Did your grade school, junior high/middle school and/or high school have a gun range?

[Solomonson]

Did your grade school, middle school/junior high school and/or high school have a gun range? How about a city-owned gun range in your hometown?

There was a basement gun range at my junior high, for use by both junior high and high school students in the early 1980s here in California. We had a rack of Remington 513T Match Masters, a handful of Colt Woodsmen Match Target pistols. They were used for JROTC, NRA smallbore and bullseye and hunter safety programs. It lasted until about 1990.

Even back in the early 1980s, we talked in awe about the past, where students could bring their own .22 target rifles to school. They would leave them in the front office and then use them at the range.

That campus closed, and along with it, the range. My hometown also had a city-owned smallbore range. It too closed a few years back.

This photo was taken on S. Main St. in Downtown Los Angeles, less than a block from city hall in about 1955. How times change:

​

 

[FROGO207]

Yes Bangor High School in Maine had a rifle range under one of the ramps that conveyed students between buildings. We had a ROTC program and they administered the range. I was a rifle team member and also brought my target rifle back and forth for practices.the rifles were mostly Remmington Match Masters and there was an unlimited supply of Olin .22 in the yelow boxes. Nobody clmplained if we walked around at school or in the building with them and left it in my locker until after school and then took it to the range. I graduated in 1976 and they ran the range up until the late 80's before It got shut down. Like said in another thread having a rifle or shotgun in a rack behind a seat in your pickup on a daily basis was normal year around on the school grounds or around town. Back then about half the teachers were Vets. How many do you suppose are now. This is part of the problem!

 

[hq]

Oh wow. The high school didn't have a range but there was one half a mile away. I kept my IPSC race gun and a couple of hundred rounds of .45 major handloads in my locker so I didn't have to go back home to get them after school. This was the 80's and no-one seemed to mind. The school had some co-operation with the local reserve officers' club and occasional .22 shooting events but it had profiled itself around basketball and everything revolved around it. To a degree that NBA players like Dennis Rodman and Scottie Pippen (yes, for real) have later guest-starred in the team during individual games so it was taken very seriously and everything else took a back seat by default.

 

[DukeConnor]

My high school had a rifle range and rifle team.

 

[Mr. Zorg]

No. Same for my siblings who, due to redrawing lines & such over the years, attended some of the same and some different schools than I did.

 

[theotherwaldo]

Of the thirty-three or so schools that I attended, only the University of Alabama had a firing range.
I believe that even that range is no longer there.

 

[DocRock]

My prep school did. A decent indoor range for 50 yard rim fire shooting. We also did biathlon.

 

[jmr40]

While it was common for rifles and shotguns to be in the gun rack in the back of pickup's, we had no school sponsored shooting activities. The closest thing was Boy Scouts. One of my high school teachers and football coaches was also my Scout Master. He was also in the National Guard and had access to their facilities where we shot.

 

[Vernon102]

Went to HS from 65 to 68 in NYC. And we had a rifle team.
We shot in the National Guard armory.
Times have changed indeed!

 

[Speedo66]

Double post.

 

[Speedo66]

Went to HS from 65 to 68 in NYC. And we had a rifle team.
We shot in the National Guard armory.
Times have changed indeed!

I also went to HS in NYC, in Queens, and while we had a rifle team, we didn't have a range, but other local HS's did.

This was in the mid '60's.

 

[ApacheCoTodd]

We had a rifle team in school but the indoor and the outdoor ranges were off-sight.

Sadly, I can't for the life of me remember where those ranges were anymore. I think outdoor was down by the river between the school and the State (read: mental) Hospital.


Todd.

 

[psyopspec]

I graduated in the early 2000s. My middle school was a newer building that did not have a range. My high school did not have an active range while I was there, and as I rack my brain I don't recall any part of the building that looked like it had been converted. But it's possible. We still had students with guns in their cars who came from hunting in the morning or went out after school, and it wasn't a problem.

The building that housed ROTC in college had several marksmanship trophies on display upstairs, and the range in the basement of that building had been converted to storage.

 

[ApacheCoTodd]

Went to HS from 65 to 68 in NYC. And we had a rifle team.
We shot in the National Guard armory.
Times have changed indeed!

Our indoor was a couple (three?) Quonset huts end to end built partially into the earth. I wonder if it was N.G. or Reserve as well?

Todd.

 

[Ru4real]

Yes, small bore / pistol range in the basement of the middle school, in use from 1950’s through today, small town Minnesota.

Firearms training is taught by parents up until age 11 at home. Then 11 & 12 year old kids have firearms training in the school with 22’s taught by NRA volunteers with MN Department of Natural Resources support. Necessary to have training before big game hunting, deer, bear.

In college, University of North Dakota, the armory on campus had a small bore range inside, 50 feet. I shot winter league 4 position from 1998-2002 on a team that competed against other teams in ND, SD and MN. Every Wednesday I’d walk a mile back and forth across campus carrying my Winchester or Anschutz in a soft case wile wearing my shooting jacket under my winter coat.

 

[FL-NC]

No, but in junior high and high school, for a couple of weeks we did archery with basic recurve bows on the football field. In Tampa, 1980's.

 

[Sistema1927]

In High School our ROTC building had a 50 ft. indoor .22 rifle range. When the rifle team wasn't using it, we were allowed to bring our own rifles and ammo (lead only) at certain times. I don't know how many times I walked across my High School campus cradling a Winchester '06, and nobody slapped handcuffs on me.

 

[bikerdoc]

Yes, and as late as the 70's as a night student I could use the 22 ROTC range at Northeastern Univ in Boston

 

[Reloadron]

The High School had a sub basement with a range used by our school rifle team and club. This was the early 60s. Uniondale HS LI, NY. We kept 22 rifles in our lockers. Go figure and that was in NY.

Ron

 

[Obturation]

I graduated high school in 2002, in the Chicago suburbs. A mention of guns at all was grounds for suspension.

 

[12Bravo20]

We didn't have a shooting range at my high school. We did have a good archery range though. And the gym teacher was a hunter so always did the archery section right before bow season so we could bring our compound bows in and make sure they were sighted in.

 

[Dunross]

Not at my school, but my high school ROTC rifle team used a range at a neighbor school to practice.

Gun racks in the back of trucks were so commonplace as to be not worthy of commenting on unless they were showing off the guns they held.

 

[Fyrstyk]

My high school rifle team (1972) had permission to use the local sportsmen's club indoor shooting range. Our guns were kept in a locker in the basement of the school. As a youngster, I can remember going to junior High school after checking my trap line in the morning. I would get on the bus with my .22 rifle and store it in my gym locker at school until the end of the day. Get the rifle and get back on the bus for home. I would walk through my neighborhood with the gun on my shoulder to get to the woods that bordered our neighborhood. Nobody said a word to me or my buddies, and nobody called the cops about kids with guns. Times have certainly changed. Now if a kid even draws a gun on a piece of paper he will get kicked out of school.

 

[entropy]

No, but the ROTC Armory at the University of Minnesota had a .22 range in the basement, all the issue Federal .22 LR you wanted to shoot ,and Win. 52D's to shoot them from. I availed myself of it as much as possible.

 

[3Crows]

Yes, I went to a small school in the country with nothing behind it but woods. There was a Rod and Gun Club that was mostly run by one of the sisters (who was an excellent marksman and fisherman lady) and sometimes the parish priest (ex-Marine of Korea) would drop in to check on things and give some pointers.