The youngin's can't believe it but......

[hightime]

It's true. I built a bolt action scoped target pistol in college. And my Dad didn't get expelled for shooting a pistol from the schoolroom window when he was a kid. In highschool we had our rifles in our cars, so we could head for the country to hunt when school was out.
I actually got a B for my woodwork on my target pistol.
Yeah, we're talking a few years ago, 1967 for me and , probably mid. 1920's for Dad. Ah the time have changed.

Owen

[bdhold]

not exactly intending to make this a political thread and Hobie feel free to edit/delete this post.

The difference is all about the value of human life, family values, and accountability to authority. It started with Roe v. Wade.
Our heroes are different. Look at the characters of John Wayne and Gary Cooper and their disdain to use their firearms.
As much as I like Clint Eastwood movies, all his movies and all his characters were antisocial and violent, and all authority was the enemy.
All men on television and movies are either buffoonish or violent.
Now even in our churches, single moms are the heroes.

[hightime]

There's a great misunderstanding. I like guns, explosives, loud noises, etc. I have nothing sinester in my thinking. Yet nowdays it's assumed that I do, because of those likes.

Owen

[bdhold]

again, it's because of the way men with guns are misrepresented by the media.

[mikld]

Yep, I went to High School just outside Dallas in '63. One of the good ol' boys made a .32 caliber precussion squirrel rifle (bbl. and most of the lock was from a kit, and the stock was hand made from scratch). I believe he did some kind of rust finish on the metal and got an A in 2 classes for his work; Wood Shop and metal Shop. In about '61 or so I was going to school in Compton, CA and one of the home boys made a "zip gun" from a piece of small tubing and parts from a cap gun in Metal Shop. He got expelled and I never saw him again. I don't know, or try to imagine the sociological implications of my post, and am not trying to politisize (sp?) this thread. I just remembered the two instances. Wish I'd stayed in Dallas...

[Charles]

I used to ride a public bus with a Winchester 52 rifle, going to matches in Washington DC. Nobody gave a second look at a kid with a rifle on the bus back then..as long as I sat in front of the white line on the floor.

[pwl44m]

It must just be "California" I got sent home because I forgot to take the matches out of My pocket after burning the trash that morning. Oh ! forgot to mention, that was about 1957. There is a trend here, Never thought about it before but it is too late to get out now (the Kitchen isn't finished."
Perry
P.S. I miiight have had the matches out showing them to another Kid.LOL

[earlmck]

Man, times do change. In '66 I was in the Navy, stationed at Treasure Island in the bay off San Francisco. There was a really fine gun store downtown San Francisco at that time (San Francisco Gun Exhcange, if memory serves...) So I found this Sharps Borchardt that had been converted to 22 hornet with a bull barrel, Lyman targetspot scope. I bought it and hopped on the trolly to go up and show it off to an old high school buddy who was going to med school there. Showed off my new acquisition and hopped another trolly or two to get to The TI bus, and then back to the base. There they did made me keep it in the armory until I went home on leave. In those travels one trolly conductor asked me what I was doing with that thing (12 or 14 pounds of rifle with a 18" scope on it). I told him "I'm with pigeon control". No problem.

I'm sure you'd be taken out by SWAT today...

[Shasta]

In 1963, I was in 7th grade and took my hunter safety training from one of the teachers after hours at the school. On the day we were to actually shoot, I took my .22 bolt action rifle and ammunition to school with me on the bus! No case or anything, just carried the rifle openly. It was handed to the bus driver on boarding, he returned it upon arriving at the school, it was then taken to the principal's office for storage, and handed back at the end of the day when we headed to the local firing range. Nothing sinister was supposed, in fact no one thought a thing about it! Just another day in small town America.

When my daughters were in grade school in the late eighties, I would make an annual presentation at their school about mountain men and the 1800's Fur Trade era, complete with a display of muzzle loading firearms. It was a real hit with both the kids and the teachers.

Now days it is illegal to possess a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school. Times do not always change for the better.

SHASTA

[Booger Bill]

When I was in grade school in the 40s we had at the time the oldest school teacher in the state. His father was a civil war veteran and he had his fathers musket. He brought it to school and demonstrated it out behind the one room school house! Thats him on the end.

[pwl44m]

C'mon Booger, which one is You?

[bdhold]

you'd think it would be the one picking his nose.

[Ben_Rumson]

Sometime between 1963-65 at a Fresno CA. high school I went to....Kids were told there was a special surprise assembly in our gymnasium.... No flyers had been sent home...No special permission was needed to attend...We got a short history of firearms development (where the speaker had real guns of various ages) lecture as it pertained to US history with demonstrations, and coupled with general firearm safety. The biggest hit that day (judging by the cheers and applause) came at the end of the lecture, when he demonstrated how to repel boarders by actually firing a double barrel flintlock pistol with a folding bayonet that would flip out like a switch blade... (My first whiff of the Holy Black as fired from a real old time gun!) It was two quick blank shots followed by the bayonet flipping over, the paper wadding still floating about...Afterward anyone that wanted to could file by his table and see the guns...

