I think the problem was that SHIELD was potentially making weapons of *mass destruction* with the Tesseract, not just better versions of battlefield weapons that Steve would already be familiar with, like rifles or tanks.
SHIELD's justification is that humanity needs weapons that are powerful enough to go up against enemies like the Hulk or Asgardians or other "heightened" threats, which can't be fought with the current level of technology... but I don't think Steve is naive enough to believe that, once these weapons exist, SHIELD (or its individual nation members) wouldn't find some excuse to deploy them against "conventional" armies made of human soldiers. (Or even civilian populations, like how the security council decided that it was ok to use nuclear weapons in NYC in order to stop the Chitauri.)
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I think the problem was that SHIELD was potentially making weapons of *mass destruction* with the Tesseract, not just better versions of battlefield weapons that Steve would already be familiar with, like rifles or tanks.
SHIELD's justification is that humanity needs weapons that are powerful enough to go up against enemies like the Hulk or Asgardians or other "heightened" threats, which can't be fought with the current level of technology... but I don't think Steve is naive enough to believe that, once these weapons exist, SHIELD (or its individual nation members) wouldn't find some excuse to deploy them against "conventional" armies made of human soldiers. (Or even civilian populations, like how the security council decided that it was ok to use nuclear weapons in NYC in order to stop the Chitauri.)