I guess it helps when the technology being deterred (strong lasers, etc) are simply not fun and recreational. I frankly have no strong desire to turn on a super strong laser and burn things with it. On contrast, learning to operate firearms safely and accurately can be a life-long pursuit. They're simply more recreational thus the desire to own.
There's nothing inherently "more recreational" or more interesting about a thing that shoots bullets than a laser that burns things. That's just your personal interest built on top of the interests of other people, a cultural artifact.
Whatever you say about guns, I can counter with something like: lasers can be bounced off mirrors, therefore they are more interesting and fun than devices that fire bullets.
Eh. Recreational generally implies some amount of affordability and easy entry level.
Nuclear weapons and lasers are not simple machines, nor are they cheap, and (somewhat unrelated) they generally aren't as instinctively fun or easy to practice at towards any goal.
The US was actually building a weapon system for this when it was banned. It’s more than just a laser, you need a complex targeting system to be effective. Anyway, the limitation on line of sight vs over the horizon missiles and the straightforward countermeasures probably played a major role.
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I guess it helps when the technology being deterred (strong lasers, etc) are simply not fun and recreational. I frankly have no strong desire to turn on a super strong laser and burn things with it. On contrast, learning to operate firearms safely and accurately can be a life-long pursuit. They're simply more recreational thus the desire to own.
No, that doesn't hold water.
There's nothing inherently "more recreational" or more interesting about a thing that shoots bullets than a laser that burns things. That's just your personal interest built on top of the interests of other people, a cultural artifact.
Whatever you say about guns, I can counter with something like: lasers can be bounced off mirrors, therefore they are more interesting and fun than devices that fire bullets.
Eh. Recreational generally implies some amount of affordability and easy entry level.
Nuclear weapons and lasers are not simple machines, nor are they cheap, and (somewhat unrelated) they generally aren't as instinctively fun or easy to practice at towards any goal.
The US was actually building a weapon system for this when it was banned. It’s more than just a laser, you need a complex targeting system to be effective. Anyway, the limitation on line of sight vs over the horizon missiles and the straightforward countermeasures probably played a major role.