Re:U.S. teens are spending less time with their friends in p...
by TomMarius on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @04:15AM
(#19498900)
I'm in my early 20's, living in Central Europe. We made a lot of gunpowder when I was a kid, and we shot fireworks at each other when I was teen. Up until around 13 I was carrying a knife everywhere I went. Sometimes we played cops & robbers and were shooting each other with realistically looking airsoft guns right on the street, later we bought more powerful weapons. When I was around 14 I had a very good looking fake of AK 47, a cop once stopped me when I was carrying it openly on my back - to ask where I bought it so he could buy it for his son.
None of that is possible today I think, except for the knife, that is still okay where I live. Boy & Girl Scouts are wildly popular here for more than 100 years, that probably helps.
I'm in my mid-20s, having grown up in a jurisdiction where home fireworks have been banned for many years.
Apart from my year 9 science teacher, who let off an explosion down one end of the school oval so we could time the difference seeing the flash and hearing the bang, I can't think of anyone I know who has told me they've ever tried to make gunpowder at home. Obviously I think I probably do know a few people who have but not told me. But it's not something that really ever crossed my mind as a thing you would do.
(Of course, I'm very conformist by disposition, perhaps I just don't hang out with sufficiently exciting friends.)
All things considered I think I prefer overly strict regulation on explosives to inadequately strict...