I know a guy who grew up in Western North Dakota back in the ‘60s and ‘70s.
All the elementary school boys showed up to class and put their .22 rifles in the closet.
Then, after school, they’d go shoot varmints like they did on the way to school.
Nobody ever thought of shooting one another. They were brought up better than that!
LOL - what a difference we have today. A kid walking down the street with a 22 today would be arrested on the spot!
Our Liberty and Freedom is being stripped away, and few see it coming.
I went to school in Carlsbad NM in 1960-62. If a kid brought a gun or big knife to class we knew he was in leathercraft class.
I re-stocked a Mossberg 20ga bolt action shotgun in high skrool wood shop in the late 70’s.
The shop teacher asked that I let him keep the bolt until I got ready to inlet it.
I remember walking down the hall carrying it in a soft sleeve and no-one gave me a second look.
They would come to class and ask that we take the shot guns out of the truck window gun rack and put it on the floor if you forgot to.
Wow, how far we have come.
And those were only the rifles. There were still a whole passel of pistols tucked under car seats.
There was some poor kid from back east who showed up my junior year. He was rather skittish over the 'arsenal' in the parking lot, but instead of keeping quiet about it, he had to start questioning it.
Bad move on his part. His question 'Why do all of the students carry guns?' was answered with everything from 'For shooting damn Yankees' to the standard Texan response- 'Whatthehellswrongwith YEW?'
LOL! He turned out to be a pretty decent guy once we got his head back on straight!
Growing up in Lexington Mass. in the 1960s, we were encouraged to re-inacted the Revolutionary War and dress as “Minutemen” in grade school — with little wooden rifles and tri-cornered hats. Then in the summer at MIT (Mass. Institute of Techn.) day camp, we grade schoolers (4th grade) had rifle shooting classes, along with archery, swimming, crafts and so on. I will never forget that. It seemed so natural and normal, back then. In the summers we’d go to rural Maine when I was little, and we’d practice shooting old dishes with 22s in a field. When we’d go to the local dump up in Maine, people were often there target shooting rats.
Can you imagine these childhood things happening in 2012 - in ANY Massachusetts public school or day camp? (no)
You’d be closely scrutinized for even suggesting it as a MA public school teacher today....