We used to put aerosol cans in fires and shoot them with rifles to watch them explode.
We hiked in the forests carrying rifles.
You were clearly a budding militia member and needed to be taken away from your parents and raised by the state collective. sarc/
In Junior High my best friend and I brought our .22's to school and stored them in our school wall lockers.
Then after school we would go shooting rats at the town dump for target practice.
To get to the dump we walked down part of Main Street, past the police station, carrying the rifles on our shoulders and no one gave us a second look.
One time during the Cold War we saw a Movie-Tone news reel of people throwing Molotov Cocktails on Russian tanks.
The next day the kids were all out in the fields throwing Molotov Cocktails at the shale banks and rock pits.
Back then you could just go to the gas station with a glass jug and buy 5 or 10 cents worth of gas and no one even batted an eye.
I guess they figured it was for the lawn mower!
"Where have you been all day?"
"Out."
"What were you doing?"
"Nothing."
So did I. In the '50s lmost every boy in my neighborhood had a rife by the time he was 12 years old, and a bow and arrow long before that. We'd spend all day in the woods hunting crows, and squirrels, or just shooting whatever, and then come back at dark. I can remember they had barrels of surplus WWII rifles at the hardware store or in Pep Boys, and anyone could buy one just like you might buy a bag of nails. I grew up within 25 miles of Washington D.C.