Sign of weakness? Hmmm... In what way? Immaturity, maybe, and (if they think they do much for 'self-protection') naivety. A friend of mine used to have a Bren gun in the basement in Lhasa but as he said, when the Chinese used tanks and aircraft to invade and subjugate Tibet, there wasn't much you could keep at home that would stop them. Though the Swiss really do seem to have the 'well regulated militia' that the American constitution envisioned.
Like most small boys I had an air pistol and then an air rifle, and I always enjoyed target shooting. At school, we were required to learn rifle shooting (Cadet Corps) and I was pretty good. Then, years later, my late father-in-law was a crack pistol shot (he was head of the Cornell team in the early 30s and he went on getting better for decades) and in the 90s I inherited some of his guns, including a Colt 45 National Match from his Cornell days.
Partly there is the engineering, but there's also the fascination/challenge of using something that is better at what it does than I am: the National Match doesn't limit my marksmanship, just as an MP doesn't limit my photography. It's a different challenge from making things work that don't really want to work, like digital cameras or computers.
Finally, I think that everyone should be required, as part of the school curriculum, to learn to use firearms so that their ideas don't come from Hollywood, where even 44 magnums merely inflict small flesh wounds on the goodies while 22 pistols instantly kill all the baddies, sometimes at 48 to the magazine. They can give them up as soon as they like, but at least they might require some respect for the things and realize that unless you are careful they are seriously dangerous.
Cheers,
Roger
