High school gun club, 1941.
Posted on 06/05/2018 5:16:03 PM PDT by Politically Correct
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.
Excellent....
Never in history has a gun ever been charged, arrested or tried for murder...
Exactly throwing God out of school has lead to the moral decline in this country.
Exactly what the liberals and communists want.
....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?....
The widespread “diagnosis” and prescription of drugs for “ADHD”!!!! (That’s a good part of the problem, anyway, IMHO!)
Walter Williams is one of the best.
I was surprised to learn how old he is. He will be missed.
...What’s the difference between yesteryear and today?...
With the exception of Columbine and domestic related shootings at schools, Millennials are the perpetrators and solely responsible for mass school shootings.
That’s the difference. And the oldest of them will be eligible age wise to run for President in 2020.
when in high school several members of the student body had rifles in window racks in the back of their truck. Once we were pulled by a local cop who just wanted to look at the rifle. Had about a 1/2 hour discussion on the merits of that particular piece.
“What’s the difference between yesteryear and today? “
SSRI drugs with suicide/homicidal tendencies as a side effect.
High school gun club, 1941.
I knew women in the past were actually tougher than the wusses today, despite their oft-pushed stereotypes.
A friend of mine and me were cutting 6&7th hours study halls to bird hunt my junior year. 2 shotguns in the car we took to school. Then deer season opened and shotguns went back in the closet. Deer rifles came out. The principal caught us leaving school. Said don’t let our grades drop and don’t open the car trunk at school. Then asked how the hunting was going. It was 1969. Our parents both of them in each of our lives knew where we were at. Wish kids still had those times.
It is a good article. People changed, that’s for sure. The family broke down. Some blame the fact that it’s easier to get a divorce. I don’t think that’s all of it. We are a society literally programmed by television and the internet. Liberals reach us through those mediums like never before. Militant feminism has to be mentioned as well in the breakdown of the nuclear family.
Liberals don’t hate guns, they hate gun owners. They despise anyone who disagrees. They really want to ban US!
Truth can be painful to dictating tyrants.
Same here. Went to high school in the 60’s in a rural community. During bird season nearly every farm kid had a shotgun in their car. It was a big deal if someone got a new gun. We’d all rush out to the parking lot to have a look see. Never ever thought about settling an argument with a gun. Fists or insults were the weapons of the day.
Bookmarked.
In 1993 my son’s teacher tried to convince us that Ritalin was heaven sent, and would “fix” his problem. The problem was, he was acting like an eight year-old boy. Just to be sure, we had a clinical evaluation done. In very professional language, the good doctor wrote a letter telling the teacher to go pound sand.
Very Good, but just more White Privilege being exerted by the good Doctor, because everyone knows GUNS kill Black People and Minorities at a far greater rate than whites.
My annual, class of 65 has a photo of the Sportsman’s Club.
They are all holding rifles or shotguns along with their class sponger.
Maybe the prettiest girls in school got a Browning Sweet 16 shotgun for her 16th birthday.
Farm girls could shoot, fish and cook. The guys back then bucked hay, cultivated, and took care of work on the farm. When you worked in the hay fields, they brought you in at noon. While you ate lunch you checked out the farmers daughter. By the time you were done that night you were barely able to tell her goodby. Wasn’t a bad time to grow up.
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