Bethel Park High School officials have contradicted reports that Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks was bullied, threatening, and a member of the school’s rifle team.
In updated statements posted Saturday, officials said they have “no record” of Crooks ever trying out or being dismissed from the rifle team due to character or performance concerns, as previously reported.
A high school rifle team? What the what?
Yeah, it’s a thing.
Rifle teams, trap shooting teams are not all that uncommon, all funded by your friends in the NRA.
The Olympics have shooting in both the biathlon (rifle) and trap shooting so it’s not as bizarre as some US gun things.
All I can say is I never heard of such a thing growing up in Indiana. And I graduated high school before Columbine. Giving kids rifles at schools now, even if they’re being monitored, seems nuts.
High schools in Nevada with HSJROTC programs had rifle teams. My high school had a range and I believe that they used .22s in competion, but for class we used air rifles. There was a gun safety training and written testing you had to pass and then those who were allowed to participate could fire during class during the module (only juniors and seniors, freshmen and sophomores did not get this module). I remember the Colonel was the only one who had a key to the lockers for rifles and the ammunition was kept in a separate locked locker. It was a fun unit! For reference, I graduated in 2000.
If I remember correctly, those who opted out were given other work or allowed to work on unfinished classwork.
I don’t know if they still do this though.
JROTC makes sense. My high school didn’t have it.
I grew up in the Glorious People’s Republic of Texas and was in highschool in the 90s. We had a variety of projectile-based clubs: rifle, trap shooting, and archery.
I may or may not have learned how to bow hunt as part of a school club.
However, uh, yeah, I don’t think I’d give a bunch of kids guns at this point either.
I would have loved archery as an extracurricular when I was in school.
Me too! My parents got me a kids’ size longbow and a couple of arrows (real wooden ones, not suction cups or whatever) as a present and I made a target in the yard and shot (badly) at it all the time. I’d love to have learned real archery.
I know shooting sports in schools used to be a thing, but figured after Columbine that those programs were all dropped and didn’t exist anymore. Gunfire near a school is no longer about academic competitions, but something tragic and far too common.
Although to be fair, I have never heard of a school rifle team in part because there has been no tragedy associated with one so far.
Just regular 'ol American things…
I don’t know, I wouldn’t be shocked if Swiss schools had rifle teams. Biathlon teams, in fact.