&gt; It&#x27;s a very interesting question.<p>Thank you. The multiple downvoters I got appear to believe otherwise.<p>&gt;  I guess I&#x27;m OK with restrictions on ANFO in the same way I&#x27;m OK with our (US) current restrictions on Browning .50 machine guns.<p>That is where I think the comparison between crypto and guns breaks down. You&#x27;re okay with restrictions on more powerful weapons - are you okay with restrictions on civilian use of more powerful crypto?<p>No, I don&#x27;t think you are. I am not. The use cases and threat models are very different. For example, I think we are under frequent though usually irregular attack by people who want to acquire &quot;secrets&quot;, which includes credit card and blackmail information but also more prosaic marketing information and the more Orwellian large-scale government data mining.<p>I think it&#x27;s more appropriate to compare crypto to another type of munition - personal armor. (The United States Munitions List has the category Personal Protective Equipment. This includes &quot;Body armor providing a protection level equal to or greater than NIJ Type IV&quot;.)<p>Yes, some people want to make access to armor more difficult, because it it used sometimes when committing a crime (&quot;in the wrong hands, the same tech can be used for great harm&quot;).<p>But unlike the physical world, on the internet we face attacks every day. If there were random shootings in everyone&#x27;s normal life then there wouldn&#x27;t be the call to get rid of personal armor. Moreover, we face increasingly powerful attacks on crypto, and need to have mechanisms which can keep secrets against decades of future improvements.<p>&gt; cow poop -- the fertilizer component of a homemade ANFO bomb<p>Whoever you heard that from was mistaken. The fertilizer component was ammonium nitrate fertilizer, not cow poop.<p>&gt; It&#x27;s a complicated issue. What do you think?<p>My primary interest is in highlighting how the argument you made doesn&#x27;t really support your thesis.<p>As for my own beliefs on the topic, and bearing in mind that you wrote &quot;I have zero desire to re-enact the same old gun rights vs gun control Internet flame war yet again.&quot;, I think the distinctively American views[1] for gun ownership are rooted in the US history of Native American genocide and Black slavery, and are an expression of a form of white male power and machismo. I see no reason to discuss it further as this pigeonhole is well known.<p>[1] By &#x27;distinctively American&#x27; I mean to exclude the arguments one might hear in, say, Sweden for having a gun; eg, hunting and the fun hobby of target shooting.