Remember when schools had gun clubs?
Up until the ’70s, especially in rural areas, it was commonplace to see kids entering and leaving their school campuses with rifle bags slung lazily over their backs. Guns were left in school lockers, and rifles and shotguns were routinely seen in high-school parking lots, hanging in the rear windows of pickup trucks. A good friend of mine is from North Dakota. His father was telling me recently that in the late 1960s he would hunt before school and then take his rifle — and his bloodstained kills — to school to show his teachers. He and his friends would compare their shooting techniques in the school grounds. Nobody batted an eyelid. In North Dakota, school shootings were non-existent; in the country at large, they were extremely rare…
Such attitudes would no doubt be regarded as alarming today, as unthinkable as the old — and true — slogan that “America grew up with a rifle in its hand.” So widespread has been the shift in educators’ attitudes that in 1990 Congress legislated to render all schools “gun-free zones.” The law made reasonable exceptions for weapons that were taken to school “for use in a program approved by a school in the school zone” and, regardless, it was struck down on grounds of federal overreach in 1997. Still, that such an exception needed carving out at all would have astonished many a few years earlier, not to mention inconvenienced hundreds of thousands of harmless students who, in the process of going about their business, innocently and safely kept rifles in their cars.
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I took my first hunter’s safety course in high school… Although this was Missouri.
Kaptain Amerika on January 21, 2013 at 7:18 PM
People used to tie their slaves up at the hitching post outside of school, too…but what does that mean? Other than the same sort of folks who own guns, probably owned slaves. Not that I’m being judgmental or condescending…I’m just pointing out a truth here.
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:21 PM
Really? So being a gunowner now equates to being a slaveowner?
ButterflyDragon on January 21, 2013 at 7:24 PM
People tied their slaves to hitching posts outside school? wtf are you talking about? Typical liberal logic… Opinion mixed with Nonsense.
Kaptain Amerika on January 21, 2013 at 7:25 PM
My nephews in SD were doing that in the last ten years, although they did leave the guns and the kills in the trunk of the car, instead of bringing them in.
Wethal on January 21, 2013 at 7:25 PM
I might add it generally equates to being a bitterly clinging, NON-SARCASM grasping sexist, racist, bigot, homophobe…It’s not necessarily your fault, you probably grew up poor, only around other bitter-clinging SARCASM-CHALLENGED white people, who had only your dreams of slave-holding and hunting and fishing to while away the hours in your compound in the woods.
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:27 PM
My dad and his friends brought guns to school all the time. They’d hunt before or after classes or just go plinking. This was the mid-sixties in New Jersey.
CurtZHP on January 21, 2013 at 7:27 PM
Well, I see that in your one-room school hose besides failing SARCASM, you didn’t get high marks for spelling either.
Possibly if you had hunted or fished a little less, and treated your “klonkie” tied up outside a bit better you’d have a more rounded education.
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:28 PM
Sarcasm only works when it doesn’t sound exactly like leftists trolls.
Pity the comedians and guys like the Onion Network.
sharrukin on January 21, 2013 at 7:30 PM
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:27 PM
Ha ha! Liberal elitist exposed!
yubley on January 21, 2013 at 7:30 PM
that is so bizarre (when you compare it to today’s world)… wow.
and then all the guns in schools magically disappeared forever just because congress passed a law! oh wait.
?????
Sachiko on January 21, 2013 at 7:32 PM
Even though it’s not what he meant, there is truth in his statement – slaves never own guns, which is why American’s “cling” so fervently to that right.
Project much?
peski on January 21, 2013 at 7:33 PM
All the boys in my very large high school just west of Portland, Oregon, took hunter safety courses and spent time in the rifle range with school supplied .22′s during 9th or 10th grade. This was in the 1970′s.
Scribbler on January 21, 2013 at 7:33 PM
JFKY… you’re being sarcastic? because there are plenty of people out there who would say things like what you said and genuinely mean them. XD
Sachiko on January 21, 2013 at 7:33 PM
Remember when schools used to educate children?
