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Difference Between Today and 30/40 yrs Ago

6K views 42 replies 23 participants last post by  mcp1810 
#1 ·
In 1970 or thereabouts I was coming out of my apt building in the city and I was holding a trash bag. The neighborhood was sort of nice but a halfway house was just set up across the street from our building and naturally it attracted not only unsavory occupants but unsavory visitors. On my way to my car with this garbage bag, to go target shooting with the 30-30 inside it, a carload of young thugs was parked in front of the halfway house, engine off, and one of them said HEY to me, so I walked over and said hi fellas, what's going on? and he asked me where the new halfway house is, and I said well, by coincidence you are right in front of it! And they made few remarks and one of them said oh I thought it was the dirty house you just came out of. And I shook my head and said no no no, that was the house i brought THIS out of, and I pulled out the Winchester stock first, just so they could see the stock part only, and that ended the nonsense then and there. Boston Police would have laughed at them had they complained about me brandishing a firearm etc back then. But today I would probably be subjected to all kinds of foolishness about what I did. The difference in the overall mentality between yesteryear and the times in which we live, is unbelievably appalling. Common sense is uncommon, things are the opposite of what they should be, numbers-wise there are more nitwits than ever on the streets, no one is really and truly safe, and the criminals today are not satisfied with getting money, etc, they want to hurt people also. But the scenario I described with the Winchester, done today? I would at the very least be admonished by police to please not do that anymore. Never mind the punks who asked for me to do it. Oh well, getting older, I guess :) And maybe wiser, but who knows.
 
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#3 ·
Mental illness, she says, eh? Uh oh. The things we put up with. They just don't understand us, Howard :)
 
#4 ·
But the scenario I described with the Winchester, done today? I would at the very least be admonished by police to please not do that anymore.
I imagine much of the discussion on this post could very well take a similar turn.

I personally agree with you that punks like that probably need to know that not everyone they accost is going to be a helpless :sheep:. IMO that is especially important today as the same punks will likely be packing.

Unfortunately, because of more restrictive gun laws punks are just more emboldened knowing that we are the only ones who will follow the laws and next time they say "hey", that the trash bag your carrying likely isn't going to have a bang-stick, but just helpless trash. Sad, very sad.
 
#5 ·
One of the good things is that very very few criminals who are armed have any idea at all that a victim might have a firearm on his or her person. They just don't think like that, and because of that we have a distinct advantage plus the element of surprise. The very last thing they would suppose would be that their next victim would be armed. I have never heard of them checking, either, before committing a crime. So an armed "victim" seems to have a big advantage with an unsuspecting criminal type.
 
#6 ·
Well aren't I glad that I live in a state that has good laws. You can after all carry a long gun just about any place you want to in this Great State of Texas including into a bar. Legally.

So to rewrite your story for a Texas resident, you can skip all the garbage about the garbage bag and having to pull it out to show the stock. :rofl: You would have just walked out out of the house with rifle in hand or slung over your shoulder. Probably wouldn't have gotten any comments to start with. Forget about 30-40 years ago, we can do that today. :image035:
 
#8 ·
The same goes for Vermont. Half the trucks still have full gun racks.

And DCB188, I have never heard of LEO pulling over someone for having a gun in their vehicle here. Or bother them for carrying any sort of firearm, unless it's a full auto. We are allowed to carry open or concealed without permits, and all of our LEO's are instructed of these laws before they hit the streets.

Oh, and please, please don't lump Vermont in with Massachusetts when you talk about the northeast. As far as I know, Mass is getting as bad as California and Illinois.
 
#9 ·
I know VT has no license requirements at all and that is great. Same for marriage licenses, they don't have blood tests etc. You're right, VT and Maine are worlds apart from the rest of the Northeast. What I was saying was that unless you had your rifle in your truck on the rack or were hunting etc I think a LEO would talk with you about carrying it openly, just to see what was up. They would not necessarily just ignore it because it is legal. Depends on whether city or country, though. In downtown Burlington, carrying a rifle on the street might draw an inquiry from LEO and out in or on Route 100, a different story entirely.
 
#11 ·
I can remember kids bringing .22's to school and putting them in their lockers for rifle team practice after school. I can remember if you were the target of a bully and you decided to beat the crap out of said bully instead of taking it you were considered a hero of sorts. I can remember every guy in grade school had some kind of pocket knife on them from about age 8 on up. I can remember playing until dark, (and sometimes even after dark), in the summer time and your parents didn't worry. Why? Because every parent on the block was your parent and would slap the crap out of you if you were doing anything stupid, and your parents wouldn't sue them, they would thank them then slap the crap out of you again. I can remember muscle cars.

Man I am getting old as well as sick and tired of the liberal B.S. that goes on in the world today.
 
#25 ·
I forgot!




I can remember every kid had a BB gun and we took them everywhere. We even occasionally shot one another. Boy did they sting. Not one parent freaked out about it and nobody shot an eye out.
 
#12 ·
You summed it up just like it is.
 
#14 ·
What happened down the street the other day was absolutely ridiculous. A fifth grader went to show and tell at this classroom and what did he have but an obviously empty hand grenade. It was obviously just a shell, but the teacher went crazy and called police and the school was evacuated and it was on the newscasts. And this was just an empty shell of a hand grenade which are for sale in any Army Navy surplus store for ten bucks. No pin etc. And it was treated like an international incident. This is a very sad commentary on how we are ruled by fear and common sense is a distant third or fourth in our priorities, It is fear first and foremost. What will people think? So the international incident is over now and all the embassies around the world have reopened and here on the Cape things are quiet again.
 
#15 ·
FWIW, don't really know if it was legal or not back then, but when I was about 16 and in HS I was on the rifle team, such as it was.

