Posted on 06/06/2018 5:04:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
Having enjoyed my 82nd birthday, I am part of a group of about 50 million Americans who are 65 years of age or older. Those who are 90 or older were in school during the 1930s. My age cohort was in school during the 1940s. Baby boomers approaching their 70s were in school during the 1950s and early '60s.
Try this question to any one of those 50 million Americans who are 65 or older: Do you recall any discussions about the need to hire armed guards to protect students and teachers against school shootings? Do you remember school policemen patrolling the hallways? How many students were shot to death during the time you were in school? For me and those other Americans 65 or older, when we were in school, a conversation about hiring armed guards and having police patrol hallways would have been seen as lunacy. There was no reason.
What's the difference between yesteryear and today? The logic of the argument for those calling for stricter gun control laws, in the wake of recent school shootings, is that something has happened to guns. Guns have behaved more poorly and become evil. Guns themselves are the problem. The job for those of us who are 65 or older is to relay the fact that guns were more available and less controlled in years past, when there was far less mayhem. Something else is the problem.
Guns haven't changed. People have changed. Behavior that is accepted from today's young people was not accepted yesteryear. For those of us who are 65 or older, assaults on teachers were not routine as they are in some cities. For example, in Baltimore, an average of four teachers and staff members were assaulted each school day in 2010, and more than 300 school staff members filed workers' compensation claims in a year because of injuries received through assaults or altercations on the job. In Philadelphia, 690 teachers were assaulted in 2010, and in a five-year period, 4,000 were. In that city's schools, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, "on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, or victims of other violent crimes. That doesn't even include thousands more who are extorted, threatened, or bullied in a school year."
Yale University legal scholar John Lott argues that gun accessibility in our country has never been as restricted as it is now. Lott reports that until the 1960s, New York City public high schools had shooting clubs. Students carried their rifles to school on the subway in the morning and then turned them over to their homeroom teacher or a gym teacher -- and that was mainly to keep them centrally stored and out of the way. Rifles were retrieved after school for target practice (http://tinyurl.com/yapuaehp). Virginia's rural areas had a long tradition of high school students going hunting in the morning before school, and they sometimes stored their guns in the trunks of their cars during the school day, parked on the school grounds.
During earlier periods, people could simply walk into a hardware store and buy a rifle. Buying a rifle or pistol through a mail-order catalog -- such as Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s -- was easy. Often, a 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22-caliber rifle, given to a boy by his father.
These facts of our history should confront us with a question: With greater accessibility to guns in the past, why wasn't there the kind of violence we see today, when there is much more restricted access to guns? There's another aspect of our response to mayhem. When a murderer uses a bomb, truck or car to kill people, we don't blame the bomb, truck or car. We don't call for control over the instrument of death. We seem to fully recognize that such objects are inanimate and incapable of acting on their own. We blame the perpetrator. However, when the murder is done using a gun, we do call for control over the inanimate instrument of death -- the gun. I smell a hidden anti-gun agenda.
I’m 62 and I can relate to everything in this article. Simply put, chasing God out of the classroom sure as heck didn’t usher in The Age Of Reason.
From a rural area where all pickup trucks had gun rack in back window. Not only did male teachers “bring”their guns to school but so did many of the older male students that left early to get into the fields to work or came late after work or hunting.
All homes had a rifle in the back closet In my home it was used by my mother (an ACE shot on PU rifle team) the source of name hoosiermama.
My high school had a rifle range in the school basement. Surplus WWII weapons were easily and cheaply purchased by mail from Ye Old Hunters Lodge. Murder was considered a horrible crime. Strongly agree, it’s not the guns or access to them but the attitude of people. Thanks in part to some of my favorite movies, we blurred the line between good and evil and now live in a gray area. With abortion we cheapened life. Now we rewrite history to make founders bad guys and almost daily challenge the laws and framework they gave us. We have become lazy and look at socialism as a utopia instead of realizing it represents slavery. The sad reality is that as we age, we will become victims to younger generations not embracing those attributes which made America great. MAGA is not just a slogan but a chance to save an America founded on Godly principles.
What’s the difference between yesteryear and today?
In regards to school shootings? Easy. Some student or students would have grabbed the shooter and beat the living crap out of him and if he survived held him for the police. That is if one of then had not gone out to their truck got their own gun and found the shout and blasted his ass! But basically it is this. We did not count on the “Government” or anyone else to take care of us. We knew that it was our own responsibility and we accepted that and did that!
In the back closet??? What good is that?? In my rural area, loaded rifles were (and I suspect still are) kept in the corner next to the door to the outer world. When critters are eating your crop, short response time is desirable.
And yes, my mother "offed" her share. Probably the best shot in the family.
I recall a classmate that stabbed his father with a knife, a friend of my parents who beat his wife (found out when he died) and a neighbor who beat his son and the son was later convicted of murder. There were problems but they were blamed on the person committing the crime.
Have we lost our moral standards? Now we follow political correctness and blame something else for our problems?
We need God in our lives and in society.
The local Western Auto store and the hardware stores sold guns and ammo.
A brick of .22 for 49¢.
