These are meant to be jokes, and yet…
Scenario: Jack pulls into school parking lot with rifle in gun rack of his truck.
1973: Vice Principal comes over, takes a look at Jack’s rifle, goes to his truck and gets his to show Jack.
2007: School goes into lockdown, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers.
Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school.
1973: Crowd gathers. Mark wins. Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends.
2007: Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it.
Scenario: Jeffrey won’t be still in class, disrupts other students.
1973: Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by Principal. Sits still in class.
2007: Jeffrey given huge doses of Ritalin. Becomes a zombie. School gets extra money from state because Jeffrey has a disability.
People might see this as a joke, but it was mostly true. Especially the part about the guns. In the rural high school I went to it was quite common for both students and teachers to bring in their firearms to show off. I had a friend with a semi-automatic that brought it to school a lot. He thought it was cool. No one thought of it as a concern.
As somebody that was in high school in 73, and as a parent that now has kids in high school, I’d have to say that it’s pretty much spot on.
Same thing with fireworks, the real class B stuff not the watered down cheap south of the boarder stuff, remember the unicorn brand and real m80s, cherry bombs and quarter sticks?
Now if you’re caught with anything like that, your considered a terrorist and will be locked up for a long time.. Hell I kept bottle rockets in my school locker all the time, hell teachers would always ask if I had any extra.
ah the good old days……
Guy I knew in high school whose hobby was explosives. He had vials of nitro and other things in an old freezer in his basement. He’d blow up garbage cans in a field, etc. If the cops caught a kid doing that today? Gitmo.
Ah yes, the good old days of being afraid to go to school because of psychopathic bullies. I grew up then. The two kids who fought usually didn’t end up being friends. People did get hurt by idiots with fireworks or shot with bb’s. But yes, it’s sick what they’re doing to boys with ritalin now.
#3 & 4,
Very true. If you recall though, every year there were public announcements about the danger of fireworks and every year we read about someone who lost some fingers, a hand, their eyesight, or worse. So while yes, fire works were treated much more cavalierly, it wasn’t without reason they are so restricted today. In my opinion, that has more to do with fireworks then the terrorist shit does, but they would probably use that if they felt the need.
Damn they were fun though. Some of the crap we did as kids, it is a wonder that I’m in one piece today.
3. I had a friend make his own flamethrower back in the day. The good news: it worked. The bad news: It burned three quarter of his body with 3rd degree burns.
Stupid people will always do stupid things, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t at least try and protect them.
Jokes are supposed to be funny
So true SO SO TRUE
what has our world come to.
Yes times have changed. In Jr, High school I would spend my time in shop class re-loading shotgun shells for my teacher. After school I had an archery class where we made our own bows and arrows! On Fridays I’d bring my guns with me and keep them in my locker so my friends and I could go rabbit hunting after school. This was not in a rural area, hell it was Salt Lake City. Today a student doing the same things would be spending time in jail or on drugs…or both.
We are creating an atmosphere in todays schools that tells the kids that they live in a world without danger. They are not responsible for their own actions and that they are entitled to happiness and success without any effort on their part.
We teach them that if they do not succeed (Don’t even think of using the “F”-word FAIL) that it must be someone else’s fault. So we are saddled with a generation of whining brats who want it all and want it now and they will blame anyone or sue anyone if things are not to their liking or they get a little bruised along the way.
End of rant (Sorry)
Where I went to school we would check in our guns and knives in the office and then pick them up when we went home after school. You needed them for your own protection. The toughest gangs in the city were the Irish Catholic gangs. I was attacked twice because they thought I squealed on them to the cops when they murdered some guy and I saw it. I was so young I didn’t know what really happened until my neighbor who was a cop told me and asked me if I knew who did it..
I didn’t…
So I wonder what the kids do now for protection.
My uncle is a consultant for SEP, the French equivalent of NASA, and designed the propellant for the 3rd stage of the Ariane. This stuff is like rubber, has its own oxidizer and is full of powdered aluminum. It’ll burn a hole in concrete under water. I used to take precursors to high school and have lots of fun with it. Physics teachers loved it. Today, I’d be a terrorist spending time at Gitmo. [Heavy sigh]
I was at the Christmas party at my old company last year and there’s a fireworks nut that still works there. We set off a quarter stick in the back parking lot (which was empty) that is adjacent to a huge empty field. Within 15 minutes there was a Sheriff”s helicopter circling around and four or five cruisers in the area. Man!
“…meant to be a jokes” Where are the jokes?
Spot on…. (I remember being on the school bus, at about six years old, and noting a couple of kids with hunting rifles…. Not to mention the “rifle team” .22’s….)
A now deceased Uncle worked for the Air Force during WWII. He brought home parachute flares to test over a long weekend. (His family owned a junk yard.) He let off a flare and started hearing sirens.
The PD and FD were not amused, nor was his CO at the Air Force, but there were no records kept. Today?
Ritalin is everywhere, too. Too easy….
Mostly, we’re afraid to do anything but evaluate and warehouse the kids. Not defend them, or protect them….
Different world….
Regards,
How the hell did this turn into a fireworks discussion?
At the age of 10 my grand faterh explains to me HOW to play with fire works, at 11 I get to use them myself.
At 14, Im taken out and shown how to use a rifle.
