I'm 31 this year and I carried a pocket knife all through school and no one ever cared. When I was in the 6th grade one of the high school teachers took us down to the park and shot a few guns for us, he had an old muzzelloader and an M16. 7th grade I had to go to the central county school and in gym class they took us up on a hill and we shot 22's. The "guys" in the class laughed at me (I wasn't athletic at all) because I was looking at the gun like I hadn't seen one before, but it was just that I hadn't used a bolt action before because my 22 was a semi auto <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Now a days you can't even say the word knife in school without getting in trouble. I had fun the other day though, was able to get on as an employee to the company I was contracted to, so we were sitting in the security room waiting on the fingerprint nazi to print us and the HR lady was making fun of the fingerprint nazi lady who was barking orders at the people she was printing. We got to talking about security and I was telling about the prison I went into to fix a PC and I couldn't take my cell phone but could take a pocket knife. Was telling her about the security guard at the supreme court who wasn't going to let me take my leatherman until another guard said "thats a leatherman, its ok". So I pulled out my wave and flipped it into pliers and told about the lady who backed away when I pulled a knife blade out of it to open the box with her laser printer part "ohh, thats a knife" as she backed away, and I told her how I said "how else do you want me to open this box". So I was able to get the point across to one of the HR people that knives are not bad and she didn't determine my leatherman to be a "weapon" so that says to me I'm not breaking the "no weapons" policy.
In my grandfathers day if he didn't show up at school with his gun and knife he was sent back home to get them <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> I still have his gun too, for some reason just before I moved away for college he gave it to me when I came down to visit, told me not to tell any of the other grandkids because he didn't have enough to go around (he had 7 kids himself and most of them had 2 or 3). I still have that old rifle rolled up in a blanket under our spare bed, he didn't have the hammer but did have the powder horn made from a real horn. If anyone knows some good gun restoration links or and people/places in central OH that could help me restore it, I'd like to shoot it a couple times then put it away for my grandkids.