Matter of fact I think the youngsters are going in the minority...... at first. It's going to be us old farts that have memories of the way it used to be 40 years ago, just as the way it was our fathers and grandfathers that remember how it used to be before us and so forth.
Going off on a tangent now:
Granted, things weren't perfect back in the 60s, 70s and early 80s - far from it - but we had a hell of a lot more freedoms then than we do now. I can remember getting a shotgun for my 16th Christmas in 1975, then later that day slinging it across my shoulder and proudly walking a few blocks to my best friend's house to show it off. The neighborhood reaction? Smiles, admiration, and congratulations.
I can remember having to do a report in 7th grade English class on something that I was interested in. My subject was ballistics. My grade was an A+ and my teacher asked if he could go skeet shooting with me and Pops the next weekend. He had a beautiful Remington 101 over and under and was a better shot than we were.
I remember when I got out of the Army in 1981 and walking into a sporting goods store and buying a 30-30 to hunt with. In and out of the store in 5 minutes with my new rifle. Matter of fact, I got an email from Mile-Hi last week telling me about a Remington 870 Wingmaster that his Dad just gave him, said it was bought in a liquor store just up the road from us in Escalon in the 1970s. Yup, bought in a liquor store.
I can remember going into Barbour's Bait and Tackle here in Ceres when I was 10 or 12 with Cousin Ronny and buying a half a box of 22LR, the old man counting them out for us, for a quarter and then going to the property across the street and shooting jackrabbits.
And it wasn't just guns - seatbelts in a car were usually found behind the seat, you could buy cigarettes for your folks with a note from them, folks could stop in the middle of a country road and visit without getting tickets for blocking traffic even though there wasn't any, parents could punish their kids without worrying about gov't interference, all the neighborhood markets would let you run a tab until payday, driving kids to school every day for their safety was unheard of, schoolyard arguments were settled with a fistfight after school with the worst injury being a bloody nose, and a man's Word meant something.
