Interesting to read all this...
I don't think I ever owned a BB gun. But using money from a paper route ordered a single-shot .22 from Sears. Came in the mail...no way today could a 12-year-old do such!
Carried it openly whenever I went to demolish many tin cans and similar targets in a nearby dump. No way to do that today either. Cops would be sicced on such a culprit promptly.
A while ago an acquaintance broadcast an email of antigun type. I can understand people's concerns about the stupid harmful things being done with guns, fists, knives, feet, clubs, road rage today. You name it and it is being done.
But my reply to this friend was along the lines of recalling when my friends and I all had BB guns, .22 rifles, slingshots, pocketknives, hunting knives, even bayonets. (If there was a situation deserving of violence, it was settled with fists.)
We never shot or stabbed or clubbed anyone. We never destroyed property. We never had law enforcement called on us or descend on us a la a SWAT squad.
Pocket knives in school were not an issue, no one got expelled for having such.
Times have changed. Social standards have changed. Violence for the sake of violence harms a lot of innocent people. Much of that violence is excused by one supposed disadvantage or perceived wrong or another.
Larry
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Larry W. Williams
RKCC #CM-041
ABKA #046
RKS #1246