Did anyone else learn how to shoot guns in Public School?

[Kurt]

I did. I was 12 and had shot them before by then but we all had to do it unless our parents requested that we did not (oddly the only person whose parents made her opt out also made her opt out of sex education that year too both due to religious reasons).

It was a unit of gym class that was part of a week long camp trip to our district's School Forest. We were given a lecture before we went out to the range on how we had to be totally silent during the lecture, no comments, no whispering, no horseplay. Then we were told that guns could kill anyone...adult or child and the instructor had a burden of making sure everyone was safe around armed 12 year olds so he would be cracking down on regular kid activity during the class and at the range. We were then shown a number of guns ranging from revolvers, shotguns, rifles and automatic pistols. He then showed us dodgy and dangerous guns like the kind we might find in a dump or in a barn and told us why we should never try to fire those guns if found (and that we should take them to our parents and advised to take them to a gunsmith first). He then got out the gun we would be using, a Marlin .22 single shot bolt action rifle. He explained how we always had to assume it was loaded even if we were sure it was not, just out of etiquitte and he went over news clippings he found of people being shot accidentally by guns they were sure were not loaded. Then we fired them at paper targets. I got a 72 (I think out of 100 but I do not remember for sure.) and only one person beat me with a 74. It was quite fun in spite (or perhaps because) of the serious nature of the class.

I only mention this because I have a feeling that this was rare even in the US and is probably much more rare now.

[ktrout]

Impressive. We didn't get firearms training, but we did get the first day of deer hunting season off.

[suwon fish]

In the UK my high school had us shooting Lee Enfields (No. 8) at the age of 13 and I managed to shoot the Lee Enfield No. 4, Stering SMG (set to semi), Browning pistol and SLR (Fal) before I was 15. I also shot .22 pistol every week (Vostoks, Webleys and a random S&W revolver) as part of an annual pistol match we had.

This was done as part of the CCF (Combined Cadet Force). My school also had a clay pidgeon club that I was too poor to join.

I went on a couple of CCF camps in Cornwall where I got to carry a Bren gun for mile after mile, but I never got to to fire it... Some may know that it had a comedy carrying handle so, while running at the trail, it was prone to fall into 3 parts making you look like an asshole!

Britain was different when I was a kid. I got my shotgun certificate when I was 14, it had no picture on it and I noticed with a smile when I needed to renew it that I had never even bothered to sign it ^^

[shivers]

No, there was no gun training in my school. The first time I shot a gun was at the rifle range at summer camp.

[coldharvest]

I learned at about 10 but my school did have a rifle and pistol program through our cadets...and since you were branded a fag if you
didn't join cadets everybody signed up for instruction.

[vetparatrooper]

yeah i took Youth Hunter Safety Classes and learned to correctly handle firearms (mostly single-shot, bolt action .22 rifles) through the 4-H club which i was a member of from about 4th graade until I graduated High school. I went to the summer camps they had as a young kid and then when i got older i was a camp counselor....got to go free one year in 5th grade because I was voted best camper the summer before or some shit....now is that lame or is that fucking lame as hell....YES....but I learned at an early age to respect firearms through 4-H and so I have to say not all of it was that lame.....also took archery in which I learned on a regular longbow but that is the reason I mainly Bowhunt nowadays is that they taught me all about breathing and aiming with the bow and calmly realeasinog the arrrow after being certain of my target and all that stuff....4-H was pretty cool when I was a kid but then again I grew up in a small southern town and clubs like that were always fairly popular. I had 2nd cousins 26 years older than me who had been in the same high school in the same 4-h Clubs when they were in school.

[Rhah]

Nope. A family friend taught me how to shoot. Started with .22s and when I was good with that moved up to .38s and so on. I had to clean all the firearms when we were done, under close observation of course. Taught me to really care for a firearm. But that was all handguns. I didn't start shooting rifles until I went to summer camp. They did an outstanding job of instruction and we didn't have to clean them lol. Single shot .22s also, pretty sure they were Marlins.

[JamesInTheWorld]

Don't all inner city kids learn how to shoot at school?


