[jthig32]

I walked through this comparison with a friend of mine the other day, and I thought it was an interesting thought process:

As kids, most of us boys (and many girls) love to play with firecrackers and BB Guns. They're probably roughly analogous in terms of fun/danger, right? You have to be pretty stupid to severely injure yourself with either, right?

And, hell, they're fun. Who doesn't love shooting something with a BB Gun? Or things that explode and make loud noises?

And as we get older, we like to escalate things, right? Except, at some point long ago, someone said "Well, here's an M80, but that's about the best I can do for you". As a society, we basically decided that we don't want recreational bombs being traded in the market.

Some probably find this disappointing. I mean how cool would it be to go buy a big ass bomb and blow it up in the middle of nowhere? It's be a freaking blast. And, generally speaking, responsible people would do so without being injured. There'd be accidents, as there will be with anything, but by and large those that wanted them for pure enjoyment would use them for that purpose. They would be, after all, tools, not the problem.And yet we live without them. Because when they fall into the wrong hands, they become incredibly efficient tools for causing mass destruction and harm. And so we all live without the freedom to buy a bomb.

On the flip side, guns continue to escalate. Yes, many guns are tools, either for hunting, or home defense or other reasons. But no one can deny the lethal nature of modern assault-type rifles. They're "literally" designed to be efficient human killers, that double as fun toys.

And make no mistake, the same inane argument about people "making their own" applies to bombs. You can make bombs. You can mix chemicals that produce a reaction. I suspect it's rather easy, with a little research. And yet, no rational person would argue that bombs being illegal hasn't affected the ability of the mass public to procure them.

Maybe this comparison only makes sense in my head, but I think it's interesting how society decides that one thing is irrelevant to freedom and one is essential. And this is not to say that assault rifles are the main problem in the gun control debate. I fully realize how lethal a simple semi-auto pistol is. I'm just musing about the differences in how we view things as a society.