Personally I think that responsibility to play behavior and roleplay are proportional to gameplay impact your ship may do. And yes, with bigger ship and bigger firepower it's easier to do more impact than by piloting rhino. For example compare two situations: for you in a small ship either battleship or rhino means a lot if either one would try to intimidate you, but unlike the first one rhino wouldn't make bigger impact if it opens fire. It's not about fairness or discrimination. It's merely stating a fact that ships can make impact on someone's else play in different ways and have different magnitude, so ship firepower and toughness do play an important factor here as well, this isn't PvE after all. Had all were flying one ship - yes, indeed, all would require everything equal, but even there would be different weapons too. And what next? Different locations, everything is different. Abusing starfliers sound comical, but abusing capital ships sound serious. Just as ships are different, roleplay is as well. Responsibility and roleplay go hand in hand along, one balances the other and vice versa. Having no gun and having armed gun does have different responsibility too. Sure, you can deal damage unarmed as well, but easiness and probability of dealing lethal damage in shortest time are so much different in most cases, hence various levels of responsibility. There are licenses to weld firearms, although that requirement varies from countries and regions but I presume majority have that in place. And that's just my opinion.
Back to topic: yes, technically anyone can fly them, although it's tricky but fun.
