Would you agree with this statement by an NRA firearms instructor on cable TV's "FOX And Friends" in 2014: "Up through the 1970's, firearms safety, familiarization and education was standard curriculum in elementary schools throughout the U.S."?
As weird as it may seem now, there’s definitely some truth to it. I have never seen anything to indicate that it was ever part of the actual curriculum (though, as others have pointed out, there was no “standard curriculum” back then), or often found at the elementary school level, or if it was more regionally common than national. I personally believe there’s definitely exaggeration in the breadth of his claim. However, school-based marksmanship programs and even in-school firing ranges definitely used to be a real thing in the US.Hayward Union High School Girls Rifle Team. California, 1947One manifestation of this was school rifle teams. At their peak, these seem to have been a fairly common sport at the middle school and high school levels. The heyday of the school marksmanship era seems to have been during and just after the second World War (as in the photo above of the girls’ rifle team at a California high school). Even during the the time period that the NRA guy claims as his end point (1975, in this case) New York state still had over 80 school districts with rifle teams! They were rapidly losing popularity and support by that point, and the New York state high school rifle championships were shut down in the late 80s.This photo is of another girls rifle team from what looks like the 40s to 50s. The caption indicated this as being in their school’s new basement gun range. In fact, gun ranges were a fancy feature of some new schools built during that period. Most of them have obviously since been renovated away… But some of them are still around today:Here’s an article about a Wisconsin mom getting shocked by finding out her kid’s middle school still has a functioning rifle range:Gun range in school is targeted as health, safety issueAnd here’s a school district in Minnesota that was trying to decide what to do with the still-functioning rifle range in one of their elementary schools:Basement gun range at Hibbing elementary school under scrutiny