I was hunting unsupervised by the age of 12. Alone, after school. In fact, I'd walk by my local high school on the way to the woods. No accidents. No incidents. I was well trained with firearms safety.
Heck, the kids in my neighborhood had regular rock throwing fights. No one ever escalated to sling shots, bows, pellet guns, or firearms. Everyone had access to all of them. Look back at pre-1968 police records and newspapers. There were no legal barriers to teenagers buying firearms and many did so. There wasn't blood in the streets.
In 1968 we never locked our doors, slept with the windows open, left the keys in the car (many times with the windows rolled down to boot. It really sucked when it rained that night and you jumped in the car the next morning. ), and had never even heard of a security alarm.
Most of the kids i grew up with engaged in pretty much the same pass-times as you've outlined, and did go hunting/shooting on a regular basis. It was a rare thing though for there not to be an adult in the near vicinity. And god help ya if you touched the guns without permission.
There was also both a respect (and fear) of the police, the courts, and the law in general. Nobody wanted to go to jail, nobody wanted to end up in court. And it was a rare thing to even know anybody who
had been jailed. A kid who'd been jailed or in legal trouble was pretty much looked at like he or she was a 3 headed monster.
These days, most people wouldn't even think of leaving their doors unlocked during the day, much less at night. And security companies are making a fortune from residential homes.
And then there's the car alarms.... How many folks reading this have one, or at least know someone who does?
As for kids and the law.... anybody actually stopped and counted how many times in a year that they see a report on the evening news of some child killing or robbing somebody? Me, I've lost track. There's been at least 6 reports on the local news in the last week. Nashville's police chief, Ronal Surpas has also been on the new, talking about how juvenile involvement in violent crime is on the rise. Again, this was just in the past week.
And I won't even bother telling you the stories of the 15-17 year olds that I thought I was going to have to shoot, while I was with the S.O.
Sorry folks, but things are different now than they were in 1968. Very different. And no, I don't know exactly what has changed but it's pretty obvious that it's not for the better.
I don't know if you've realized it yet, but there's a great deal taught in college classes that is ideologically driven or otherwise divorced from reality.
A good many of the instructors' greatest dilemma in their teaching career is how to wear their tinfoil hats in public.
Something that you might find valuable while taking classes in college is to look at classes in critical thinking. A good class in critical thinking will give you a stricter standard for validation of data than "it's being taught in college." Basket weaving is being taught in colleges.
I've been to a college or 2 in my time... even have a degree in mechanical drafting and design. Also attended the local police academy.
So yeah, I have at least a bit of an idea how far out in "left field" some instructors and professors can be.
Due to my step-daughter's medical problems, I've also gotten to spend quite a bit of time with psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists, these past 7 years. We usually see one or the other of them about twice a month.
As for critical thinking.... that's a skill you can not survive without, when you spend as much time as I have, dealing with both "normal" and "problem" children. When I was around 11 or 12 years old, my parents decided that we needed to become a foster family for TN's then Department of Human Services. I've had more than 30 foster-brothers and foster-sisters in the 25 years my parents kept that up. Some quite normal, others about as messed-up as a human can get. We all got to attend more than a few classes and lectures on how they were best handled and dealt with.
So, although I'm certainly no expert, I believe I know a thing or two about children and how they think and operate. And anything i don't know, i have no problem asking the real experts about.
One way or the other, I most certainly don't think the people in the articles I linked to are the tinfoil hat-wearing variety. And if they are, I suppose I'd better go get fitted for one as well, since what they're saying very much fits in with what I've personally seen and experienced over the years.
J.C.
( Hell, looking back, I'm surprised that I survived my teen years, sometimes... And I was relatively well-behaved. )