I remember 22LR in matchboxes for $.99 a hundred. I remember that Sears and K-Mart and Western Auto sold guns in the store and in the catalogs. I remember going Christmas shopping at the mall and the sporting goods stores had all these funny machines with round things and handles that said "Lee" on them and I thought that they were really complicated. I used to collect stamps and I could get all the stamp collecting stuff at the Woolworths. People had revolvers but they were mostly hidden. People had shotguns for hunting and 22s for fun. I remember at Boy Scout Camp we had single-shot 22s, some of them were bolt action magazine fed but you were only allowed to put one cartridge in at a time...if the range officer knew you were OK he would let you load the magazine. You got ten rounds of 22LR stuck in a piece of 2x4 with ten holes drilled in it. That cost a dollar and you had to bring back the piece of wood and the ten empties to get more. Every week we had a watermelon shoot. The best scout troop and patrol's scores got a cold watermelon.
In movies guns were a surprise not a common occurrance. Semi-autos were owned by the truly serious gun people, everyone else had revolvers. Black rifles like ARs and AKs were only owned by the crazy survivalist militia whackjobs and nobody needed more than a levergun or a bolt action hunting rifle.
You could go to the gunshows and find barrels of mausers, six for $100, mix and match, all varieties. Crates of surplus ammo, old leather and canvas gear. Surplus stores sold actual surplus and not cheap crap made in China to simulate surplus.
We could be outside playing cops n robbers or cowboys n indians or americans vs japs and run around taking cover behind trees or hedges or mailboxes and nobody panicked, we shot off roll caps in our cap guns, or by hitting the whole roll with a rock.
When the cop cars would go up the street we would jump out and ambush them with our toy guns, and the cops would often play along like they were surprised and shoot back with their 'finger guns'....some cops would give us plastic badges or candy and always tell us to be careful not to get too close to the street.
I took my shooting merit badge in Boy Scouts...I remember the Boy Scout meeting at our neighborhood elementary school, the scoutmasters and dads all brought out their guns, we had blankets on tables in the school cafeteria and there were row after row of different rifles, shotguns, pistols, and different kinds of ammunition....all <gasp> IN THE SCHOOL of all places. And nobody got shot or grew up to be evil (I think). We learned knife, hatchet and axe skills, how to build fires and we all carried matches and sharp knives and nobody got stabbed or set on fire or the Scoutmaster or Patrol Leaders would cut a corner off your Totin' Chip.
We played in everybody's yards and rode our bikes everywhere and left them where we dropped them, and nobody stole them. We could go to the gas station and pump air in the bike tires for free and often score a free Coke for all of us to share if the right attendant was working. We had the good firecrackers, M80s and cherrybombs and bottle rockets that actually blew up, not those lame old smoke balls and worms and fizzers they have now. We had minibikes and gocarts and sometimes Dad would give us a sip of beer.
We treated people with respect and said "Yes Sir" and "No Ma'am" and we would hold the door for people. We would gather up pop bottles for the dime deposit and that would buy a pack of baseball cards with that hard old flavorless gum inside. First it was pinball, and then when video games came out we swarmed over the Asteroids and Centipede and Donkey Kong machines and cut grass and raked leaves or saved milk money to get quarters to throw in the machines.
Saturday mornings there were cartoons on TV, real good funny ones where anvils fell on peoples' heads and a swarm of birds would fly around, and if a hammer was smashed on their hand it would swell up like a balloon, and if a pretty girl walked by the character's heart would start pounding out of their chest and wolf whistle. That stupid duck would get his pronouns wrong and get his beak blasted off with the shotgun and then just pick it up and put it back on and the space alien would try to blow up the Earth to get a better view of Venus.
We mostly all turned out OK, and I can't recall anyone ever getting prescribed Ritalin or anti depressants or clinical psychology for our violent tendancies. People got in fights, people did stupid stuff, and things worked out.
