The Huntsville city school board Thursday approved nearly $285,000 for construction of an indoor firing range at Columbia High School.
John Brown, director of operations for Huntsville City Schools, said the 1,400 square-foot facility could be ready in late spring or early summer. It will be used by the school's Junior ROTC program.
This is the entirety of the report in the paper and I find this proposal disturbing on many levels, as should any parent who has a student at Columbia High School. I have never, ever, heard of any high school in this country with its own shooting range and, given the problems throughout the country with school shootings, why are we building a shooting range in a high school. The story says that this range is for use by the Junior ROTC program, but this is just beyond the pale.
I attended a land grant college where ROTC was mandatory for freshmen and sophmores and our experience at firing a weapon was one time in a year on a local range off the university site. As it turns out I had classes when this was scheduled and missed firing the M14. The participation was voluntary instead of mandatory.
I think that some serious questions should be asked about this. Not only why someone felt that a shooting range should be built in a high school environment, but how did this proposal get approved apparently without much, if any, public notice.
I find this to be truly frightening and makes me wonder about the reasoning ability of the Huntsville city school board!
4 comments:
Fred, Fred, Fred...
Never put "reasoning ability" and "Huntsville school board" in the same sentence.
Luckily I've never had a child in the Huntsville school system so I've no experience in dealing with them, but I find this truly frightening given that there was a pepper spray incident reported at Columbia High on the day before.
"I have never, ever, heard of any high school in this country with its own shooting range"
Perhaps you need to get out more. Reading the thread on this site,you will find it was once a common practice:http://www.warriortalk.com/showthread.php?t=30830&page=2
Shooting ranges and gun ownership have little if anything to do with school shootings.
As a student at the Columbia Campus and a Cadet in the Junior ROTC program there, I can say that this firing range, and MANY others like it, Grissom, Sparkman, etc., will be used only by cadets that have passed safety tests with a perfect score. The rifles to be used are strictly air rifles firing pellets, nothing near the M14 you speak of. Oh, by the way, this is an Olympic Sport, using the exact air rifles we will be using under the same circumstances.
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