[AJMD429]

It's true. I built a bolt action scoped target pistol in college. And my Dad didn't get expelled for shooting a pistol from the schoolroom window when he was a kid. In highschool we had our rifles in our cars, so we could head for the country to hunt when school was out.
I actually got a B for my woodwork on my target pistol.
Yeah, we're talking a few years ago, 1967 for me and , probably mid. 1920's for Dad. Ah the time have changed.

Same here. Wood-shop project in 7th grade was a stock-redo for a Ruger 10/22 "semiautomatic high-capacity assault rifle" . Even as a 7th-grader, I had enough sense to just disassemble the gun and remove the bolt/spring, rendering it harmless. NOBODY raised an eyebrow, from my english teacher, who saw me with the rifle (cased) before shop-class, to the shop teacher, other students, principal, etc...

In high school, there were fist-fights at lunch every few weeks (probably over girlfriends), and no doubt most of those guys had shotguns or rifles in their pickup-trucks, unless they rode the bus to school, in which case their guns were likely in their school-lockers. NEVER did any of those guys go get their gun to bring to the fist-fight. They were just 'stupid red-neck high-school kids', but they ALL knew you don't get out guns unless it's a true life-and-death issue, which in the days before 'reality television', everyone knew didn't include 'girlfriend' fights. Most of them likely had 4" Case or other brand folding belt-knives on them DURING the fights, but they didn't EVER get them out.

If they had, bystanders would have intervened (instead of running), beat the snot out of them (instead of texting their friends), and teachers would have then beat the snot out of them again (instead of cowering and filling out paperwork later), then their parents would have beat the snot out of them one more time (instead of suing the school), before the police even heard about it.

[ollogger]

in the 60s & early 70s we could bring a gun on the bus once at school
we had to take it to the office, Boy did the day drag by
couldnt wait to get the gun & take off for the woods, it was bout 4
miles to home, it was the best of times for a kid, even when the chores were waiting for me when i got home


ollogger

[m.wun]

I mean this with respect.Their is alot of old fanny burbs here! Now I know why I like it
here so much.

[piller]

In the early 80s, we we had our shotguns in our cars and pickups in the school parking lot. We often went pheasant hunting right after school. Nobody ever seemed bothered by it back then. My kids think that I am just crazy.

[Griff]

It's location, not necessarily the times... Just last year I planned on attending a match near Clarksville, TX... a day before the match an agent called me and offered me an unseeming amount of money to take a load of surplus military goods from a base in TX to the Gov't surplus sales warehouse in OKC, OK. I told her I didn't want to bother getting on the base because I had about 8 guns in the truck... plus about 300 rounds of ammo... she upped the ante to an obscene amount of money!

It took three or four trips from the truck to the security office to carry all the guns, ammo, camera &, binocs. They filled out a receipt... and I went on the base and picked up the freight... came back out and repeated the trips to load it all back in the truck... the only comments: "you plannin' on invading a small country?" I told 'im that it'd have to be very small and rather backward... then he asked if I was "one of them cowboy shooters?" I would wonder what gave it away; but, it's rather obvious: I had 4 1851s Navies, a Henry, an 1873, a Sharps and two side by side shotguns!

[Larkbill]

This is a great thread, but it does show the age of many of the participants. My brother and I were just talking about this. We grew up in the far west suburbs of St. Louis, somewhat rural at that time but not really out in the country. Guns were not allowed at school, but when I was 14-15 I often tied my cased shotgun or .22 to my bike and rode to various friend's houses that had woods nearby to hunt and shoot. My brother topped that though, late 60's he frequently hitchhiked to a friend's carrying an uncased .22. Since it was just after school most of his rides came from women, being the 60's the menfolks were naturally at work. He said no one objected to the rifle, but they all wanted to know who he was, I guess just in case.

First rabbit shot in the woods behind our house with my rebuilt Stevens bolt action .410. Was a rusty mess when I got it, but learned how to refinish the metal and wood before I could use it. That's my Grandmother's 1902 built house behind me. Sadly it's gone now. Not sure what happened to the Stevens either, probably traded for something I wanted more.

[hightime]

I hunt 75 miles from the city in the farm country I was born. One time durring deer season I tracked a wounded deer though to the next county and walked the road back at night, a long walk. A farmer lady picked me and my uncased Model 70 up and gave me a ride home. Oh the horror.
Thanks lady!

