CHARLES COOKE: Gun Clubs At School: The notion of schools as “gun-free zones” flies in the face of history.

In 1975, New York state had over 80 school districts with rifle teams. In 1984, that had dropped to 65. By 1999 there were just 26. The state’s annual riflery championship was shut down in 1986 for lack of demand. This, sadly, is a familiar story across the country. The clubs are fading from memory, too. A Chicago Tribune report from 2007 notes the astonishment of a Wisconsin mother who discovered that her children’s school had a range on site. “I was surprised, because I never would have suspected to have something like that in my child’s school,” she told the Tribune. The district’s superintendent admitted that it was now a rarity, confessing that he “often gets raised eyebrows” if he mentions the range to other educators. The astonished mother raised her eyebrows — and then led a fight to have the range closed. “Guns and school don’t mix,” she averred. “If you have guns in school, that does away with the whole zero-tolerance policy.”

But how wise is that “zero-tolerance policy”? Until 1989, there were only a few school shootings in which more than two victims were killed. This was despite widespread ownership of — and familiarity with — weapons and an absence of “gun-free zones.”

It’s like all that gun-control and deliberate “denormalization” of guns backfired or something.

UPDATE: Reader Gary Robinson emails: “We worry about kids and sex – so we have sex education in school. We educate kids about driver safety, drugs, healthy lifestyles and a host of other things that we have concerns about so kids learn safe practices. If we’re worried about kids and guns, why don’t we teach basic gun safety in schools?”

I would say that the effort by gun-controllers to “denormalize” gun ownership, and to portray it as deviant and dangerous, actually increases the allure of guns to unbalanced minds.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Danielle Ivey writes:

I can tell you that youth shooting sports is alive and well and safely existing outside the tyranny of the public school systems. I’m one of 11 coaches for a 40+ member multidisciplinary team – rifle, pistol, archery and shotgun. Each year we compete in our state tournament that attracts over 2000 competitors in 36 different matches. While our focus is teaching safety and a life skill, we do have alumni who have been in the running for the US National and Olympic teams.

In 2 weeks, 6 of our members will be competing for $10k in scholarship money at the San Antonio Livestock Expo tournament.

I just rebuilt my office computer or I’d send you some great pics of our members in action at last year’s state tournament.

P.S. – Most rifle teams that are school based have gone under the auspices of JROTC programs.

Good to hear.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Only when women are overrepresented on every educational metric will we have reached the goal of ‘full gender equity’?

WAPO FACT-CHECKER: Obama’s 40 Percent No-Background-Check Claim Isn’t True, But We’ll Suspend Judgment. And it’s all the NRA’s fault anyway.

Related item from Tom Maguire.

NOT SO PSYCHED ABOUT THE INAUGURATION? Discuss it with friends old and new at Helen’s Page.

EMAIL FROM THE LOVING, TOLERANT LEFT. “Over the last few years, I’ve heard the left talk about how hateful conservatives can be. Being a libertarian, there have been plenty of occasions where I disagreed with conservatives in discussions on social issues, but I’ve never at any moment gotten to the point where they were berating me or wishing harm upon me. Needless to say, I’m strongly considering sending this one to the police since the e-mail address, which I’ve left off the post, is from a legitimate account.”

AT AMAZON, Blu-Ray releases for under $10.

OBAMA: “A Decade of War Is Now Ending.”

David Cameron: Global War on Terror Will Last “Decades”: David Cameron. So I guess a decade of war is now ending, to be replaced by . . . another decade of war.

MARTIN LUTHER KING AND AUTOMOBILITY: “History Shows That Freedom Drives A Car.”

FREE ON KINDLE: The Complete Sherlock Holmes.

SQUEEZED: Gun control debate is testing Minnesota’s rural congressmen: Democrats in rural Minnesota keenly feel the tensions between support for gun rights and push for new controls. “One thing all three rural Democrats have in common is that the National Republican Congressional Committee has put them on a list of top takeover targets in 2014. . . . Republicans, who have generally condemned Obama’s agenda as violating the Second Amendment, also see an opening against Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who is up for statewide re-election next year.”

JAMES LILEKS REPORTS FROM BEST BUY:

The clerk asked if he could help, and I said I was looking for a cheap virus-magnet laptop loaded with crapware. He asked me to repeat myself. He said the offerings on the showroom floor were scant, but I might try the website. He also said something interesting:

I don’t use a computer myself.

