I went to high school in the early 60s, not long before you, and we owned guns living in the middle of the city. I had a Remington 40XB in .220 Swift and a Ruger M44 .44 Magnum carbine to name a couple. What we didn't ever do is shoot the guns in the middle of the city. Since we drove cars, not trucks, we didn't bring our guns to school, either.
I understand your point, Dolph, and although I don't endorse your fondness for child beating, I agree that guns are inanimate objects and that people are the entities that actually commit violent crimes.
Right now, though, we have a serious national problem with firearms violence, and it won't get fixed unless country folks with guns and city folks mostly without them--without long guns at least--work together on a solution.
That, of course, can't happen because country folks are Republicans, city folks are Democrats, and the two factions are now so far apart that working together is out of the question. In fact, if they tried to work together, they'd probably shoot one another.