I missed a subtlety, then. The point was that Dumbledore had the notion that if he allowed himself to be killed by another, without having previously been defeated by anyone, then control of the wand would NOT pass to his killer because it was in effect suicide-by-Potions-Master?
What reasons did Dumbledore have for expecting this to work?
...
That said, do we have evidence that anyone ever tried to willingly give up the Elder Wand?
Because if the answer is "no," then this suggests that the idea is so weird and foreign to most people's point of view in-setting that
nobody ever tried it. Until Dumbledore and Harry. In which case we shouldn't take it as given that it would be a normal reaction to try and destroy the Elder Wand, upon obtaining it.
Dumbledore wanted to neutralize the wand- but then, Dumbledore is intensely afraid of power, and it was virtually certain that if the Elder Wand was lost, it would fall to Voldemort. Very bad, much worse than the 'average' outcome of the Wand passing from one person to another.
Harry wanted to destroy it- but Harry had internalized Dumbledore's mindset, and in fact Dumbledore had basically been grooming him to be the most self-sacrificing person imaginable through the course of several books.
You don't have to be weak-willed to say "the Elder Wand's potential for future good outweighs its potential for future evil, do not destroy it."
Captain Seafort wrote:No, I'm starting from a basic assumption that an abnormally powerful instrument that can be transferred from person to person with ease and which has a track record of leaving a trail of blood, potentially including the entire Second World War in its wake should be destroyed.
The wand had no involvement in the Second World War until its time in Grindelwald's hand, from him it passed to Dumbledore, who did indeed plot to neutralize the Elder Wand.
Prior to that time, we have little or no evidence that the Elder Wand was responsible for its own violent track record. It's a powerful device, and there have been a lot of wizards willing to kill to obtain a powerful device. That's all there is to it.