The Notorious G.O.P on January 21, 2013 at 7:33 PM
You DIDN’T grow up poor, then what was your excuse for making your slaves carry your shot gun/fishing pole(s) to school and then leaving tied to the hitching post?
Certainly, in my neighborhood we would have at least had a STABLE, and Press Pot Coffee for the slaves….
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:33 PM
And we often saw juniors and seniors on campus with their rifles, as they would bring them to the shop to have work done on them just before and during the hunting seasons.
Did I mention this was 18 miles west of Portlandia?
Scribbler on January 21, 2013 at 7:34 PM
When I was a teen in the early 1980′s, I used to have my .22 rifle in my pickup truck out in the high school parking lot. My buddies and I would go small game hunting after school. We also had our skinning/hunting knives in our vehicles. There was no such thing as “No Gun Zone” idiocracy. No mass shootings. No violent video games. No CNN demonizing patriotic people. No one was easily offended. Political correctness hadn’t hit mainstream yet. Hardly anyone my age was on meds. And the media didn’t turn criminals into instant celebrities on a daily basis.
jediwebdude on January 21, 2013 at 7:35 PM
Miss the important ALL CAPS, much?
They still do, in all honesty, no sarcasm, you just don’t like what they are teaching….I’m sure Abbie Hoffman felt the same way, it’s just now the positions are reversed.
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:36 PM
Yep.
Bmore on January 21, 2013 at 7:38 PM
We used to have teachers that taught the Constitution also.
Bmore on January 21, 2013 at 7:39 PM
What’s a one-room school hose? You must’ve failed spelling also.
reagant on January 21, 2013 at 7:39 PM
Sorry a$$ wipe, but you’re the one who’s sarcasm challenged. If you meant what you wrote, it’s despicable. If you didn’t, you’re a illiterate fool.
If you’d care to make a clear point, go ahead and try again.
peski on January 21, 2013 at 7:39 PM
Welcome to Hot Air, Danny Glover…..
TKindred on January 21, 2013 at 7:40 PM
Sounds about right. Maybe Mel Gibson will join soon and they can flame each other to death in fit of Lethal Weapon nostalgia.
peski on January 21, 2013 at 7:42 PM
Wow what a huge strawman. Dude you’re an idiot. What a strange comparison.
CW on January 21, 2013 at 7:43 PM
Wow,
There were no slaves when I was in school and we went shooting and everything. A truck without a rifle in the back window would be a “new” truck.
And that was in upstate New York. With visits to my grandparents in Vermont, where we went “chuckin’” on farms to help farmers out.
Nobody would ever mess around with a rifle..we knew what they would do and if someone would have ever even thought about it their Dad would have “cleaned their clocks” and some serious chores were in their future.
But maybe that’s part of the reason…Dad was there to put the fear of God into you if you screwed up. And to be proud of you when you did well.
So many of these kids don’t have Dads around to keep them on the straight and narrow.
{sarc}
Thank you, Liberals, for that welfare system that destroyed many families and gave us a culture of single moms rather than parents. {/sarc} <– for JF from KY since he seems to be tag impaired
ProfShadow on January 21, 2013 at 7:43 PM
Excellent argument, @ss-wipe, indeed…My point being YES schools still educate…just as they did, they also INDOCTRINATE…now you and Notorious don’t see what you call education “indoctrination”, but the Left did and now THEY control the system. They feel they are educating, you see it differently. Is that clear enough?
You say, God Bless America”, they say “God D@mn Amerikkka” each of you feels the other is “indoctrinating…both are right. Only right now Pfeger/Ayers/Wright are in charge. It’s simple enough, unless you happen to believe ONLY YOU have the “truth.”
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:46 PM
Bahwwahahaahahaahahaa!!! Hahaahabwwahahaaaa!!
What an idiot.
CW on January 21, 2013 at 7:46 PM
Stupid democrats ruin everything. Voting for obozo in 2012 should be considered treason and dealt with accordingly.
Flange on January 21, 2013 at 7:46 PM
ANOTHER poor, sarcasm-challenged white person, I see…
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:46 PM
Yer silly.
