I have a question for the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and others of their generation. It is a question they do not seem to be asking themselves but which they ought to ponder. It is not a hypothetical question – I really, really want to know what they think on the subject.
So that they might be fully aware of my reason for asking this question — letting them know where I’m coming from — I should explain that I graduated high school in the class of 1964. In my HS we had a rifle club.
Others of my generation belonged to trap and skeet teams in school and brought their shotguns to school, put them and their ammo in their lockers until after class and then went shooting on the HS team. (One fellow tells that, at his school, one had to leave his shotgun and ammo in the Principal’s office and pick it up after classes.)
Others of my generation took their rifles to school, left them in the back of the classroom and then, on the way home, bagged a few squirrels for dinner.
It was a time before FFLs (Federal Firearms Licensees — gun dealers), long before background checks and a time when one could buy a gun at Sears & Roebuck, the Western Auto store, a hardware store and anywhere else that chose to sell them. You could buy guns by mail order from the ads in the newspaper. Anyone could buy as many guns as they wanted.
By contrast, today, guns have never ever been harder to purchase in the USA.
So, we (my generation) had no FFLs, no background checks, no restrictions on where we could buy guns or how many. We also had no epidemic of school shootings.
You see, the kids these days think they know the answer to the question: How do we stop school shootings? In fact, they are not even asking the right question which is: Why did school shootings become a ‘thing’?
My question for them is: What has changed between my generation and yours that makes your generation so willing to go to school, and massacre schoolmates?
I think that if you look at the facts, examine them honestly, you will see how best to stop school shootings.
Get back to me when you have an answer. I have my own theory but I’d really, really like to know what you have to say on the matter.