Owen

[hightime]

As for the age thing. It's stories like these that help those youngin's make a foundation for reality. Maybe with both spouses working the kids missed something. Ya think?

Owen

[bdhold]

Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold
poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill and pay millowner for permission to come to work, and when we got home,
our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!

Aah. Are you trying to tell the young people of today that, and they won't believe you!

[Canuck Bob]

My, when I was kid, story involves bears. My Dad worked in construction building our great nation after WW2. A whole generation of men sickened by war bent on creating a modern nation. His employer, Mannix Construction, was a big project company that built remote railroads and dams.

They were building the rail line into Chuchill Manitoba on Hudson's Bay. We lived in the moving bush camp north of the Pas Manitoba. I was 5 and a real big sturdy kid for my age. The camp cook took a shine to me and I helped in the kitchen to earn fresh baked wild blueberry pie and canned milk, yum.

I dumped garbage in the pit a ways from the cookshack. To get there I had to spray the black bears with a water hose to make them run away, dump the garbage, and they returned while I got a kick outa watching them fight over the scraps. Today a two year cub wanders up the river close to Calgary and you would think a pack of werewolves had invaded the city. Just watch the yuppy tree huggers call SWAT and scream "kill". Thier eco-tourism and manicured mountain trails, ski hills, raft tours, and mountain bikes are killing off the last grizzlies in our rockies not me hunting whitetail. I was taught how to co-exist with God's creatures.

[Ray Newman]

I graduated from Sewanhaka H.S, Floral Park, NY, in 1964; my brother in 1957; my sister in 1958. I was the academic rose after the two thorns....

The school was built in 1928 and had a small rifle range in the basement or one of the sub-basements. My brother often brought his .22 to school and shot it there.

I grew up in Franklin Square, NY. During hunting season, the local sporting goods store --Sports Afield -- had hunting related props in the front windows, including firearms and shells. Large plate glass windows that could be easily broken, the firearms removed, and run about 20 feet into a car on the turnpike. 'Nevva' happened though.

Different time back them. And I did not want the Nassau PD to give me a ride home. Worse thing I was ever told was "Do I have to tell your father?" When working on the family farms in Sullivan Co, NY, my grandfathers told me "don't want to go to the State Police barracks to get you. You'll be safer there."

[Cottonwood Mike]

It hasn't been that long ago, in the early '90s, that I brought my 1886 Winchester and my 1884 vintage Colt SAA into my 4th grade classroom as a followup activity for a core literature book that we had just finished reading. It is a small rural school district, and the superintendent was fully supportive. The kids enjoyed it immensely and they dryfired my old Colt so many times that all the screws loosened up. I still teach 4th grade in the same district, but could not do this same activity today. Laws and attitudes have changed.

Regards,

Mike

[DunRanull]

Another old gasbag checking in. Grew up in the 1960's and it was a different world in many ways. Guns? Not that big of a deal, tho the liberals in waiting were there in some of my classmates. Went hunting after school, gun in car? No big deal. Got in more trouble for being caught smoking (tobacco). This was the day when the local cops would escort you home and make sure your folks knew the scoop. Got the "Do I need to talk to your Dad" line too, and it was seriously serious business...

[bdhold]

yep, it all changed when feelings became more important than human life.

[Booger Bill]

Just reread this thread asking me which kid I was. They have my name wrong david? I am merril werch first boy on the left in front. The brundage brothers in the back row drove about a 1927 chev coup to school everyday! I was 7 years old in 1948.

[Chuck 100 yd]

I made Bowie knife in HS shop class. I got an A even though the shop teacher and I both knew that the blade was made of mild steel and wouldn't be worth a dang as a knife.

[Hobie]

The year is 1970. A classmate and fellow Sophomore brings his firearms collection to school to history class for a "show and tell". Unchaperoned. A photo is in the yearbook and I've included it here. Some of you might recognize it for what it is... Yes, it was fully functional. The caption begins, "This is a machinegun..."

scan0001.jpg

[hightime]

How can we convince others that a gun with a srew loose doen't generally shoot somebody but a ..............

Owen

[jlchucker]

It's true. I built a bolt action scoped target pistol in college. And my Dad didn't get expelled for shooting a pistol from the schoolroom window when he was a kid. In highschool we had our rifles in our cars, so we could head for the country to hunt when school was out.
I actually got a B for my woodwork on my target pistol.
Yeah, we're talking a few years ago, 1967 for me and , probably mid. 1920's for Dad. Ah the time have changed.

Owen

Yessir! Times certainly have changed--along with what can be taken for decency, patriotism, and honesty. Too bad that the changes haven't been for the better.

[pdawg.shooter]

I stocked a 03A3 in wood shop in high school. That was in 67.