I hate people who treat them like some toys and fantasize about them. That makes me think they are in some sort of death cult. That they found socially acceptable way to love violence.
I would still get one for safety but it is a tool made for specifically one thing. To pierce the skin and rip through the inner organs of a person.
They can serve a good purpose but they are fundamentally grim tools of pain and suffering. They shouldn’t be celebrated and glorified in their own right, that is sick. They can be used to preserve something precious but at a price to pay.
So are bows and swords and crossbows. But they don’t have hillbillies ruining their public image. I see no harm in having guns around for recreational and hobby purposes as long as they are only in the hands of people who can safely store and operate them.
Honestly I’d rather not have a man on the street with a real sword/bow/crossbow either, and the only reason we may find it less threatening nowadays is that we know there are more perfect weapons that could be used to take such a man down very quickly should he become a tangible threat - and that he himself would use should he go crazy about killing people.
Swords are actually the only weapons specifically designed to kill people. Every other weapon used by humanity is or was a tool for another task at one point. Axes can be used to cut down trees, maces are just fancy hammers, and spears were the first real hunting tools for large game. Swords stand above all other weapons in that it’s use is specifically engineered to be as dangerous to humans as possible. It’s too long to be used effectively as a knife and too fragile to use as any other tool. It’s almost as dangerous to the person wielding it as the person it’s used on. It’s remarkable how every other killing tool used by man has other purposes, but the sword really has just the one.