Schools and guns

[Unshaven2897]

Probably won't happen in WA:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/03/28/latvia-russia-war-guns-students-00848017

When I was in high school (Omaha) the ROTC had a shooting range in the lowest level in an unfinished area with dirt floors. On the way to metal shop it wasn't unusual to hear the peu peu peu of marksmanship class going. I wondered what it would be like to shoot a gun - sounded like fun. That wouldn't be there any more. Hah, nor the metal/electrical/or woods shop classes.

 

[Larry]

Wow, times have really changed. Schools used to offer hands-on skills like shooting and shop classes now it feels almost unthinkable to have that kind of access.

 

[Unshaven2897]

And we wonder why no one enters the trades these days.

Thinking back, I wish I had the foresight to take some homemaking classes. It was the perfect way to get introduced to some really cute girls.

 

[Unshaven2897]

Maybe there IS some hope with the youngsters.

 

[Jim R]

Now this gives me some hope

Maybe there IS some hope with the youngsters.
View attachment 176

 

[Rimfire Fanatic]

I remember when I was in high school. Everyone had guns in racks in their back windows at school. We even had shooting teams. My wife was a state champion i\n small bore back in the 70’s.

 

[Hilldweller]

I remember when I was in high school. Everyone had guns in racks in their back windows at school. We even had shooting teams. My wife was a state champion i\n small bore back in the 70’s.

Damn ! Weren’t the 1870’s great !!??

 

[Unshaven2897]

The 2026's are great too. It depends on where you live.

 

[Alan]

Crazy how what used to be normal school programs now feels like a whole different world entirely

 

[Unshaven2897]

Crazy how what used to be normal school programs now feels like a whole different world entirely

Like shop class?

 

[Hilldweller]

Yea ! Shop class with our 3-fingered teacher!

And Driver’s Ed complete with movies on what to watch out for and what not to do….which we all did. They also piled 3 students with an “instructor” (usually an athletic coach) in the school owned vehicles and drove off. On my first day the instructor asked if anyone had driven before which I had (dad’s lessons in a vacant parking lot) so I got put behind the wheel first. I remember starting the engine and when I got to the street and turned I asked “what’s the speed limit ?”. Teacher knew he had a problem right then. I remember ”lead foot” being noted many times on my driving sheet.

 

[Twisted_1in66]

Damn ! Weren’t the 1870’s great !!??

Born 1950, graduated high school in 1968. Almost 100-years after your suggested time period, and yes we would have racks in our pickups and usually a shotgun and a .22 in the rack unless it was deer season. Back then you'd replace that .22 with your 30-06, .308, 30-30, .270, .243, or whatever rifle was legal to hunt deer with in the rack. And yes, we absolutely parked our pickups at the high school with our guns in the rack. If you just had a normal car, they went in the trunk. Two space racks were common, but 3 space gun racks were not unusual. With the 3-gun rack, you'd have all three of them in there. In the late 1970's I had a 3-gun rack on the back window of my F-150. I sometimes also stuck my .357 on it. Alsoin the 80's I helped out at the .22 gun range we had set up at the Boy Scouts at their summer camp.

It really wasn't that long ago, my friend.

 

[VancMike]

Born in '42, graduated HS '61. Most was in rural Illinois, of course guns in racks in the school parking lot during fall and winter hunting season.
My driver's ed was in a giant '58 Buick 4-dr sedan with stick shift, naturally. Local dealer would donate for a year, then sell them to a farmer at a big discount.

 

[BearBio]

I was in the college prep classes and we had to do a mini-performance of a movie. I was voted director and chose "Stalag 17. I also played Stosh. Anyway, we needed props, so we all brought stuff from home. A buddy's dad had been a medic and he helped liberate Dachau. He had a Browning Hi-Power with SS markings. Another had a K-98 Mauser. I brought a 1903 Stringfield stock (no metal) and a long Mauser bayonet. None of our teachers said anything! This was 1967 or '68.

 

[VancMike]

"A buddy's dad had been a medic and he helped liberate Dachau."

That would have created nightmares for a lifetime.

 

[BearBio]

"A buddy's dad had been a medic and he helped liberate Dachau."

That would have created nightmares for a lifetime.

