I remember my grandpa taking me under some bridge somewhere and letting me loose off a few .45 rounds. I was about 8.
It was supremely stupid. In fact, I have a vivid memory of it almost being a disaster. My grandpa lived in a bad part of Alton, IL. His house got broken into on a regular basis. So he kept a loaded pistol right next to his bed.
Somehow I found this thing at around the same age, and started fooling around with it.
But then something interesting happened. The thing my grandpa taught me: never to assume a gun wasn't loaded, and always check it. So I checked it, and sure enough, I did not squeeze the trigger that day.
My point is, it doesn't take much training to be safe around weapons. Military tactics are an entirely different matter, of course. It's not a great idea to have random people running around with guns.
But they're not random people. They're defending their home. If SF was under attack by Japan in an alternate universe, wouldn't you do the same?
Seeing Kiev unfold makes me feel a strange kinship with Washington, of all people. There too, people had very little combat training, and were pretty much arming the neighbors. But it turns out that armed neighbors can sometimes be effective.
Here's a fascinating piece of propaganda for you: https://twitter.com/peedutuisk/status/1497310882069581824
It's propaganda, but it's very good propaganda. For a brief moment, I was actually crazy enough to wish I was out there helping them.