Alphecca: High School Gun Ranges

May 03, 2006

High School Gun Ranges

Another remembrance of high school ranges:

A couple of phone calls sent me into a bit of a time warp, with each person referring me to the previous Mitchell principal. Finally, I reached Wally Stenavich, who was principal in the late 1950s or so and still lives in the area. Was there really a shooting range in the basement? "I helped build it," he said.

An industrial arts teacher oversaw the construction of it and started a rifle club league. Stenavich was a student in 1939 and got involved in one of the teams.

Later, as a teacher and principal, he took over the teams.

Dang, my payoff was in danger. The only chance I had left was to squeeze by on a technicality. I asked Stenavich if the guns were stored in the office, as I'd heard.

Sure, he said. And we're not talking the air rifles that some schools compete with today, the ones that barely give crows a tickle.

"At the time, the U.S. Army was encouraging these things, and they supplied us with the rifles," he said.

As I've said, my own high school had a rifle range in the basement but it was long out of use by the time I was imprisoned there a student there. In rural areas it was simply a way of life. In the urban area where I grew up, I suspect it was probably (as noted in the story) a response to the Cold War of the middle of the last century. Yes, I'm that old. In elementary school, we had the whole black shades/duck under the desks drills every week.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at May 3, 2006 08:29 AM

Comments

My high school had a shooting team.

Our range wasn't at the school though. The range was an ROTC range at Vanderbilt University. I was on the team all three years I was at the school, until I graduated in...

...1996.

Posted by: Ben at May 3, 2006 12:25 PM

The range at my old HS was under the stage in the auditorioum (none of that multi-purpose stuff; the building was built in 1919 and had a real auditorium, with a balcony. The stage had curtains (fireproof), and a real proscenium arch.
The ceiling rafters were fake (hollow) with spotlight positions there.

At any rate, through the orchestra pit was a small door to the under stage area (there were even trap doors there) and at the back end of the stage was another door. This opened into a firing pit, behind which was a dirt floored crawl space, with the targets at the far end. There was an path excaveted down so that the shooters could walk to the targets without having to low crawl to them.

Used 22 l.r. target ammo there. The rifle team was disbanded when I was still in junior high, so I never actually shot there.

The building is now used as a middle school, and I heard that the school board wants to tear it down and build something else, using the excuse that it was "unsafe". The locals brought in a CE who told them that the building was safer than every other building in the district, so now they're looking for another excuse to shove some tax dollars for demolition and construction to their "campaign contributors" and buddies. Local east coast politics, ptooii!

BTW, it was closed a half century ago, probably a good thing, since I don't remember *any* ventilation.

email is human readable - aloud.

Posted by: bud at May 3, 2006 01:21 PM

Yup. In NJ, Glen Rock horror school had a rifle range too. Used for book storage and A.V. videos. It was even still referred to as the Rifle Range, in the 1970's.

Heck, there was actually an ACTIVE range in the basement of a school in Bogota, NJ util only a couple of years ago. It had been used by a town pistol club since the 1950's until someone suddenly noticed and stopped that right quick after 5 decades. None of THAT kind of behaviour allowed here, no-sir-eeeee!

I think they are still cleaning up poo from the B.O.E. offices.

Posted by: tomWright at May 3, 2006 09:21 PM

I went to Bryant HS in Queens, New York City in the 60's and we had a defuncted rangle in the basement. No one talked about it but my Uncle had gone to that school and was a member of the rifle team while there. The other HS I know about was called Long Island City HS and it had a range because it had been the original Bryant HS and had the original team. Seemed the teams and the rifles were stopped in the 50's but I don't know when.

BUT, I was a member of the 114th Rifleman, (14 and up) which was a club sponsored by the 114th police percent in Queens and while it had its own target rifle we also brought our own, traveling on the subways with them because no one had a car. Try that now :)

Posted by: Rich at May 5, 2006 12:34 PM

Posted by: me at May 12, 2006 04:34 PM

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May 03, 2006

High School Gun Ranges

By Golly, you're reading an archived post. Click Here to head to the main page and read current stuff...

Check it out:

My group sci-fi blog novel:

Colony: Alchibah