In third grade, I was in Tuscon AZ for a year. A kid in my class brought a handgun to school for show and tell. I'm a little hazy on the details, but I'm pretty sure the teacher held onto it for the boy for the day but let him hold it and show it in front of the class for show and tell. She didn't let him pass it around. And I think she asked him if it was loaded, and he said it wasn't, but I never saw her check for herself. That part of the memory is pretty foggy.
He had found it in the desert on the edge of town and had gone shooting with it. He told the story of when he shot a prickly pear cactus, and when he went to look at the bullet hole, he saw that he had killed a lizard or some other small animal that was behind the cactus.
This was 1976. Different times.
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