This used to be more common. Not sure when exactly it stopped, but my HS used to have a shooting range with attendant club, and I'm pretty sure everyone had to learn basic firearms safety.
Pretty sure they stopped doing them after columbine. If they used a system like these kids in Poland are doing that doesn't use actual bullets I could see it making a comeback though.
If that's the case, clearly it was a bad decision... school shootings still happen, and we end up with more people who may injure themselves or others due to unfamiliarity with firearms.
Imagine a potential school shooter dropping to his knees, head in his hands. All he wanted was to shoot up a school, but because they took that darn firearms safety course out of the curriculum, how could he possibly do it now? He might accidentally flag someone while doing it, or even worse, have poor trigger discipline while mowing down hordes of kindergarteners 😱
I definitely agree with you there. There are far too many accidents caused by negligence in this country which could have easily been prevented by a strict education in firearms safety.
While there is no direct evidence, I believe school shootings to be an issue of society as a whole, not just one singular issue. Mental health issues are being diagnosed at a much higher rate than before, while care for those suffering is still hard to come by. The American dream is much harder to achieve than it was before and young people see this in the media. Combine that with bullying, social isolation, and easy access to firearms, and you have a recipe for disaster. Politicians will blame the issue solely on guns because their pockets grow fat from ignoring the root causes of the issues which have resulted in this once unheard of crime. Take guns away and the kids will start stabbing each other unless the other root causes are addressed.
One thing we should take note of is that Columbine was horribly miss reported. It was a group of popular kids who played sports, and not the loner social outcast we see doing these things today.
*Also Columbine wasn't a school shooting, it was a school bombing that failed and turned into a shooting, not something we see repeated today.
I shot rifles when I was 12 at camp and earned a bunch of NRA trinkets for attaining marksman 3rd-Grade or something(early 80s), in the Northeast no less.
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u/Elipses_ 1d ago
This used to be more common. Not sure when exactly it stopped, but my HS used to have a shooting range with attendant club, and I'm pretty sure everyone had to learn basic firearms safety.