HIGH SCHOOL RIFLERY PROGRAMS ARE, er, booming in Georgia:

“Something unique has happened in Georgia,” said Bob Mitchell, the head of USA Shooting, the organization that oversees the country’s Olympic and International shooting programs. “Georgia has the best youth shooting education and competition program in the country. I want to use that same model in other states.”

And, not entirely a surprise, girls are dominating the sport. I’d like to see this, and high-school Junior ROTC, pick up across the country.

UPDATE: A reader responds:

In the 50s my high school had a rifle club, and kids were on the school bus once a week bringing their rifles into school and home; and nobody thought anything of it.

NJ, Pingry School, Hillside.

Yearbook entry (1959) has a Rifle Club, Middle School Rifle Club, and Rod and Gun Club, pictures of kids standing in usual portrait, but with guns.

I knew things were screw up when the first thing after 9/11 they disarmed all the passengers instead of putting a large knife at each seat.

Yes, but the times they are a’changin’.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Peter Gookins emails:

Talk about “times a-changin”….I attended two schools in the D.C. area in the ’50s and ’60s that had riflery programs – one was a private school in the subutbs and the other a D.C. public high school from which I graduated. I grew up in D.C.close to the Zoo, and during the years I was 13-15 (early ’60s) on Friday afternoons after school I used to sling my 22 on my shoulder – uncased for the first year until I got a rifle case for Christmas – and ride the bus (public transit) down Connecticut Avenue to Dupont Circle, walk the three blocks to the NRA building and shoot with a junior rifle club, and reverse the trip about 9:30 PM. No one ever batted an eye. Try that now.

Yeah. And yet we’re not as safe as we used to be.