There are some things that make you intrinsically ashamed to be a man, in front of women, even if you personally have never had anything to do with them. They include, in no particular order, Spearmint Rhino, trainspotting, Vinnie Jones, Airfix, Top Gear, mail-order schoolgirl outfits, war, Yorkie bars, domestic violence, very big digital watches, Mick Hucknall, the continued success of Pamela Anderson, American polygamy sects, and people who can speak Klingon.

This is an exemplary list, obviously, rather than an exclusive one. Another example would be guns. Not so much that they exist, just that we are all so damn into them. The idea of the gun makes a man feel like a virile demi-god. It clicks, it awes. It is a phallus, with reach.

Last week, you may have heard about Jahangir Hanif, the SNP councillor from Glasgow who, it has recently emerged, took his young family in 2005 to a “military-style camp” on the Pakistani side of Kashmir, so they could all learn how to fire an AK-47. This included his youngest daughter, Sana, who was 5.

“I wasn't happy about it,” said her older sister, 17-year-old Noor. “We didn't know why we were being taken there.” And this, presumably, in the sort of wary, baffled tones that she might have used had she discovered her old man playing with his secret train set in the attic, perhaps while wearing a British Rail cap.

There was a video, too, showing “Councillor Kalashnikov” firing merrily into a hillside. You will notice, by the way, the careful caginess of the term “military-style camp”. That was how most papers described Hanif's destination, somehow ignoring the images of Adam Ant singing Stand And Deliver inherent in the phrase.

Others went farther, and opted for “alleged-training base” (with quote marks) and, knowingly, pointed out that the AK-47 was the “weapon of choice” for various unsavoury characters around the globe. The inference here, presumably, being that Hanif is some kind of secret religious extremist, possibly even a potential terrorist. As opposed to, say, just a bit of a loser.

I can't know, alas, not having been there, but I would wager that heading out into the South Asian mountains to fire automatic weapons isn't, actually, that odd a thing for a tourist in Kashmir to do. I bet they have notices advertising such activities, pinned up in touristy cafes. It's a standard backpacker activity, up there with white water rafting and bungee jumping. They do it in South Africa. They even do it in California. If you pay a little extra just outside Phnom Pehn, in Cambodia, they let you blow up a cow.

Or so I read in my Lonely Planet. I didn't check it out. Partly it seemed unsavoury, as the many guns washing around in Cambodia are an obvious reminder of their savage, devastating and recent civil war. And also, well, I was with the wife. With a group of male friends, and as long as we didn't pay the cow supplement, who can say? I just missed something similar in Israel once, when I was a day late for a stag party. Afterwards, I was told that somebody had blithely turned around and pointed the gun in the wrong direction, only to be slammed up against the wall and savagely disarmed by the instructor. Apparently it was hilarious.

No five-year-old-girls there, true enough. Personally, I was at least 14 before anybody showed me how to fire an automatic weapon. What did I get out of school? Decent GCSEs and A levels, a budding nicotine habit, and the ability to strip and reassemble an SA-80 in a little under 30 seconds. A little longer with my eyes closed. In a posh, Scottish way, my school was quite big on guns.

My classmates and I went off to camps, too. Not “military-style camps” or “alleged training bases”, either. Real army ones. Not actually that much fun, once you are there. Strict, boring and cold.

As a general rule, I would say that the more you know about guns, the less exciting they seem. Prior to his Kashmiri jaunt, I'd imagine that Hanif didn't know much. In the movies they look light, empowering. In real life they are all clunky, heavy functionality; all weight and kickback. The noise is never the smooth bthththtbthth of a computer game, but more scream-kerthunker-scream-kerthunker-scream. Toy guns never give you that, not that you can even buy them any more. Argos doesn't sell any. Toys ‘R' Us only sell water pistols, all purple and pink. There is nothing to scare you with a bang, not even a cap gun.

There was an urban myth that looped around a few months ago, about a young female interviewer chiding some army general for teaching children how to shoot, because this was equipping them to be violent killers. “You're equipped to be a prostitute,” the fictitious general retorted, “but you're not one, are you?” I'm not convinced that anybody on this side of the Atlantic really got the point of that. We tended to see it as an amusing example of brusque, military sexism. We weren't quite comfortable saying “good point, well made”.

Look, I'm not saying that we should have gun lessons in schools, although I am glad, in a perverse sort of way, that I had mine. I do understand the strategy of getting guns out of toy boxes and playgrounds, and the way that it chills people, sometimes, to see a toddler point a plastic pistol and say “bang”. But boys do love guns, even if what they imagine guns to be is a long way from the loud, oily, complicated reality. It is a lot like the way they love Pamela Anderson. Get stuck in a lift with her, and the fantasy might fade.

My point is, the British anti-gun strategy hasn't helped the fantasy to fade. If anything, it has beefed it up. When I read about gun crime, and when I look at Jahangir Hanif and his AK-47, I wonder whether we have got that strategy right.

Times Recommends

• Tear down this wall! And save the planet
• Double click if you want the bin emptied
• Have you got permission to read this?