Darn it, I'm turning into one of those "when I was your age" guys.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s in rural northern MN. Guns, ubiquitous. Many young men had gun racks in their pickup trucks with "real guns." They parked in the high school parking lot, smoked a cigarette on the way into class, and they ended up just fine. Nobody sharted or tinkled or fainted.
Oh, BTW, taking into account inflation, these guns cost about the same as today:
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=250&year1=1975&year2=2015I have kids (of course they are honor students) and we took an certain approach to things like guns. We openly talked and exposed the kids (safely) to firearms.
When things are hidden and demonized, they become irresistible forbidden fruit. That's when problems happen. If I come home with a new gun, my sons say "meh" and go back to their activities.
Citiot