Yeah, times have changed. When I was in high school those many decades ago it was not that unusual for the few kids that drove to have a gun in their car out in the school parking lot. They were used for small game, squirrel, rabbits, and quail mostly. We did not have any deer in that part of the country then, they are all over there now. Sometimes they'd go to the garbage dump after school when the workers had gone home (it was not a landfill then, just the county dump) and plink rats.
One of my classmates in the senior class play had the part of sheriff. He not only supplied his own real revolver and holster, he wore it to school the day of the play. As long as he wore it out in the open and not concealed he was legal. No ammunition of course.
A few years ago that school made national news. The son of one of my classmates took a gun to high school and killed a teacher. He also wounded two other teachers. I did not know the teacher that was killed but one of the wounded was a classmate. The other one wounded was in the class ahead of me. They found out the kid had a gun and took it away from him. No students were harmed.
I forgot to mention one irony in this. The English 4 teacher that put in that play was father to one of the teachers wounded decades later.
My son and his wife teach in a rural school way down south in south Louisiana, about as far south as you can go. Kindergarten through high school are all on the same campus. It's a small school. Her 1st grade class is 16 kids. He is the high school math department, teaching all the math classes. I'd not be surprised to find that a lot of the kids that drive have guns hidden in their cars out in the school parking lot. It's a hunting and fishing area with a lot of the parents making their living fishing, crabbing, or oystering and maybe a little alligator hunting on the side. The kids grow up helping the family business plus hunting food for the table on the side.
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