The ole gun rack in the back of your truck

Saw it all the time. Usually a .30-30 or semi-auto .22 and lots of times an old man's cane....lol

Yes, a common sight at my High School in El Paso, TX in the early 1970's.

My Senior year, driving my 1966 F100, I had my newly purchased Ruger Mini-14 in the rear window rack. Pulling into the school parking lot I was stopped by the Assistant Principal. I wasn't in trouble, he just wanted to see that new rifle from Ruger. As he fondled it, he told me about humping an M1 Garand during Korea. I was late to class, but he wrote me an excuse note.

BTW, I paid for 3 semesters at UTEP with that rifle, shooting West Texas coyotes for the country bounty and pelts.

I remember those days well.
Illinois required the gun to be cased....but they still hung in the rear window. Sort of a badge of honor, if you had a gun in your rear window, and dual glass-pack exhaust!

I noticed that a few times. It was probably just part of the scenery. One of the favorite places to shoot was a couple miles down the road from the high school. We brought guns to school to shoot afterwards.

It seems like half the class brought a gun in for a presentation for speech class. The gun stayed in the office until speech class then the vice principal would show up with it. That's where learned about .38s and .357s.

I used to get on the bus after school for 50 cents. Meet my buddies and duck hunt. Then ride the bus back with the ducks I killed back home. All the while with my Mossberg 500 12 gauge with me. I still have that gun with a slug barrel and 40 years later it still kills game.

I remember that era well, back when this area was still more "old Florida" than what it's been turned into today. I got my first pickup truck in 1985, and it wasn't long before I had a rack in there. Kept a 20 gauge single back there, but I delivered pizza for a living, so the gun got dropped below out of sight while working.

It's still legal in Florida, and still fairly common in the interior, rural parts.

I grew up in the Thousand Islands area of NY...not far from the Cape Vincent Correctional Facility. It was common to see rifles and shotguns in racks in pickups back in my youth.

Word was that when transporting the inmates to the prison, as they passed through town, the guards would get on the intercom and announce to the bus full of prisoners that they should look out the window at the guns in the vehicles...if they escaped the locals would shoot them. I have no idea if it is true or not, but I’ve always enjoyed the story.

(and there was never an escape while i was living there)

Yup - back window of the pick-up and drivers side window of the Scout.

The REALLY weird thing to look back on is how often windows were left open and as far as locking doors.... Ha!

Todd.

Yep grew up with that but I had a 66 Beetle in HS and had either a Rem 1100 or Rem 742 in the back seat during the fall to hunt with after school if I wasn't working.

I remember seeing lots of them. Nowadays, guys working construction sometimes use them to store their levels so they don't get banged around.

My uncle and cousins out in the country kept a rifle or shotgun in the rack. After the movie Walking Tall seen a lot of hickory sticks

FL-NC said:

I remember seeing lots of them. Nowadays, guys working construction sometimes use them to store their levels so they don't get banged around.

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I've hung a level there, and flyrods.
We had (still have) a drive-in theater in out little town. If you hung your hat on the gun rack,....that meant something else.

I went to high school in Round Rock, Texas in the early 1980's and most of the pickup trucks in the student lot, including my 1960 F-100, had one or two rifles in the window and empty beer cans in the bed. It doesn't seem that long ago in my mind.

I've been into guns for a long time (going back to the early 1960's) yet I never even considered putting a gun on display in a vehicle. Mainly, it didn't make sense security-wise. And that included living in Texas (Austin) as well as in northern Virginia.

Several years ago a neighbor had a 25-20 Single shot Stevens hanging in his truck.
Not in the best of condition either.

I had a gun rack in my pickup from high school in the 50s, and on the ranch until the year 2000 when I moved back to town.
During high school it was a Nylon 66 and a Remington 300 H&H magnum.
When I got a new gun, I took it in to show the Coach. He called the Principal and the Ag Teacher over to take a look. By the time I left the ranch it was an M1 and a S&W 6" model 28 one hand carbine in a holster hanging from one of the hooks.

this was my high school ride. I got it in August 1980. I passed on to #1 son in 2007, then to #2 in 2010, then to #3 in 2018.
Now its waiting in my shed for my grandson.
it has a rifle rack, and another feature behind the seat that you cant get anywhere......a gasoline tank!
(What could possibly go wrong?)

Iggy said:

I had a gun rack in my pickup from high school in the 50s, and on the ranch until the year 2000 when I moved back to town.
During high school it was a Nylon 66 and a Remington 300 H&H magnum. By the time I left the ranch it was an M1 and a S&W model 28 one hand carbine in a holster hanging from one of the hooks.

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Hand carbine... I like that.

Famous story in our house is when my Polish Grandmother who grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin and lived most of her life in Chicago, came to visit us in Houston, TX in the early 70's. When she asked my father why people had gun racks in the back windows of their pickups, he replied "for the Indians." She was stunned because she believed him! LOL

I graduated high school in 1990. It was quite common to see rifles and shotguns in the back window of almost every truck in the school parking lot. Depending on the season, it was either a shotgun and 22lr or a shotgun and deer rifle.

12Bravo20 said:

I graduated high school in 1990. It was quite common to see rifles and shotguns in the back window of almost every truck in the school parking lot. Depending on the season, it was either a shotgun and 22lr or a shotgun and deer rifle.

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I think the phenomenon of guns in truck racks had to do with people who viewed their guns as tools and everyday objects, and not people who were serious gun collectors. Even back in the 1960's, when I was just getting started in gun collecting, I considered my guns as too important to risk getting them stolen. I dunno. I was never part of the "rural lifestyle." I would never in my wildest dreams consider openly displaying a gun in a vehicle rack.

AlexanderA said:

I think the phenomenon of guns in truck racks had to do with people who viewed their guns as tools and everyday objects, and not people who were serious gun collectors. Even back in the 1960's, when I was just getting started in gun collecting, I considered my guns as too important to risk getting them stolen. I dunno. I was never part of the "rural lifestyle." I would never in my wildest dreams consider openly displaying a gun in a vehicle rack.

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A lot of it depended on where you lived. I lived about 40 miles west of downtown St Louis and it was still fairly rural at the time. We looked at firearms as tools so we could go hunting. Even then we would not dare drive into St Louis City or other areas in St Louis County with firearms in the back window because they would get stolen in those areas.

Armored farmer said:

If you hung your hat on the gun rack,....that meant something else.

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I was waiting for someone to say that............

My first pick-up (during High School) was a '69 F250, yup, gun rack and the fuel tank behind the seat.