[mrerick]

I sincerely wish that we could somehow introduce firearms collecting and history into school curriculum.

American, European and World history were dry and almost boring subjects when I went to school. Civics classes, in which we thoroughly studied the actual formation and structure of our government was even more dry and detailed.

Can you imagine the number of young people that would perk up at being actually able to hold history in their hands from the various eras and human conflicts that are discussed? It is a crossover subject that combines sports, mechanical design and engineering and the political and technological history of each era represented.

Of course, it's clearly not "politically correct" today so I suppose it's place is outside formal education studies, but it sure would have made these classes quite a bit more interesting for me.

When I was in high school (an urban school with 5,200 students in a suburb adjacent to Chicago), I learned how to shoot safely and accurately from my biology teacher. He coached a high school rifle team on a range dug out underneath the school buildings. I am thankful for his dedication and also for preserving those DCM Winchester rifles as long as he could.