In Jr. High and High School we brought our .22 rifles to school and kept them in our lockers to go target shooting crows or dump rats when school let out.
No one paid much attention to a couple boys carrying .22 rifles walking through town to the Western Auto and then down Main Street to the open dump for some plinking.
74 years ago.
I’m 63 and when I was in 6th and 7th grade (elementary school - no “middle schools” back then), a lad in my tweens, I can recall riding Mrs. Baker’s bus to school with my friends during Dove season, all of us carrying our 410s and 20-gauges. Mrs. Baker was cool with that as long as they were unloaded.
At school, we lined them up neatly in the coat room and went to class where we started the day with the pledge to our flag and a prayer to our Lord.
In the afternoon, we collected our shotguns and walked home through the fields and while we seldom shot a bird, we did shoot at them and we never, ever shot each other, even though we sometimes had fist-fights on those walks - as kids were prone to do.
Now-a-days, if there is a flag and a pledge, there is also some “opt-out” or “take a knee” clause, and there are no prayers at all as God has been removed from our public schools. I’m as appalled at the school shootings as anyone, but it astonishes me when folks get bent out of shape, when after kicking God out, the devil comes to call. All I’m hearing from some, even most youngsters these days is that gun owners are “terrorists” and I’m a bad man and a “bitter clinger”. It’s time to do something for sure, but banning guns won’t save your soul.
“Haters gonna hate”, as evidenced by racist Nazi-boy Dylann Roof who murdered nine at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. If he hadn’t had a gun, he’d have used a bomb or a vehicle, a knife or his bare hands - and that kind of racist hatred, that leads one to murder fellow human-beings, be it with a rock or a gas chamber is born in ignorance, lies and “the Devil’s right-hand”. As I understand, the Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas actually had a “Gun-free Zone” sign at the entrance and I reckon those good Christians followed the rules. By the way, it was a neighbor who heard the ruckus and took the shooter down with a gun.
I won’t mention any names, but all my preachers carry in the pulpit along with a half-dozen deacons, ushers, some Sunday school teachers and most of the choir. Some are concealed and others open carry (including Yours Truly). A “shooter” brandishing a firearm wouldn’t have much of a chance making it across the parking lot, much less getting through the vestibule and just to clarify, Pastor has yet to shoot anyone by accident or otherwise.
I know that in this world, there is Good and there is Evil and I think most people accept that as far as it goes. You can call it “God” and “the Devil” and again, folks get the drift. I know that God is love - I’ve been blessed beyond anything I deserve. If Evil comes knocking, Good folk need to make a stand. Making guns illegal is as effective as that “gun-free zone” sign and if you demonize the Good folk that follow the rules and take away rights “imbued by our Creator” it just assures that Evil will win every time because Evil has no rules.
Much has changed socially, with very much of it purposely directed by social Marxists/Progressives.
God’s out of schools, Dr. Spock stopped spankings, the pill arrived and fornication flourishes, students got political power over adults, fathers are out of our homes, large numbers of mental institutions were shut down, faggotry is rampant and marketed, abortion as birth control is popular, violent shoot-em-up video games saturate young minds, and legal punishment jsn’t really punishment.
Add to your assessment:
* the proliferation and ubiquity of “first person shooter” games desensitizing kids.
* violent movies and music desensitizing kids
* breakup of the nuclear family and loss,of a strong father figure
* women joining the workforce in large numbers in WW II and thereafter
* welfare encouraging th ebreakup of families
* liberalism ushering in the era of relativism and destroying the simple objective notion of good and evil
* the rejection of Constitution as the bedrock of all objective law in the country — liberals make up any law via the judiciary that feels good at the moment.
* I totally agree with you that the horror of abortion mirdering 50 million or more of the most innocent babes is a HUGE factor in this as well as the removal of God from the public square
ALL of the above were forced on us by liberals.
Thanks for posting. Great posts BUMP!
What’s the difference between yesteryear and today?
In regards to school shootings? Easy. Some student or students would have grabbed the shooter and beat the living crap out of him and if he survived held him for the police. That is if one of then had not gone out to their truck got their own gun and found the shout and blasted his ass! But basically it is this. We did not count on the “Government” or anyone else to take care of us. We knew that it was our own responsibility and we accepted that and did that!
Familiar with The Frankfurt School?
Everyone here should be.
ping
Walter Williams common sense!
Our two rifles are in racks right next to the back door (the one we use--we don't use the front door).
My wife has shot 3 armadillos and one coyote with her .22 rifle. She learned to shoot as a kid hunting in South Carolina.
I got all my gun training in high school, where we had a gun safety class and a range in the basement of the gym, in the Boy Scouts with their marksmanship badges and in the military in basic.
IMO, the problems with school shootings nowadays has nothing to do with guns. It has to do with the liberal culture and liberal policies in schools.
At that school in Florida, they gave a pass to the shooter many times to avoid have the crime stats show up attached to their school. These are liberal adults making these decisions, not the crazy kid who was given a pass and who everybody knew was going to eventually shoot-up the school.
Unintended consequences of poor, liberal decisions.
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