I went to school in a different time, the late 1950's and 1960's. It was a semi-rural area, and most people in the area had guns.

I was also a nerd before there was such a thing as a nerd. If I were in school today, I would have been labeled ADD and drugged into complacency. As it was, I was bored to tears because school was not much of a challenge.

I was also a target for every bully in the school from grades 1-12, including the teachers. One classmate expected me to show up every morning and accept my usual harassment or beating. I usually did.

I looked at every school day morning as a death-row prisoner must look at their last day on Earth, except I knew I'd have to repeat it tomorrow. Like many other kids in my school, I had easy access to guns.

If any kid ever had motive, means and opportunity to blow away their teachers and classmates, I did.

Note: I eventually mediated a solution by rather forcibly applying the side of a large rock to the side of the aforementioned bullies head. One teacher's reaction: "I wondered how long you were going to take that." No one was suspended, no one was punished and no one was seriously injured anywhere other than their pride. As a bonus, I found a new sense of self-confidence, a bully learned that everyone has their limits and all was well without 'government intervention.'

The LAST THING I would have dreamed of, however, would have been to shoot someone. I watched Elmer Fudd point a shotgun, point-blank at Buggs Bunny and pull the trigger. All that happened to Buggs was a soot-covered face. I knew instinctively, however, that you didn't point a real shotgun at a person.

For Some Reason, We Seemed To Know the Difference Between Fantasy and Reality

Killing a human being just wasn't a concept in my mind, or in the minds of my fellow students. A respect for life was something we knew instinctively in our souls.

Somehow We Knew: Killing is Really Really Serious and is Usually Really Really Wrong.

Most of the boys in my neighborhood had guns. Surplus WWII German Mausers were sold from 55 Gallon drums at the local K Mart™ for $12.00. Ammo was available at Robbie's surplus store. You needed no I.D., permit or anything but two dollars to buy 100 rounds of surplus NATO ammunition.

On Saturdays, Alfred Stegall, the town police "chief" would occasionally stop by the local trash dump when we were shooting at rats, old refrigerators and pretend Nazis. He never came by to scold us or interfere in any way, he merely wanted to see that we weren't being careless. "You boys have a good day now, and try not to shoot each other," he would say before he left.

On other days we played war games, had BB battles, played cowboys and Indians and Cops and Robbers. For these, of course, we'd leave the 'Real' guns at home. We somehow knew they weren't toys.

We built pipe bombs filled with our own home made black powder. We made bazookas (potato guns) that would shoot a dirt clod a quarter of a mile. We generated hydrogen in pop bottles using of aluminum foil and lye so we could float surplus weather balloons (ordered from the back of the Sgt. York comics) high in the sky and shoot them with flare guns just to watch them burn.

We knew that White Phosphorus (Willie Pete) could burn a hole in an engine block because we did it. We made rockets from steel broom handles. We filled these with homemade solid rocket (powdered Sulfur, Sugar and Magnesium) fuel and used them to launch our homemade fireworks.

Our toys had sharp edges, things that would burn you, shock you, crush your fingers and get lodged in your throat.

We had easy access to knives, hatchets, axes and other potentially harmful tools.

We lived next to forests filled with Poison Ivy and snakes. We were close to rivers with undertow and all manner of other deadly things. We had fishhooks, spears, crossbows (mostly home made) poisons and other potentially fatal objects all around us.

One kid built a beautiful crossbow in metal shop using a leaf spring from a car. The thing would shoot a hardened steel rod through cinder block at 25 yards. He got an "A."

We watched war movies, read really gross and violent comics (Sgt. York would be deemed too violent today.) As teens we grew up with the horror of the Viet Nam war on television, and for many of us, in reality. We were forced to kill, and some of us, to die.

We grew up living under the threat of nuclear annihilation and practiced regular 'duck and cover' drills. [As if a school desktop would save us should the Russians attack.]

We had no 'grief counselors' other than our family, friends and neighbors.

We rode our bicycles without knee pads or helmets, spent a lot of fun time riding in the back of the pickup truck and engaged in many activities that today would seem to scream negligent parenting.

Based on the above, our last reunion should have been attended by psychotic veterans, emotional cripples, parolees, grieving parents and widows. SURPRISE -- other than those who gave their lives in the service of their country, we're pretty much alive and well.

Of course times were different back then. WWII vets and those on active duty in Korea saw atrocities and had traumatic experiences. They went away as young men and returned as trained killers. My parent's generation lived through severe economic depression and prohibition.

They lived through a war so all-encompassing that it truly was a "World War." Other Men and Women of the time worked in offices, foundries and factories in support of their nation, families and way of life.

These were our parents.

The difference between then and now….?

Adults, however misguided they may appear in hindsight, who not only deeply cared for the welfare of their children, but were at the same time, firmly grounded in reality.

My parents had their problems, and they both passed while I was in my early teens. We were not wealthy, and my father was working most of the time. When he was there, however, he left no doubt in my mind that he cared.

He took me hunting when I was 8 or 9 years old, but only after I knew how to safely handle the .22 bolt-action single shot.. When I held my first kill, a little bunny rabbit, something in my life my life changed. That lovable furry little critter that I would have loved to pet and cuddle was limp, bloody and dead.

Nothing teaches a child more respect for life than holding death in his hands. From that day forward I had a deeper respect not only for life, but for what a person with a gun could do to that life in an instant. That respect for life is with me today. (BTW, we still ate the rabbit.)

Our parents didn't need to child-proof the guns, they chose to gun-proof the children.

Gunproofing your children is as important as drownproofing them, i.e., teaching them to swim. We don't teach children fear of water, we [should] teach them to swim. Are parents doing their children any favors by saying things like, "Don't go near the water, you'll get sucked in!," or, "I never want my child to ever even see a real gun." We all know the lure the forbidden presents to children. Do we really want to foster this curiosity, or should we teach our children a healthy respect for the things that can hurt them, or others, such as guns and swimming pools..

Are we doing them a favor by insulating them from anything that could cut, bruise crush or burn?

Could a lack of such a sterile environment possibly have some bearing on the fact that none of my classmates turned into serial killers? It couldn't have been the guns, because we all had them. On the first day of Deer season it wasn't unusual to see a rifle or shotgun in somebody's locker when they came in at 2:00, just in time for the last class.

What we have to ask ourselves is not only why times were different then, but how.

Guns haven't changed. Guns are pretty much the same as they were at the beginning of the century. They were easier to get then, but the mechanics have pretty much remained the same.

Children haven't changed. They are still born without avarice, hatred, intolerance and bigotry.

Could it be the parents who have changed?

Is this the same set of "generation ME" parents who use television, video games and the Internet as if they were "free baby sitters from Heaven?"

Are these the ones who settle political, traffic and workplace disagreements with rage and violence?

No wonder the kids are screwed up!

But that's another rant!

<- his mark