Not Your Typical School Shooting

By Linda Walker

In modern times, the words “school” and “shooting” put together, always rocks us parents to our knees. We hear the headline news about another school shooting and instantly fear for our childrens lives, regardless of whether they are elementary age or college age or anything in between.

Recently I witnessed something I have not witnessed in three decades! Yes, you can put the words school and shooting together in the very best sense of the words. Let me explain.

My youngest son Zak attends Northridge High School as a freshman this year. He was bumped from one of the classes he had signed up for and was placed in FFA (Future Farmers of America). This class actually counts towards science credits. I thought he would hate this class, and he has proved Mom wrong on that point.

Zak came home a few weeks ago with paper in hand (that’s a rare occurrence) about an FFA-sponsored trap shoot meet between several other school districts. He was excited to have the opportunity to participate in this. “Mom, can I go?” Well now, what kind of gun advocate would I be, if I said no?

We traveled to the Centerburg Conservation Club on Saturday, October 4, where there were several schools attending. I estimate the FFA members participating around 60, about 10% female! Groups of 5 members rotated through their stations, each shooting 25 rounds per match, and doing two matches each.

It didn’t take long for me to move out from underneath the shelter house, and out to front row viewing of the matches. My heart was filled with glee that I was witnessing a school function that - *GASP* - involved guns! Believe it or not, not one single student was killed. Not one single student turned a gun on another. There were no accidental shootings of the innocent bystanders. And there were no words of anger directed at another. Good lord...what would the anti gunners think of such a disgraceful act of FUN?

Zak took his turns at the clay targets. He was nervous, because he had never shoot trap before. He did quite well for the first time out, hitting 50%. Much better than his Mom did when I had my first try at shooting clays this summer. I’ll blame my inability on being right-handed, left-eye dominate. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!)

I question what has happened to our society? My husband and I grew up in rural Fulton County, Ohio both graduating from Evergreen High School. Being children of the ‘70’s, it was not a big deal that the students had their shotgun in the window rack in their pick up trucks. No, they were not going to go retrieve it and gun down their fellow students, but it meant they had already been out in the field prior to school hunting, or they were headed there after school.

Today I read an article about a high school student in Minnesota who forgot and left his bow in the back of his SUV. Immediately in the morning of his first class, he informed his teacher that he accidentally forgot about the bow being in the vehicle. The young man went through his entire school day and finally last period, the principal pulls him from his class, and promptly expels this young man indefinitely. His honesty got him where?

How did we get here? In a span of three decades, we went from students having their hunting “tools” in their vehicles, to the mere gesture of a child pointing their finger at someone, creating a frenzy of a total school lockdown and expulsion of the child.

Kids no longer can stick up for themselves. No, we must have “mediation”. “You make me angry when you point your finger at me.” Our school administrators are turning our children into a society of wimps and sissy’s. It is no wonder, that the thirty-two Virginia Tech victims did not fight back, but rather, many sat in their chairs while the criminal element gunned them down one by one, right where they sat. But don’t get me started on that subject, it makes my angry to just think about it!

In our “olden” days of school, we had the shotgun club and the rifle club. My husband was a member of FFA and the agriculture class. Heaven forbid, they reloaded right there at school. Jim talks often about having a keg of gun powder in the ag room. I suspect if we flashed forward to the 2000’s and that was the case, the bomb squad would be called out to remove the keg by robotics.

I am so thankful that we moved from a suburban school two years ago, to a rural school, quite similar to what I attended as a kid. Zak would have never had the opportunity to have gone and shoot guns at his old school. What a shame that the majority of students will never get that opportunity to do the same, at a “school function”.

It is our duty as parents and as gun owners, to teach our children about firearms. To teach them to respect them and to safely handle them. We can not lose this generation of children to the anti gun crowd. We must get our youth involved in hunting and sport shooting, or it is going to die out with our generation. Take a kid under your wing, and show them that with proper respect, that guns can be fun, but they are also a tool in our toolbox of life!

Linda Walker is a leader with Buckeye Firearms Association, the NRA-EVC for the 12th Congressional District of Ohio, on the board of directors of the Licking County Republican Patriot’s Club, and an NRA certified instructor, instructing concealed carry classes in central Ohio.