Is it common for high schools (or junior high schools) to have gun clubs/ rifle clubs? Are they generally “officially sanctioned” by the school districts?
I never heard of such a thing at the suburban public school I attended in Michigan in the 70s.
I graduated high school in 1984, and finished junior high school in 1981. I was told, but never verified, that there was a gun range in the junior high school building. I don’t remember a gun club so if it was there, it might have been left over from an earlier time.
I graduated HS in 1981 in suburban Boston. There was a Shooting club/team that practiced at the police shooting range. It was an official school activity.
Grew up in Texas. No official gun clubs recognized by the schools, but I and several friends of mine would go out on property that our families owned and shoot from time to time.
Plenty of guys kepts rifles or shotguns in their vehicles that were parked on campus during school days, especially during hunting season. There were no rules against it.
There we never any gun incidents on campus during my time in high school. Late 70’s early 80’s.
Define Common?
In 2018 there were only 2000 such clubs out of of little over 20,000 High Schools. So 10% and I’m sure this varies a lot by state.
The link article is terrible but matches some other articles.
This TIme.Com article talks about it in more detail.
High School Shooting Teams Are Getting Popular in the U.S. | Time
Is where the 2,000 figure seems to come from.
There are over 2,000 high-school rifle programs across the US. Some, like the ones I watched compete at West Point, operate as varsity-level teams.
Like many things, it will really vary by state. Also indications are it was pretty popular until the 70s when they diminished greatly and now in the last 10 years they’re making a comeback.
My high school didn’t have a gun club per se, but if I remember correctly the JROTC had a gun range.
I’m in my 50’s and have never head of this, but the town I live in has a Facebook Forum of historic community pictures and I’ll occasionally see black and white photos from around 1940’s-1960’s with students bearing firearms in the classroom or outside on the lawn for demonstrations or projects.
Even here in the gun-shy UK, my school took part in the government Cadet Force and we got a chance to familiarise ourselves with ancient .303 rifles - which meant I got to fire a blank. Once. They wouldn’t even let me take the basic proficiency test.
Putting aside any moral arguments, I feel most schools would avoid gun clubs for financial reasons. I have to feel that any school that has students involved in officially shooting activities is going to see its insurance rates rise significantly.
When I was in high school (graduated 1991) one year there were announced plans to have optional rifle training, which quietly never happened. Apparently it was killed behind the scenes with no public announcement of “never mind”.
I don’t know if it’s a gun club as what the OP was thinking but in my area (Iowa) several high schools, including the one I graduated from, have trap/skeet shooting teams. For those who don’t know, it is the sport where the shooter yells “pull!” and a clay pigeon (a clay disk) is launched into the air and the shooter uses a shotgun to try and hit it.
Most, if not all, are considered as a club activity, not an official sport of the school although most teams use the school nickname/mascot. The students are given time off with no penalty to attend matches.
I graduated from a somewhat rural Ohio high school in 1964. I don’t recall a shooting club but during hunting season there were always pickup trucks with shotguns in gun racks in the back window. No one ever thought twice about it. On the opening day of hunting season many kids were excused to hunt.
When I competed at Camp Perry in the early 2000s there were many junior rifle and pistol teams. Clean cut, well disciplined teenagers with their matching uniforms and very expensive rifles.
We had a shooting club at NASA at least into the 1970s with a rifle and pistol range on campus. All you needed was your membership card to transport guns at work.
My high school had one but got rid of it sometime in the 1980s before I started attending. I was on the wrestling team, and we used to practice on the old shooting range in the basement. The rifle team used air powered rifles to practice indoors.
I worked at a private school in England. We had a .22 rifle range, supervised by an ex-SAS sergeant.
As you can imagine, safety was rigorous.
Nevertheless I disagree with the Guardian article above - it wasn’t safer than chess (I ran the chess club!)
By any chance, was this the Lockheed/NASA in Mountain View, Ca?
One of the counselors at my Jr High (74-75) started a rifle club and took us to the range there.
The Minnesota State High School League, which sponsors the high school sports in the state, includes Clay Target clubs. I thought they were in only a few rural areas, but there are dozens of schools with teams, ranging from the smallest school districts to the largest ones in the state. We certainly didn’t have them when I was in school (way back when). Their growth took off starting in 2014, which is when they had their first statewide tournament.
I graduated HS in 1983. My Jr. High was the old high school building and had a rifle range under the auditorium . We did a PE unit of gun safety/ target shooting. It was based some of the Hunter’s Safety Badge curriculum, I believe.
Was that gun safety unit mandatory or voluntary?
In rural western PA (which is probably what prompted the question), it’s absolutely normal. And the schools in the area don’t even bother to “excuse students” for the first day of deer season: They just call off school that day.
Here in the Cleveland area, it’s absolutely not something that I’d take for granted that any given school will have it, and the Cleveland district itself probably doesn’t (just because they don’t have the funding), but I wouldn’t be particularly surprised if a school did. And it’s also a fairly standard option at Scout camp (and, of course, many Scout troops are sponsored by schools).
I’m pretty sure it was voluntary. PE was certainly co-ed but I don’t remember any girls on the range. There was most likely some other unit you could choose and the girls chose that.