[w1andsodidwe]

Incidents like this always bring to mind my 1964 speech class where a student brought his shotgun as a audio visual aid for his talk. No one in my class had any reason to be frightened. I as a 16 year old girl, raised on a farm in rural Iowa thought very little of it at the time. After all, I had been going hunting with my dad since I was little and there were always guns in the house.

Of course nobody grabbed a gun and pointed it at anyone for sport. We had common sense back then.

My question is, what makes society so different that you are allowed to do this sort of thing as long as you can claim you are off your medication or crazy? There is always an excuse for this behavior. We had mentally ill people back then, but this sort of thing did not happen when guns were readily available to everyone.

The only answer can be that everyone having guns was a deterent.

[HD1200]

Interesting. About that same year, 1965, we would all bring our firearms to our school and store them in our jacket/book lockers during class day then haul them to firearms training at the school after classes.

[logic]

The only answer can be that everyone having guns was a deterent.

As you said, you have common sense, an extremely rare gift these days.....

[El Gato]

We had mentally ill people back then, but this sort of thing did not happen when guns were readily available to everyone.

Well, it didn't happen often. There was Charlie Starkweather, right across the river from you there in Iowa. You might remember. I do, and I'm a couple of years younger than you. Of course I lived in Lincoln, where the rampage got started. In fact my Dad and his friend were the ones who reported the empty gas station, that was empty because Charlie had taken the attendant a mile or so away by the creek and killed him with a shotgun. There were 3 shotguns in the car Dad was traveling in, his, his buddy's and his buddy's fathers. They were going duck hunting that day. They had left the station before the police arrived.

Of course Charlie and Carol Ann didn't off themselves. The state offed Charlie, with the now banned "Old Sparky", just over year after his was caught. Maybe that is why that sort of thing rarely happened in those days?