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.