Past Versus Present Americans

[bamboomaster]

An 82-Year-Old Patriot Reflects On "Past Versus Present Americans"

Authored by Walter Williams, op-ed via Townhall.com

Having enjoyed my 82nd birthday, I am part of a group of about 50 million Americans who are 65 years of age or older. Those who are 90 or older were in school during the 1930s. My age cohort was in school during the 1940s. Baby boomers approaching their 70s were in school during the 1950s and early '60s.

Try this question to any one of those 50 million Americans who are 65 or older:

Do you recall any discussions about the need to hire armed guards to protect students and teachers against school shootings?

Do you remember school policemen patrolling the hallways?

How many students were shot to death during the time you were in school?

For me and those other Americans 65 or older, when we were in school, a conversation about hiring armed guards and having police patrol hallways would have been seen as lunacy. There was no reason.

What's the difference between yesteryear and today? The logic of the argument for those calling for stricter gun control laws, in the wake of recent school shootings, is that something has happened to guns. Guns have behaved more poorly and become evil. Guns themselves are the problem. The job for those of us who are 65 or older is to relay the fact that guns were more available and less controlled in years past, when there was far less mayhem. Something else is the problem.

Guns haven't changed. People have changed.

Behavior that is accepted from today's young people was not accepted yesteryear. For those of us who are 65 or older, assaults on teachers were not routine as they are in some cities. For example, in Baltimore, an average of four teachers and staff members were assaulted each school day in 2010, and more than 300 school staff members filed workers' compensation claims in a year because of injuries received through assaults or altercations on the job. In Philadelphia, 690 teachers were assaulted in 2010, and in a five-year period, 4,000 were. In that city's schools, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, "on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, or victims of other violent crimes. That doesn't even include thousands more who are extorted, threatened, or bullied in a school year."

Yale University legal scholar John Lott argues that gun accessibility in our country has never been as restricted as it is now. Lott reports that until the 1960s, New York City public high schools had shooting clubs. Students carried their rifles to school on the subway in the morning and then turned them over to their homeroom teacher or a gym teacher -- and that was mainly to keep them centrally stored and out of the way. Rifles were retrieved after school for target practice.

Virginia's rural areas had a long tradition of high school students going hunting in the morning before school, and they sometimes stored their guns in the trunks of their cars during the school day, parked on the school grounds.

During earlier periods, people could simply walk into a hardware store and buy a rifle. Buying a rifle or pistol through a mail-order catalog -- such as Sears, Roebuck & Co.'s -- was easy. Often, a 12th or 14th birthday present was a shiny new .22-caliber rifle, given to a boy by his father.

These facts of our history should confront us with a question: With greater accessibility to guns in the past, why wasn't there the kind of violence we see today, when there is much more restricted access to guns?

There's another aspect of our response to mayhem. When a murderer uses a bomb, truck or car to kill people, we don't blame the bomb, truck or car. We don't call for control over the instrument of death. We seem to fully recognize that such objects are inanimate and incapable of acting on their own. We blame the perpetrator. However, when the murder is done using a gun, we do call for control over the inanimate instrument of death -- the gun. I smell a hidden anti-gun agenda.

While the article is reprinted above, here is the link: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...sent-americans

[alpacaheat]

Wow, didn't realize he was 82. I enjoy when he fills in for Rush.

He's right, it's harder to get guns now and yet, PEOPLE are causing more problems with them in society. You can't blame the gun.

[alpacaheat]

[cephas]

Good read. Hesitate to post this since it's not directly firearms related but it does fit in. Was sent this awhile back:

The other day I was talking to someone at a store in our town who read that a Methamphetamine lab had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county and asked me a rhetorical question, 'Why didn't we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?'

I replied that I had a drug problem when I was young:
I was drug to church on Sunday morning.
I was drug to church for weddings and funerals.
I was drug to family reunions and community socials no matter the weather.

I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults.
I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the priest, or if I didn't put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me.

