A warning sign indeed. When I was a young man, paying for college with a stint in the Marine Corps reserves, I was a machine gunner. My job was caring for and firing assault weapons.

My Marine buddies who had the same job pretty much all felt the same way as I felt, as far as I ever saw. Assault weapons were tools. They were part of our jobs. They were often stressful parts of our jobs.

We did not go home and collect them, glorify them, or otherwise treat them as some kind of projection of our masculinity.

Not anymore than a construction worker would glorify a shovel or a pickaxe.

When I see a man collecting and glorifying assault weapons, my guard hair stand up straight and prickle.

I know something is probably very wrong.