Times sure have changed!

[IWAC]

I remember living in California during the '70. I got my first centerfire rifle ... a .270 Ruger 77. Curious, I took it to the local post office, and asked the clerk to weigh it for me. He grinned, and did . None of the other half-dozen customers were upset.

 

[Actionjrs]

Wow imagine what would happen if you did that today.

 

[yugorpk]

Every truck in the high school parking lot had a gun in the rack and the smoking area at high school was standing room only .

 

[Reloadron]

Yeah, I was NYC born (Brooklyn) and grew up on Long Island NY. Born in 1950 and my HS had a rifle team and range in the basement. It was not unusual to take our .22 rifles to school. Never had any problems then. Glad I grew up during the 50s and 60s but feel bad for the grand children who will never know the freedoms we enjoyed.

Ron

 

[Flechette]

There is some flip side so do not get too depressed.

When I held an FFL in the 90's I was very depressed because it seemed like the Clinton Administration was passing new gun control every other week and no one cared. Even the NRA was apologetic and made ridiculous arguments like "assault rifles" should not be banned because you can hunt with them in some areas.

It was impossible to get a concealed carry permit.

Fast forward to now. Concealed carry is ubiquitous across the nation, people unabashedly are unapologetic for owning "assault rifles" and the Second Amendment is embraced as a means to overthrow the government if need be.

I even hear ads on national radio for handguns, ammunition and shooting ranges. I never thought I'd see the day...

 

[Ks5shooter]

In the early 80's as a teenager,I would get on the public transit bus with my Mossberg 500 shotgun(cased of course). I would meet friends we would small game hunt ,then I would get on the bus to go home,sometimes with some game. No one ever batted an eye. Ahhhh the good ole days.

 

[medalguy]

Heh. I went to high school in 1961. Just imagine all the gun stuff we carried to school and traded out in the school parking lot before school. AFTER school we were in too much of a hurry to go hunting before it got dark to bother trading stuff.

 

[Warp]

I was still in high school for 9/11 so yeah things were a little different already

 

[threefeathers]

I grew up in Arizona. The only thing I can't do is own an automatic firearm without a federal permit.

 

[Warp]

I grew up in Arizona. The only thing I can't do is own an automatic firearm without a federal permit.

There are states that allow (shall issue, no hoops or training or anything) concealed carry at age 18. AZ doesn't have that, have to be 21.

IF you are 18, 19, or 20 years old that might be a pretty big deal. Otherwise you may not even realize that that is how it is.

 

[Old Dog]

Yeah, times have changed.

As teens in my generation, we kept our shotguns in our cars in the high school parking lot so we could do some afternoon bird hunting. School had a rifle team and JROTC rifle drill squad. Opening day of deer season was a de facto state holiday and you'd have been hard-pressed to find a lot of male students in class the first week of deer camp. Rifles in racks in pick-up cabs were abundant.

As a teen, I bought my .22 rounds at my local K-Mart without having to sign a list or show ID. My buddies and I traveled in packs, each of us with our .22 rifles, walking the railroad tracks or the road on the outskirts of the city, plinking as we saw fit. Nowadays a group of pre-teens and teens with rifles will get a SWAT team response and news choppers overhead.

But we're much safer now, really.

 

[Theohazard]

Yep, times have changed. When I started getting serious about guns in the late 80s and early 90s, concealed carry was impossible for most people in this country. AR-15s and other semi-auto rifles were just niche firearms that were about to be banned nationwide. Silencer ownership was pretty rare and was banned in a bunch of states. Things were way worse for gun owners.

Now concealed carry laws are so much better nationwide. AR-15s are legal and mainstream. More states are legalizing silencers, and ownership has skyrocketed and is about to get even easier after July 13th. And gun ownership and is more widespread than even before.

Yep, things have gotten so much better for gun owners in my lifetime, and they keep getting better.

 

[Warp]

But we're much safer now, really.

Well, we probably are, depending on what you are comparing to. Our crime and violent crime rates have been doing down and down and down...and more and more and more people are lawfully carrying concealed handguns all over the place.

 

[Ken C]

Growing up in upstate NY, I was 11 when dad took me to the S&H Green stamp store in Rochester. I turned in a whole bunch of filled stamp books for a Remington 514 single shot .22 rifle (still have it). The only paperwork was a receipt.

 

[Hokkmike]

When I was a young teacher I had a Smith and Wesson Model 1500 bolt action rifle delivered by UPS to the high school where I taught. It came in the morning. The Principal and I opened it up, took it out, and ogled it a little. I put it back in its box and kept it in my classroom closet until school was out of the day and took it home. NOW, a kid drawing a picture of what vaguely resembles a gun brings swift retribution.

 

[NorthBorder]

Don't ever remember taking a gun to school. But in grade school in Georgia we would play chicken and territory with our knives in to dirt on the playground. Teachers would see it and never say a word.

 

[Reloadron]

Don't ever remember taking a gun to school. But in grade school in Georgia we would play chicken and territory with our knives in to dirt on the playground. Teachers would see it and never say a word.

We had a similar game called Mumblety-peg (also known as mumbley-peg, mumblepeg, mumble-the-peg, mumbledepeg or mumble-de-peg) is an old outdoor game played using pocketknives. We would throw between each other's legs. Went home once with a gash in my ankle and told my parents I fell on a stick. My father just looked down at me and called it. "Playing mumbley-peg huh?

Ron

 

[Ryanxia]

We had a similar game called Mumblety-peg (also known as mumbley-peg, mumblepeg, mumble-the-peg, mumbledepeg or mumble-de-peg) is an old outdoor game played using pocketknives.

There's a guy that does these videos and articles called The Art of Manliness and one of his videos is teaching how to play that game. Pretty neat.

In most States gun laws seem to be changing for the better with a few exceptions. In my State of Maine, we recently got the permit requirement removed for concealed carry. It had been a law since the very early 1900's, people have been born, lived and died with the system in place and now it's gone. One step closer to Liberty. People shouted there would be blood on the streets and with our first year almost over it has obviously been no different than before (with the exception of a lot more people getting training now that they can carry).

I think the internet has allowed us to spread information very quickly and let our voices be heard to politicians, businesses, media, etc and done a good job and helping us wrestle some more Freedom back from our government. I cannot imagine that without us having the ability to launch campaigns to protect our Rights after Sandy Hook that we would have stood a chance at stopping another AWB, magazine limit, UBC, etc.

 

[SunnySlopes]

Yeah, with all due respect to the whole "back in the day" genre, whenever I go there, I turn off my air conditioning from July to September. That's about all I need to remember.

 

[gbran]

Bought my first (without dad) at Western Auto in 1968.

 

[Sheepdog1968]

Every truck in the high school parking lot had a gun in the rack and the smoking area at high school was standing room only .

Smoking age just raised to 21 in CA.

 

[Ignition Override]

As for the 1960s, didn't the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations create the main pretext/excuses for the most dramatic increases in gun restrictions after WW2?

Two of them were killed by bolt-action rifles which must have had very small magazines.

A friend who retired from the Navy Rifle Team said that a bill has been stored in Congress for years, which would hope to ban many types of hunting rifles, among other categories.

Maybe such a potential bill used those assassinations as an excuse to try to make so many bolt-action rifles illegal?

 

[CWL]

When I was in high school in Mountain View, CA (home of Google today) during the 80's, our math teacher would invite the custodian to bring his .22 pistols into class. He'd fire them inside our classroom into coffee cans packed with paper and we'd calculate the velocity.

I wonder when that practice ended.