I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if I
uttered a profanity.
I was drug out to pull weeds in mom's garden and flower beds.
I was drug to the homes of neighbors to help mow the yard, repair the clothesline, and if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for this kindness, my dad would have drug me back to the woodshed.

Those drugs are still in my veins and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say, or think. They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin:
and if today's children had this kind of drug problem, America would be a better place.

[bamboomaster]

Good read. Hesitate to post this since it's not directly firearms related but it does fit in. Was sent this awhile back:

The other day I was talking to someone at a store in our town who read that a Methamphetamine lab had been found in an old farmhouse in the adjoining county and asked me a rhetorical question, 'Why didn't we have a drug problem when you and I were growing up?'

I replied that I had a drug problem when I was young:
I was drug to church on Sunday morning.
I was drug to church for weddings and funerals.
I was drug to family reunions and community socials no matter the weather.

I was drug by my ears when I was disrespectful to adults.
I was also drug to the woodshed when I disobeyed my parents, told a lie, brought home a bad report card, did not speak with respect, spoke ill of the teacher or the priest, or if I didn't put forth my best effort in everything that was asked of me.

I was drug to the kitchen sink to have my mouth washed out with soap if I
uttered a profanity.
I was drug out to pull weeds in mom's garden and flower beds.
I was drug to the homes of neighbors to help mow the yard, repair the clothesline, and if my mother had ever known that I took a single dime as a tip for this kindness, my dad would have drug me back to the woodshed.

Those drugs are still in my veins and they affect my behavior in everything I do, say, or think. They are stronger than cocaine, crack, or heroin:
and if today's children had this kind of drug problem, America would be a better place.

Mighty fine post! Which I immediately sent to my siblings and kids. Sadly, I have to spread the rep around...

[Jhaydeno]

I'm only 57 and everything he's said, I could say too. It's strange, back in my days, we had students drive to school, park their cars/trucks in the school parking lot WITH shotguns and rifles in the trunk or hanging from a rack on the back window. Fights would occur back then too. We started and ended with fists. Nothing more, nothing less.

What's changed?

I'm just under 50, and we did the same thing in high school, in Delaware County (Garnet Valley was still a rural area back then). I know some other kids in my class would hunt with two of the vice principals too.

Mighty fine post! Which I immediately sent to my siblings and kids. Sadly, I have to spread the rep around...

Got him for ya!!

[eagleclaw]

What I would like to know is where all these transgender/gender confused kids came from. They were none when I went to school.

[Roadking]

What I would like to know is where all these transgender/gender confused kids came from. They were none when I went to school.

I seriously believe it is caused by their parents trying to be the "cool" person at the soccer game...

[j_h_smith]

I seriously believe it is caused by their parents trying to be the "cool" person at the soccer game...

Parents are meant to be parents, not FRIENDS to their children. I've said it all along. You're first and foremost supposed to be the child's parent. I'm not saying you can't be friendly towards your kids, but you and they must know that you're the parent and will be the grown up in the relationship.

I get flack from some people when I say this, but that's the way it should be in my opinion.

[eagleclaw]

I seriously believe it is caused by their parents trying to be the "cool" person at the soccer game...

Parents are meant to be parents, not FRIENDS to their children. I've said it all along. You're first and foremost supposed to be the child's parent. I'm not saying you can't be friendly towards your kids, but you and they must know that you're the parent and will be the grown up in the relationship.

I get flack from some people when I say this, but that's the way it should be in my opinion.

From my recollection, when I was in grade school, boys had no desire to become girly. Even if they parents wanted them to wear gender neutral hand me down clothing from their sister, boys would have refused to wear it. A news show I watched had a story on transgender kids, mostly boys wanting to be girls. It showed them not only wearing girl's clothes and make up, but moving and acting like girls. I don't know if something is in the water supply or did these kids get brainwashed early on from the TV , internet and their parents. ( maybe teachers and school too).