He was or later became a doctor and he was Jewish. My first experience with WWII atrocities was a Cub Scout leader who survived the Bataan Death March. Later, I met a boss' mother with a six digit tattoo starting with "A". I asked why she didn't have it removed and he said "she keeps it so others don't forget"!

So MANY today have forgotten or deny the Holocaust. As a Freemason, we wear Forget-me-nots in memory of the 80,000-250,000 Masons who died in the camps.

My wife has an ethnic Jewish ancestry and several distant cousins died at Auschwitz .

 

[Montana Cowboy]

I went to Dachau concentration camp while stationed in Germany. The person who at that time gave the tour was a prisoner there during WWII. After the war he became a priest and lived inside the camp. It is hard to describe what went on there during the war, some people don't believe what they did there. At the beginning of the tour a film was shown taken from inside the camp during the war and people were getting up out of their seats and running out crying. Some of the stuff they did like breaking a person's arm, letting it heal and then break it again and continue this to see how many times they could break it to where it wouldn't function anymore. Another one was an experiment with two electric chairs facing each other. They put a mother in one chair and her daughter in the other. They then instructed the mother to give her daughter a shock, if she refused to do so they gave the mother the shock. After each shock they would increase the voltage so that the next shock would increase the pain. The mother got to where she could not handle it any longer and started giving her daughter the shock. This went on until the mother gave the daughter a shock that killed her.

They performed surgery on people without any antistatic. The operating table was a galvanized tube in the shape of a person lying down whit with drains so that the blood from the surgery could run out and not pool in / on the operating table. This is just a few of the things they did to prisoners. Escape was pretty much out of the question as the camp was surrounded by a deep concrete ditch with a barbed wire fence which was quite tall, you did not want to go in that ditch as it was patrolled by dogs that would kill you.

Dachau or any of the other prisoner of war camps was some place you didn't want to be. MC

 

[VancMike]

We went to Dachau on a visit to Germany. Horrible, horrible place. But I was encouraged by the large number of German visitors. A couple of them, figuring that we were American, apologized.

 

[Unshaven2897]

It was closed when we went there. Sobering just from the parking lot. So we went to town for a real beer and meal and contemplated.

I'm not making light of the experience. One can celebrate blessings of a disaster that came to an end.

 

[Rimfire Fanatic]

I went to Dachau concentration camp while stationed in Germany. The person who at that time gave the tour was a prisoner there during WWII. After the war he became a priest and lived inside the camp. It is hard to describe what went on there during the war, some people don't believe what they did there. At the beginning of the tour a film was shown taken from inside the camp during the war and people were getting up out of their seats and running out crying. Some of the stuff they did like breaking a person's arm, letting it heal and then break it again and continue this to see how many times they could break it to where it wouldn't function anymore. Another one was an experiment with two electric chairs facing each other. They put a mother in one chair and her daughter in the other. They then instructed the mother to give her daughter a shock, if she refused to do so they gave the mother the shock. After each shock they would increase the voltage so that the next shock would increase the pain. The mother got to where she could not handle it any longer and started giving her daughter the shock. This went on until the mother gave the daughter a shock that killed her.

They performed surgery on people without any antistatic. The operating table was a galvanized tube in the shape of a person lying down whit with drains so that the blood from the surgery could run out and not pool in / on the operating table. This is just a few of the things they did to prisoners. Escape was pretty much out of the question as the camp was surrounded by a deep concrete ditch with a barbed wire fence which was quite tall, you did not want to go in that ditch as it was patrolled by dogs that would kill you.

Dachau or any of the other prisoner of war camps was some place you didn't want to be. MC

I know a woman who was in a concentration camp. She was a friend of my grandparents. She is still alive. My grandparents passed a long time ago.

She was German. Blue eyed blond. The Aryan ideal. She was just 5 years old when she and her mother were sent to a concentration camp. She had a number tattooed on her arm. They were sent there because the mother was helping hide Jews.

She is really old now. I talk to her from time to time. She lives in Virginia. She married a much older US Air Force officer after the war sometime. I am thinking in the 1960’s sometime.

Anyway, she was like 20 some years younger than her husband and my grandparents. The Holocaust was real. Unfortunately, the people that survived it are dying out or have already died. She has told me stories about life in the camp. It’s just sickening.