I’ve thought about making this comparison for quite some time but never got around to it. Tech Paladin does the topic justice.
The View From North Central Idaho
Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.
My kids know that, any time they want, I’ll take them to the range or teach them anything they want to know about the dozens of guns we keep around. Their gun curiosity is completely and totally assuaged at all times, almost to the point where I think I’ve overdone it (they may be bored with guns).
Parents; teach your kids. If you have to, take them to some NRA classes in your area, even if you are anti-gun, left-wing, anti-capitalist, bigoted, anti-American, pants-shitting, hysterical douche bags with no understanding of American history or of the Constitution. There is no need to talk politics in class. Your kids will be better off with some real knowledge and understanding, and that’s what is important. Yes—just imagine you are being asked to sign a public school sex ed permission slip.
Does this mean we should start lobbying for “safe gun” vending machines in public school restrooms, wherein kids could buy Glocks, Colts, S&Ws, Sigs, and STIs, instead of getting unsafe junk guns off the streets?
Seriously though; we should reinstate the previously common practice of having shooting clubs and on-site ranges at public schools.
Bad comparison. I left a long post at the site. Curiousity about guns and the sex drive are not comparable issues.
Kids aren’t uber curious about guns? If you don’t think so, try placing a toy gun in the middle of a playground or a party of kindergarteners. Such curiosity is unlikely to result in problems within the 50% of American homes that contain guns? Cool, then we can get rid of all the gun safes and trigger locks, and leave our guns and ammo lying about.
I think you’re focusing on the degree differences and not acknowledging the identical concept of the sex and gun arguments. The concept of “educating kids about something that they are naturally curious about so they don’t harm themselves” applies equally well to sex and guns, even if the degree of the “urge”, or the likelihood of a direct experience at a young age, is very different.
And don’t make the mistake of thinking that interest in weapons is unique to any particular culture– it’s in every culture throughout history and around the planet. It’s part of being human, if not as critically important as breathing, eating or procreating. We’re hard-wired for it. Well, at least real men are (heh!).
It is the intellectual hypocrisy on the part of the anti gun movement (demanding isolation from what they as a political group hate, verses demanding public education in what they as a political group approve) that is being addressed. It is very real hypocrisy.
This has been in my .sig file rotation for several years: