[WriteOn]

We had a competitve gun team: 1976.

[JoeProBono]

School_679_Baltimore_PattersonHigh_RifleClub_1967

[Real Cynic No More]

Fear amongst the masses is the result of the lack of education during the past 40 or so years, driven by federally funded education. Firearms should be taught in school just as sex education has been. Not merely the mechanics, but our heritage as well. Mandatory safe firearms education.

[trebb]

In the late ‘60s, our shop teacher enlisted a few parents and started a gun club. My Dad was a volunteer and we covered a lot of safety along with NRA membership, etc. No casualties and none of us became mass killers.

[GenXteacher]

My school’s ROTC unit has a rifle team....

[Iron Munro]

The decline of school gun clubs coincides with the general loss of common sense and reational judgement along with a turn away from traditional values and follows the rise in the feminization of the government schools.

When I was in Junior High and High school we brought our .22 rifles to school and kept them in our lockers so we could go plinking after school. It was more or less a traditional thing, parents and teachers were aware of it and no one ever abused the permission.

Now the adult gun fearing wussies in charge of schools attack and penalize little children for merely pointing with their index fingers.

[Venturer]

I took my rifle to school on the bus.
When I got on I gave it to the driver and he laid it on the heater next to him until we got to school.

I belonged to the FFA Rifle Team.

[Venturer]

I took my rifle to school on the bus.
When I got on I gave it to the driver and he laid it on the heater next to him until we got to school.

I belonged to the FFA Rifle Team.

[mountainlion]

I was required to take NRA hunter safety in High School. I went into the US Army and really learned to shoot.

[PowderMonkey]

I participated in our school’s team. The county required an ambulance and physician to be present at every sporting event. We never saw one at ours. Nobody ever got hurt. I can’t recall a single ND or AD at any competitive shooting event anywhere in the state, but at every football game, somebody always got carted away in an ambulance. Long after I graduated and moved on, I heard the county ordered all rifle teams disbanded and clubs off school property as being “too dangerous” and sending “the wrong signals” to students.

[I cannot think of a name]

Shhhhh - be careful. You are getting close to the truth that totally obliterates the current gun nonsense argument:

“The current easy availability of guns is the cause of our gun violence problem.”

It's us pesky people that were alive in the 50s and 60s that undermine the whole thing. THE FACT IS, GUNS HAVE NEVER BEEN AS DIFFICULT TO 0BTAIN AS THEY ARE TODAY. I can't think of one household in the neighborhood that I grew up in that did not have a gun.

Most of the fathers (and there was one in every home that had kids) were World War II veterans. There were 3 M1 Grands, numerous 1911s, and of course the full compliment of hunting rifles and shotguns in my neighborhood alone. None had locks on them, and many were kept loaded and ‘at the ready.’ And we won't even go into what you could mail order back then (who remembers the great “Service Armament” company?)

By today's logic, the 50s should have been a school bloodbath. But they weren't. And it is obvious to all but the complete idiot that the availability of guns has NOTHING to do with the current problems. But guns are an effective way to keep the sheeple from actually focusing on the real problems!

[BBell]

In the mid 80’s the high school I went to in Nebraska still had a skeet shooting team.

[Joe 6-pack]

In western PA where I grew up, buck season opened the Monday after Thanksgiving. The schools were closed for that express purpose. Additionally, students could get up to two excused absences per year for hunting, merely by presenting a parental note and a copy of your hunting license. Any number of days, I would take my old 7x57 to school in the morning, put it in my locker, and my dad would pick me up at noon and we'd go hunting.

In 8th grade woodshop, I brought in a .22 and custom built a stock for it. The shop teacher had no problem with it whatsoever.

From 9th - 12th grade I was on the rifle team...

Nobody ever got shot.

[Charles Martel]

My high school still has a rifle club, though now it uses air rifles. When I was there (mid-'70s), the NJROTC office space included an armory room. There were long wooden racks of former military training rifles - Winchester 52Ds, Remington 541Ts and of course the more numerous 44US Mossbergs. The crusty old Master Chief even had a few 1911s locked up in there. The school didn't have its own range, but had the use of a USN Reserve facility range a few miles away.

It's true that some of us carried in our own firearms. The upperclassmen had dibs on the Winchesters and Remingtons, and some of the Mossbergs were getting clunky... so my dad found a Winchester 75 target model on a local shop's used gun rack and loaned me the money to buy it. Yep, I used to carry it in the front door of the school. Heck, I used to carry it (cased) on the public bus, before I had a driver's license.

[txrefugee]

In the years before WWII, Germans were teaching their sons to shoot, while the French were teaching their sons to dance.

It took the Germans six weeks to conquer France.

[buffaloguy]

Some Texas schools still have rifle teams and there doesn’t seem to be any problems at all.

I think it may be increasing but I am not sure.

[buffaloguy]

A few years ago a local school district wanted to start a rifle team and they simply put out empty cigar boxes at most of the gun dealers checkout area with a sign that said “Help the Lamar school district start a rifle team”.

I dropped in an extra twenty and mine was one of many. I also saw a hundred dollar bill in the box. I think they were successful in their fundraising as when I dropped in the twenty there looked to be pretty close to a thousand in the box.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

In the late 40s I was in fourth grade and on the school sidewalk safety patrol. We had to be at school early to serve as street crossing guards, we stayed a little late after classes for more crossing guard duty, and several times a month we got to go to the police pistol range and shoot .22 rifles.

When I bought my own .22 rifle at age 11 I already had 3 years of gun safety and marksmanship training.

[9YearLurker]

I wonder if there are even enough schools now with boys not on high-risk medication.

[oldstaffsergeant]

So true. At my High School in the early 1980s we had a school skeet team. We met during school, often took our shotguns to school, and our successes were in the school paper. There were zero firearms “incidents” at my school in those days. You were required to take a safety course to Letter for Skeet.