[Joe Brower]

What riverrunner said is also true of my high school daze back in the late 70s, on the Gulf Coast of Florida. We could have staged a "Columbine" any time we wanted. We never did. It just wasn't in us. So what's changed?

This same high school now looks like a damned gulag -- chain link fences everywhere, with a cop roaming the hallways.

It never has been, and never will be, the guns.

[Travis McGee]

What's changed has been the triumph of nihilism.

[PhilDragoo]

I went to a YMCA camp from age eight through thirteen at which we learned to safely shoot.

.22 rifles, .22 revolver, 30.06, skeet.

We also shot at the central Y.

The emphasis was safety on the range and there was no fear of guns, nor any particular fetish or fascination.

Imagine that.

[in the Arena]

I had a similar experience growing up in South Dakota in the late 70's. There was definitely "guns on campus", at least in our cars, there wasn't a chance we were going to miss the afternoon pheasant hunt.