No problem bringing gun to school. No problem carrying it openly on the New York City Subway system on the way to the range in Mt. Vernon; just north of the city.

Those days are gone. The population of the US has about doubled since then.
More people = less freedom. More people = less freedom.

We better get that through our thick skulls. When everyone is living crowded together, there is less opportunity to do stuff without stepping on your neighbor.

If we don't get a handle on this issue, the big one will come in the form of something far worse than gun rights restrictions; famine.
 
#16 ·
You know, you hit upon something that we hardly ever think about. I don't hear people talk about it much at all. The population increase over the years and the food necessary to feed everyone. It seems to be something that people are aware of but they don't think about very often.
 
#18 ·
I remember bringing the old Remington 870 to school to go dove hunting after football practice.

Those days are gone, and they ain't comin' back.
 
#20 ·
While we never took guns to school where I lived, we all had pocket knives and such. We all hunted after getting home from school. None of us did anything worse than shooting a few birds and once a fight was done, that was pretty much the end of things other than some heckling on occasion. I was always the smallest kid and I got picked on all through school - and never once did I consider taking a weapon to school to attack someone.

I really think that parents are failing our society and its nothing that can be fixed by legislation, but by education and parents stepping up to their responsabilities. We are always going to have good people who snap and do bad things, but we are producing bad people now it seems to me...

And while not as old as the op I imagine, I still look around and shiver when I think about the condition of our society.
 
#21 ·
If you want to put a date on when things started sliding downhill real fast, it was 1968. We were already on the slipery slope though from the 1930's and 1950's knife and gun laws. But the gun laws passed in 1968 tipped the scale.
When I went into the Military in 1965 one could still purchase firearms from mailorder and have it sent to your house, when I got back stateside in 1969 new laws were passed that caused even a lot of stores to stop selling firearms. As time passed there have been fewer and fewer dealers. There was a time, pre 1968, that every major department store has a large hunting and fishing department.
 
#22 ·
I would say that 1968 is exactly right. I was USMC 1963-67 and I remember getting out and having things change but I thought it was due to all the college campuses going crazy and everyone protesting against everything under the sun, just to be protesting against something.
But I think this downward slide probably began way back in the 50s after WWII when people were really disillusioned then after being in such a war and wanted to have everything afterwards to kind of make up for it, so they got more and more and aimed higher for more material things and that may have been the real beginning, but you are right about 1968, if I had to pick one year where it was starting to change dramatically, that would be the one. Too bad to see it, too.
And nowadays it is absolutely out of control, and so are most of the people on the streets, and that is why we need guns, because these people nowadays, the criminal types, they no longer want to just rob people, they want to hurt people, too, and that is epidemic. And we are the doctors they need to administer doses of lead poisoning as required.
I would not leave my house without my Ruger SP101, not even to get a quart of milk.
Sad.
You never know what nitwit is around looking for his next victim.
 
#23 ·
Any time someone brings up the good old days I think about many things both good and bad. In 1960 my 6 year old cousin was playing and fell off the porch onto a broken jar which cut her throat. About 4 hours later she died in operating room. Todaydue to modern medicine I am absolutely sure that not only she would have survived but probably have gone home the next day.

About 1990 a seventh grade friend of my daughters got mad and brought a gun to school. He decided not to use it so got scared and cut school. I don't know what happened exactly but about 500 yards from the school he shot himself. It wasn't fatal but it wasn't nearly as big of a deal then as now.

The father of a friend of mine was showing off his .22 caliber revolver when for some reason it fired. It hit his 14 year old son and killed him immediatly.

Many times I long for the good old days where you could order a gun through the mail, get your drivers license at 14, didn't have to wear seatblets, (got the scar over my left eye to prove that), and a bunch of other things. But I also know that I just had three vertebrae fused in my neck and went home the next day. I remeber the time when such an operation would have required traveling to some specialized clinic and 6 weeks in the hospital and untold rehabilitation.

Lots of good things about the old days and the new days.
 
#26 ·
I remember in the late fifties when every boy I knew carried a pocket knife to school. We played mumblety peg and stretch with our knives on the playground at recess. Many kids owned bb guns and we spent a lot of time plinking with them. While visiting my grandparents in the country, my brother and I would spend an entire day roaming the woods with my grandpa's .22 rifle. We were 15 and 13 years old. We bought our ammo from a local country store. The only comment from the store owner was a "Now you boys be careful, you hear."

Larry
 
#27 ·
Hi Larry, Semper Fi, USMC 1963-67, right after the Little Big Horn, it seems.
Everyone had Boy Scout knives of one kind or another. And no one played in a careless way with them. Nowadays we would be in some federal juvenile prison for ten years for carrying one. Add another five years for playing a game with the knife :) Exaggerating but you get the picture. Not too much of an exaggeration if some could have their way these days.
 
#28 ·
When I was 10 years old I had my own .22 bought new at Sears! Nowadays Sears would be sued for a hundred million dollars......oh well, times have changed, and that is for sure....
 
#29 ·
Hi dcb188. Semper Fi
When I was in junior high school, if two guys got in a fist fight at school the coach marched them to the gym. There he strapped them into some large boxing gloves and had them fight until they couldn't stand up. They (and we boys watching) learned a lesson about proper behavior at school and usually found a better way to resolve conflicts in the future.

Larry
Sgt USMC
1965-69
 
#30 ·
I remember things like that, Larry. Everyone was the better for it. It stopped a lot of future fights because you knew you would end up in a real boxing match. What would happen nowadays? I can see it now. COACH ABUSES CHILDREN BY FORCING THEM TO FIGHT. STANDS BY AND DOES NOTHING. Ten years in federal prison......Oh, just to go back in time when common sense was rampant.
 
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