Mimzey on January 21, 2013 at 7:46 PM
Heh….. I grew up in Northern Utah. In high school, everything the author talks about was true. You could walk through the parking lots and see a couple hundred pick up, and most of them would have at least one rifle or shotgun in the rear window. At lunch, and after school, those same students and their teachers would be comparing notes on hunting areas, best loads for different weapons, etc.
We all knew how to kill and dress an animal, and also how to fish, clean and cook what we caught. It was a great time to be a kid, that time before the government decided it could be a better parent for us than our own parents.
TKindred on January 21, 2013 at 7:47 PM
WHOA I am not a sarcasm-challenged white boi…that there is some good sarcasm.
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:47 PM
lol. Not that it means anything but I got it. I think that sometimes people here are not familiar with a poster’s history. I do have to say I had to run it by my few brain cells—”JFKY, doesn’t he/she usually post reasonable stuff?”
arnold ziffel on January 21, 2013 at 7:48 PM
Awww poor widdle JFKY doesn’t like being laughed at….awww. So sad.
CW on January 21, 2013 at 7:48 PM
Poor CW, after reading, only what you want to, an “obvious attack” on your beliefs, you miss the whole SARCASM-CHALLENGED, all-caps line…get a sense of humour, you’ve been hooked, gaffed and tossed into the boat….
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 7:53 PM
Awww still spinning are ya? Poor small person. So much anger…
CW on January 21, 2013 at 7:56 PM
Your disgusting. SO having a rifle means your most likely racist.
So… what about all those gang banging inner city folk who happen to be a majority “non-white”…flashing their guns, which bTW, I am sure a majority of them are ILLEGAL too (as in not registered to them)? Are they racist also? Go ahead and walk down there and flap your mouth in front of them. See how far you get.
watertown on January 21, 2013 at 7:58 PM
Have you always been a misinformed Racist?
Galt2009 on January 21, 2013 at 7:59 PM
Please explain then, why the fastest-growing demographic group of gun owners is northeastern women.
Washington Nearsider on January 21, 2013 at 7:59 PM
Diane Feinstein is a slave owner now?
aryeung on January 21, 2013 at 8:00 PM
Well, thanks for trying, but I made no comments about education or indoctrination. Once again, projection.
I just reacted to your racist ranting equating gun owners to slave owners.
We get it. You hate white people, and you love assuming who is white on an anonymous blog comment thread. Your love of hate is so strong that you can just feel the slave-craving whiteness oozing out of your monitor.
Now that’s funny.
peski on January 21, 2013 at 8:00 PM
He’s claiming he now he was being sarcastic.
CW on January 21, 2013 at 8:01 PM
I was captain of my high school rifle team in suburban NJ. This was in the late 70s-early 80s. We had CMP .22lr target rifles in a locker in the basement, along with a 50 foot range.
I wonder what became of those rifles, they were sweet shooters.
Rebar on January 21, 2013 at 8:02 PM
Now do you see why sarcasm tags were invented?
sharrukin on January 21, 2013 at 8:02 PM
The inability to grasp anything as other than attack or agreement is strong with this one….
I’m not the one tying my slaves up outside the school, in all sorts of weathers….
I’d say that it has something to do with their men-folk being too busy fishing to get on down to the gun store…not trying to condescend or anything.
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 8:02 PM
No, you’re making Racist charges – and projecting your racism on others.
You are the Racist here.
Galt2009 on January 21, 2013 at 8:05 PM
Not just claiming it, had you been less of an angry rube only desiring to attack or defend, you’d have seen several clues…oh the all caps, the whole slaves on hitching post line, the huntin’ and fish’n line from Clinton…the not trying to condescend line, also from Clinton…
I consider them cheating, I have more respect for my audience. I trust that they, for the most part, can get a grasp of the idea, without me having to put in a “laugh” track as it were….
As for the others, so angry, to look past the obvious gag lines, not much I can do for them.
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 8:06 PM
Get in the cooler with CW….
Or as the Colonel/Oberst says to Steve McQueen in The Great Escape…”Kooler.”
JFKY on January 21, 2013 at 8:08 PM
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