~JITW

[kilroy]

like all little dudes, i was always fascinated by guns but never actually held a real one til i was 18. we've had a loving relationship ever since.

[Woodsman]

That is really awesome, Kurt - we need more classes like that in schools. Especially today.

I am under the impression that not only is such instruction rare today, but I doubt it will ever happen today since the administrators are too busy teaching the kids how to cower in the corners during their terrorist lock down drills - equally as rational as the tornado drills.

It's a sad state of affairs really. The thing is, you never know how it can change!

Sadly, none of the schools I went to in IN, TN, or MI had any firearms courses.

I learned how to shoot when I was around 11 - got my first bb/pellet gun then while in Tennessee. I do not recall having any instruction on safe arms handling at that time, but everything you ever wanted to know about it was in the manual and i'm a read the manual kind of guy.

In a residential neighborhood, my friends and i had competitions how many birds we could shoot out of the trees. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't have any understanding of conservation at all back then. When I got a little better at it, I would shoot leaves off trees.

I had one friend who could have used a course like that - It took him years to quit pointing barrels at us guys out of a lack of self-awareness. I'm lucky and glad to have not had a Dick Cheney moment with that guy!

[ktrout]

yeah i took Youth Hunter Safety Classes.

Oh, yeah. We did have that in a school classroom by one of the high school teachers, but it was on a weekend.

[vetparatrooper]

ktrout wrote

Oh, yeah. We did have that in a school classroom by one of the high school teachers, but it was on a weekend.

Well like I said, ours was through the 4-H Club and we did it for a week in the summer during 4-H camp and then it was given an entire weeekened before the opening of each various hunting season as long as you were old enough to get a youth license to hunt. I learned alot and we had to clean all our rifles....the first Handgun I ever shot was .357 Magnum and I was only about 14 years old and it almost knocked me off my ass.....took me a looooong time to get into handguns after that little experience but it made my dumb ass step father laugh his ass off because he is the one who handed it to me and said it was okay to hold it with just one hand because it did not have much "kick"....no, noooooo it did not have much kick.....it was an entire fucking cannon in my hand. Bastard. Actually he was a prettty fun guy to be around now when I think about it. My Father taught me everything I needed to know about rifles though aside from what I learned in 4-H...He did his own reloads as far as shot gun shells and such and he was excellent at sighting a rifles iron sights.....he sighted my first Marlin single shot .22 so well that I could put a baseball card in a fence post with the thin side pointing out and if I aimed correctly which he taught me how to do, I could split the card in two and that was when i was only thriteen.....I am not bragging though because I KNOW there are probably some professional shooters on this forum and I, unfortunately, have been corrupted by some of the bad habits gained by learning the finer points of US Army marksmanship (or lack thereof)

[ktrout]

Don't all inner city kids learn how to shoot at school?

Well played.

[Hitoru]

Don't all inner city kids learn how to shoot at school?


~JITW

What ever.

[Kurt]

That is really awesome, Kurt - we need more classes like that in schools. Especially today.

I am under the impression that not only is such instruction rare today, but I doubt it will ever happen today since the administrators are too busy teaching the kids how to cower in the corners during their terrorist lock down drills - equally as rational as the tornado drills.

It's a sad state of affairs really. The thing is, you never know how it can change!

Sadly, none of the schools I went to in IN, TN, or MI had any firearms courses.

I learned how to shoot when I was around 11 - got my first bb/pellet gun then while in Tennessee. I do not recall having any instruction on safe arms handling at that time, but everything you ever wanted to know about it was in the manual and i'm a read the manual kind of guy.

In a residential neighborhood, my friends and i had competitions how many birds we could shoot out of the trees. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't have any understanding of conservation at all back then. When I got a little better at it, I would shoot leaves off trees.

I had one friend who could have used a course like that - It took him years to quit pointing barrels at us guys out of a lack of self-awareness. I'm lucky and glad to have not had a Dick Cheney moment with that guy!

What is more amazing is that I remember it almost 31 years later. If Hugh Curtis uses google, thanks for the memorable class.

So am I the only person who had a taxpayer funded gun course when I was a kid?