternatives, I can understand why someone would do this. If we want to discourage it, we should make the correct solution more obvious and widely available.