When I was 14, I could walk all over town with a .22 rifle. Nobody freaked out. If a cop drove by, he’d just wave.
I grew up in rural Iowa and my small town high school had a marksmanship club. We all brought our rifles to school for after school practice. No one gave it a second thought. It was as normal as skipping school for the first day of deer season.
When I was 13 , my brother and a friend of mine used to walk across town through neighborhoods carrying .22 rifles to attend our gun safety classes. And that was through a suburb of Los Angeles.