And this from a young fellow. Why so? Because he used his phone for everything except games, and for that he had an Xbox. The idea of a computer was . . . (shrug) whatever. I wandered around the store, looking at things I neither wanted or needed. This was the Best Buy flagship, the best store in the chain: it’s close to the corporate mothership, and they experiment here, put on their best face. I walked out thinking:

They really are doomed.

I don’t know why I thought that; I’ve always enjoyed the store. It always felt like a going concern. But they sell cameras. Laptops. Where once they had rows of media, now there’s little, because physical media is going away. Where once they had games they don’t have games, because – well, see above.

I’m going to miss shopping and looking and touching, I really am.

Read the whole thing.

I ADVISE GETTING INVOLVED OR EMIGRATING: More young Syrians disillusioned by the revolution. “Many educated, middle-class Syrians who had embraced the opposition now feel alienated by its drift toward extremism — and are aligned with neither side.” In a revolution, if you’re not willing to die or kill for your beliefs you’re basically irrelevant. Tweeting doesn’t count.

AN INCONVENIENT GENERAL: The Obama Administration’s Inexplicable Mishandling of Marine General James Mattis.

More here.

UPDATE: Reader Maxwell Jones writes:

Ricks is a major reporter who has written several excellent books and won well-justified prizes for them.

The scandal in his article is that he still loves Obama, despite his incompetence.

It is astounding that he only just now got around to “reading” Obama’s book Dreams from My Father, except that he “read” it on Books-on-Tape:

“I’m still a fan of President Obama. I just drove for two days down the East Coast listening to his first book, and enjoyed it enormously. But I am at the point where I don’t trust his national security team. They strike me as politicized, defensive and narrow. These are people who will not recognize it when they screw up, and will treat as enemies anyone who tells them they are doing that. And that is how things like Vietnam get repeated. Harsh words, I know. But I am worried.”

The national security reporter for the Washington Post surely knows about Brennan, Samantha Power, Donilon and the rest of the gang but only now is he “at the point” where they are to be recognized as narrow.

Obama is the problem. No Obama->no Hagel or Power or Brennan or Libya or Mali.

Yes, but if you face that fact, you might worry that you’re racist or something.

MY DUE PROCESS WHEN EVERYTHING IS A CRIME PIECE gets a nice discussion in this piece in The Atlantic on reforming prosecutions.

21ST CENTURY MOTHERING: I Don’t Want My Preschooler to Be a ‘Gentleman.’ “Start to complain about your preschooler adopting gentlemanly behavior and you quickly discover how out of step you are with the rest of the world. Almost everyone I mention it to thinks it’s lovely and sweet. What’s the harm in teaching little boys to respect little girls?”

UPDATE: A reader emails:

Notice that the author, the teacher, and the female commentators, don’t expect the little girls to do anything in return. And we get the pay myth right away. Her objection isn’t her son is being taken advantage of but it’s not feminist doctrine. I’d suggest therapy but that’s probably part of the problem.

We are doomed as a civilization….

Well, in for a rough patch, anyway. But yes. Chivalry was part of a system, in which expectations were imposed on women and girls, as well as boys and men.

SO AMAZON RECOMMENDED THESE TO ME under “Beauty Products.” Well, a clean gun is a thing of beauty.

SCIENCE: Is Global Warming Caused By Hot Women? The correlation is strong.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Planetary Disasters: It Could Happen One Night.

AT AMAZON, markdowns on sport watches.

21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Is my vibrator ruining my relationship? “I thought my boyfriend would be amused when I ordered another sex toy. Apparently, it was one too many.”

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here Are Some Tips on How to Avoid “Consensual” Police Encounters.

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Liberalism and the Future of the State. “The decline of the blue model calls into question the structure of many of our social programs and government institutions. The post office may be on the way out; the public school systems of the 20th century will probably not survive in their current form. The welfare state faces a complex demographic and financial crisis. All these changes are linked in some way to the decline of the Fordist social model, and they are informing some heated national debates over the future of social policy and the size of the state. To supporters of the New England school, these debates lead directly to some unsettling questions.”

SOME AMUSING AMAZON REVIEWS for How To Avoid Huge Ships.

PORTENTS IN THE SKY: Look Up in 2013 And You Might Just See a Comet. “‘Great Comets’—those bright enough for us to see with the naked eye—are exceedingly rare. Yet two of them could come our way this year.”

ANDREW KLAVAN: Obama’s Second Inaugural and The Party Line.