At 15, Im taken in the Blue mtns, and shown how to hunt, in -20 degree weather, Froze my $#@%$#@4 off…
at 16 I took my Driver ed, and gun saftty courses…
(this is deliberate)
At 8, I took my sled down a hill that was a Good 400 foot hill, And ran HEAD ON into a phone pole, and was out for 3 days…
Let us be idiots, let us kill ourselves, LEt us LEARN the hard way…
DONT stick your finger into an electrical socket, DONT stick ANYTHING into that socket.
I dont need MOTHER, governmant to control myself, from being STUPID…
The good old days….what is this the nostalgia blog!! The old times were better because we didn’t know what we know now!!
For those who don’t see the humor in the post, you’ve got your irony feature turned off. Please turn on and reboot.
Yeah, these days are much different. In my youth, the progression of Christmas presents for boys was: BB gun for ten-year old, .22 at age twelve, shotgun at 14, and high-powered rifle at 16.
I remember turning my 10-year old loose to hunt birds with his BB gun. He and his friend only had to walk a half-mile to get to the sagebrush-covered hills. They came back after a few minutes saying that some man threatened to call the cops if they didn’t return home.
What a knee-slapper! And I see that some of the commenters recognize bald-faced propaganda in the form of a “funny” story when they see it. Does anybody remember this from a few years ago?
“A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN”
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too.
He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.
In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.
Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.
If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.
Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.
Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.
He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.
The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.
He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.
Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”
Today’s teenagers have no sense of responsibility.
21, Comment by classicalduck — 5/6/2007 @ 10:36 am
And Joe ‘gives’ 1/3 of his hard-earned paycheck to the union and the Fed. Govt. for dues, taxes and SS because some bleeding heart liberal decided it would be nice, because Joe is so stupid he can’t decide for himself how to take care of his own business. TANSTAAFL.
In the high school physics lab we shot dinner knives (from the cafeteria) out of cardboard tubes wound with copper wire, attached to a battery.
The knives flew the length of the room and embedded themselves into the wall. Cool!
Every boy (and some of the girls) had a pocket knife on them at all times except during PE. Teachers had them also. Pocket knives used to be useful tools, now they are dangerous weapons and a kid will get expelled and possibly go to jail for having one.
Nearly every kid could shoot a rifle by age 10. I learned at age 6. No one in our town ever shot at a human being back then. Never, not even once.
Guns were not some mysterious forbidden object that inspired terror. They were merely tools that people used to acquire meat. Sort of like debit cards today, except you had to clean and oil them occasionally.
Sometimes we shot at tin cans for the fun of it, just like shooting baskets with a basketball, except noisier.
Any country that allows its citizens to carry guns “just because” and without a real need for it is asking for trouble and quite messed up. I don’t give a **** what is says in the constitution but it is just simply wrong and even the stupidest person on earth should be able to see what problems it will cause.
So inclusive, I love being given the “opportunity to be a contributor”.
A reply to #25. Your anti-gun perspective is interesting, but, I suggest, completely wrong and the dream of all dictators. The current gun problem in America, if there is one, only arose when those that own, respect and responsibly use guns allowed the anti-gun proponents to implement the current reactionary policies. The current problem will resolve over time if and when a return to ubiquitous gun ownership becomes common.
If the early American settlers had implemented the same gun controls as those imposed by the English government on their relatives (no private gun ownership), all of America would be bowing Queen Elizabeth this very day. Because the early American owned and cherished gun ownership, Americans bow to no one which is in my opinion a much better way to live. And so it goes…
#25. Our constitution was a well-crafted document designed to protect the citizens of the United States from a tyrannical government. Each article reflects that attitude, including the one (or more?) which you disagree. Being able to do things “just because” is truly freedom. Anything less is living repressed. Sure, living under a Soviet or dictatorship may result in less crime, but is living in fear of the police instead of criminals really a better system?
Signed: the stupidest person on earth.
21: Joe has it good, but to many Americans his good life is but a fantasy; no health insurance, no retirement, no money in the bank and the whole clean air thing is a bit of a fiasco. But yeah, we still get to pay the high taxes, and it’s the politicians of both stripes that have all helped to bring us the problems we have today.
Ok,
The mention of guns in the constitution, is mostly based on the idea that the PEOPLE can control the gov, IF need be.
WE used to have rights in our Gov, but that hasnt happened in many a year.
Taking standard Statistics, MORE people are killed by Knives, clubs, and pool cues, Auto accidents, then there are by GUNS.
It would be easyier to Put Mentally Unbalanced persons into Hospitals, and RED tag them, then it would to take every gun off the street. THEn you can add all the POOR and the Druggies.
WELL, thats 1/2 the country.
Only reason to use a gun, is RANGE..i dont have to stand within 6 feet of you to KILL you…
Average range of MOST pistols, WONT excede 50 yards. With ANY accuracy. 90% of those that Use guns in crime dont even know how to use them to hit anything past 10 feet.
We could debate the construction of Make places Robbed, ranging from plastic to Cardboard.
Laws that FORBID, defending yourself or capturing a Robber. If you hurt the bastard, you are LIABLE…Did you know that??
how about a school system that teaches Facts, but dont teach you HOW to take care of yourself, or HOW to work… or even HOW to make Better of yourself.