Kids Make the Darnedest Things

I confiscated this lovely item this morning:



These pictures are intentionally blurry for the sake of national security, so if you can't tell, it's a dual slingshot: one made by a paperclip, the other by a creatively reconstructed mechanical pencil and a pen shaft. Masking tape holds the whole thing together surprisingly well, assuring equally surprising distance and accuracy.



My friends and I used to make things like this (I wasn't capable of this kind of craftsmanship), which resulted in The Mrs. Long's 6th Grade Class Great Staple War of 1990, but in light of recent headlines (recent being, like, this week), how can I condone this kind of homemade weaponry, despite its ingenuity? Is a paperclip taped to a mechanical pencil a gateway weapon to something more, say, automatic?