Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Classic. Life Magazine photo essay on a Gun Safety Class at an Indiana School, 1956.



I remember a different country than the one we live in now, too.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Notice how the cop looks like a Peace Officer and not a G-D Blackwater Goon like they do now?

Female III said...

Looks like one of the Family Day FTXs.

Didn't Virginia recently make gun safety a mandatory part of their school curriculum? Northeast kids still get off for first day of buck and don't need a written excuse. Lots of shooting clubs for the upper grades too. It's all about what the parents want. You want it? Talk to your school board. They don't give you want you want? Vote them out and take their places. The school board is an example of a Constitutionally lawful committee of the People. You got the power.

Anonymous said...

That's when we grew men and women with knowledge and principles, who understood freedom and their responsibilities.

Robert Fowler said...

I remember taking my new .410 shotgun to school, on the bus, for show and tell. Including a box of shells. We sure are a long ways from 1966.

Anonymous said...

I tell my children and grandchildren about sitting in Math class (1966) and hearing a pounding coming from the basement. My ROTC Commandant was down there in our SCHOOL INDOOR GUN RANGE shooting an M-14 on full auto. He was preparing the "about to be draftees" and getting them accustomed to the feel of the machine. Later that year we did company maneuvers, complete with blank firing M-1 Garands for each of us, along the wooded creek in the acreage behind the school, but still on school property.
This was not some country school out in the boonies. It was a 1500 student, Dallas, Texas high school.
The school is still there today, but the "gun range" has moved out into the neighboring streets.

Times have changed but not for the better.

redleg said...

We took our .22's and wandered down the street to the dump to shoot rats. No one raised an eyebrow. My brother-in-law has a nice 12 ga he bought from the 7th grade shop teacher before his 5th period class.

A really different world, back in the day.

Walter Zoomie said...

Living in the suburbs of Indianapolis back in the late 60s and early 70s, I would hump (several city blocks) a couple of the old man's replica (but fully functional)Revolutionary War muskets to grade school for show-and-tell. Nary a word was said.

The SWAT team would be called out today.

Anonymous said...

I can remember giving a gun safety/cleaning speech in middle-school, in Indiana (where I was raised) and being allowed to take my dad's 12 ga. shotgun in as a prop. That was back around 1970. I didn't shoot anyone, I didn't get chastised, suspended or expelled. What has this nation become?

Dedicated_Dad said...

At least one day a week you'd see DOZENS of boys pile off the school-bus with riflesin hand and ammo in their book bag. All went straight into the student's locker.

NEVER an incident - not even one.

The worst that ever happened was when someone dumped some powder into the bbls of sand in the"student smoking area" - and even that was barely a flash in the pan...

A. D. said...

There is some hope, I think:

I was fortunate enough to be a small part of the founding of a Sports Shooting Club at a public University campus in California. They regularly teach firearms safety and proficiency classes to interested staff, students, and faculty.
And this was only about 6 years ago, now.
According to contacts at the school, the club is consistently the most popular and most-signed-up-for club on campus, every year.

May it remain so!