My how things have changed

We called them Super Smackers; they got outlawed after some shattered and or flew off the strings injuring kids that were nearby.

As far as ammo, I used to be able to buy 22LR at Howlands hardware in Plain City Ohio around 69. I was nine years old. Mr. Howland knew my dad and he had given his permission for me to buy them. They were around .50 a box. Ater school I would grab the .22 Marlin and go to the dump down behind the neighbor's house and shoot rats, tin cans crows etc. It was no big deal. If I saw a groundhog near the garden, he was toast.

We rode our bikes on the road without protective gear, climbed out the windows onto the roof to look at the stars, and played with fireworks. I didn't even know they were illegal.

Things are definitely different today. Some would say we have evolved, IMO we have devolved.
 
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...It seems unbelievable now but things really were safer back then.

To those of us who've been around a while, it's not unbelievable at all...

I have a close friend who graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1970. He was on the school rifle team, and used to get on the New York City Subway with his cased target rifle, and his range bag...which he kept in his locker at school until the team met to practice after class.

I tell this to my non-shooter friends and they look at me as if I've sprouted a second head. A student having even a pocketknife on campus is a major rules transgression in many (most?) school systems these days...and I can't even imagine the reaction from the public and politicians if somebody were to propose creating a school rifle team!

It's so interesting that the harder the antis work to make gun ownership socially unacceptable and legally difficult, the more violent our society seems to get. And the solution, to them, is even more laws attacking inanimate objects, while they avoid talking about the elephant in the room...
 
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