Posted on 02/05/2013 2:35:11 PM PST by rhema
I graduated from high school in 1968. There were some problem students. I do remember a student who robbed a bank during lunch and hid the money in his locker, but that was the rare exception. It was big news at the time because it was so out of the ordinary. There were fights and petty thievery. The perpetrators were dealt with swiftly by the administration without having to worry that their parents would hire a lawyer and sue the school.
My wife grew up in a small town in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. The schools closed for the first day of doe and buck season. There was no reason to hold classes because most of the boys would be out with their dads hunting deer. No one ever took a gun to school to shoot anybody. You could see kids riding down the street with a rifle across the handle bars.
Many people do not know that many high schools across the country used to have shooting clubs. Some still do. I recall visiting a school in Prospect Heights, Illinois, that had been sold to a Christian school that also operated a home schooling curriculum company. The school was huge. It had three gymnasiums, wide halls, and a beautiful brick front. It also had a shooting range. This once-public school had a shooting club that competed with other schools.
New York governor Andrew Cuomo signed a new control bill into law to protect the children. But it wasn’t too long ago that New York had rifle teams in its schools. Even New York City had them. This is from Charles C. Cooke’s article “Gun Clubs at School”:
“In 1975, New York state had over 80 school districts with rifle teams. In 1984, that had dropped to 65. By 1999 there were just 26. The state’s annual riflery championship was shut down in 1986 for lack of demand. This, sadly, is a familiar story across the country. The clubs are fading from memory, too.
“A Chicago Tribune report from 2007 notes the astonishment of a Wisconsin mother who discovered that her children’s school had a range on site. ‘I was surprised, because I never would have suspected to have something like that in my child’s school,’ she told the Tribune. The district’s superintendent admitted that it was now a rarity, confessing that he ‘often gets raised eyebrows’ if he mentions the range to other educators. The astonished mother raised her eyebrows — and then led a fight to have the range closed. ‘Guns and school don’t mix,’ she averred. If you have guns in school, that does away with the whole zero-tolerance policy’”
Times have change. Well, actually, people and schools have changed.
You can get a sense of the change by watching the film Lean on Me (1989). It’ about an inner-city New Jersey school that was first-rate until the social engineers tried to make education fashionable. The school was in disrepair, and the majority of students could not pass a basic skills test. School officials were desperate for a quick turnaround. They brought in Joe Clark, a no nonsense administrator who dealt with crime by throwing out the criminals. Here’s the scene:
“I want all of you to take a good look at these people on the risers behind me. These people have been here up to five years and done absolutely nothing. These people are drug dealers and drug users. They have taken up space; they have disrupted the school; they have harassed your teachers, and they have intimidated you. Well, times are about to change. You will not be bothered in Joe Clark’s school. These people are incorrigible. And since none of them can graduate anyway, you [turning to the incorrigible students] are all expurgated. You are dismissed! You are out of here forever! I wish you well.”
At this point, Clark’s security team escorts the former students out of the school. Cheering erupts from the remaining students.
The problem is not with guns; it’s with kids and the amoral world they’ve been raised in.
I grew up in a tiny town way upstate in NY. I took the NRA rifle safety course IN MY HIGH SCHOOL and my uncle taught the class. I graduated in 1964.
My grand dad used to ride the school bus and carried his .22 on rifle practice days. He couldn’t afford a gun case so he carried it openly. Kids on the bus would ask “rifle club?” and he’d say “yeah”. That was that. He’d put it in his locker until after classes.
PS - this was New York.
That was pretty rare.
Not only did the school have a rifle team, we shot .22 rifles in gym. The backstop was in the gym on wheels so it could be moved. We were also taught sight pictures.
The county that I lived in also had rifle teams which shot for competition. This is one of the reasons we won WW II.
This was in western Pennsylvania.
How far the mighty have fallen.
The early 70’s, Long Island, New York, kids carrying .22 rifles to school for a rifle team, no cops arresting them ... believe it. I remember this was not an unusual or alarming sight when I was a kid and the new totalitarians can’t wipe that memory of freedom from my mind even with all their propaganda.
When I was in High School (early 70’s) we lived in a rural farming area in Indiana. You could go out to the student parking lot and see gun racks in the pickup trucks. Not only that, the racks were not empty. Rifles and shotgun were present. Lots of people would go hunting on their way home from school. Or they were used to get rid of nuisance animals. We never had any incidents concerning guns, and they were in easy reach. Different times now.
I prefer to call the Canadian one 'Joke Lark'. He called a vote in the House of Commons, though he knew he did not have enough members to win a 'non-confidence' vote. The government fell and Canada 'benefitted' from another election and four more years of Trudeau. We received similar 'benefits' as you are receiving from four more years of Obama.
BOH0CA
In my high school in rural Alabama (60’s-70’s) our ROTC had a rifle range in the basement.
An older friend of mine used to carry a .22 pistol to school every day when he grew up in Ohio. He carried it in a wooden box and kept it on a shelf in the coat room behind the blackboard. Everyone including the teacher knew he had it. Why did he carry it? To go squirrel hunting immediately after school.
What happened since then? Kids today are not taught “Thou shalt not kill” and of God who commanded it.
Colleges still do. My boys’ Scout troop taught rifles and shotguns at camp. (Archery too)
1968 was the year of madness when Bobby Kennedy got murdered. Americans threw their rights in the bonfire for the promise of safety and began to “de-militarize” our youth by promoting a very anti-gun anti-self defense program.
It has never stopped.
Yup, Did it! No Problems with anyone in the early 1950”s doing so.
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