Thanks to the continuing generosity of the family of the late Col. John Jacob Astor IV, who so bravely met his end last year on the Titanic, New York schoolboys will continue to have the opportunity to learn to shoot rifles and even more powerful weapons, the Los Angeles Times reports. “Fourteen of the largest high schools of the city have now installed a target machine gun,” largely through funds supplied by the family.
The Colonel’s son, Vincent Astor, has been elected director of the Public School Athletic League which administers the shooting lessons, and Astor will “continue the active interest which his father had in teaching schoolboys of the country how to shoot.” Having inherited $69 million and dropped out of Harvard on his father’s death, it seems that “the richest boy in the world” (as they are calling him) has both the money and the time to devote to this worthy endeavor.
Retropundit 
Our thanks for Col. Astor’s support of our young men.
Reblogged this on YouViewed/Editorial and commented:
High School Machine Guns … Courtesy Of One Of Those Awful 1%er’s . We’ve Sure Come A Long Way , Haven’t We ?
I put $69 million dollars into an inflation calculator which tells me that 69 mil in 1913 would be the equivalent of $1.6 billion today. I’d probably drop out of Harvard, too. Plenty of other things to do.
Dropout ? heh, I’d buy my faculty and hire the Dean at twice his current rate to dedicate his days to perfecting my recipe for an Espresso Latte Lager.
In the eighties I used to do gunsmithing in my high school metal shop, now you can’t even have a paring knife in school! What we’re seeing is a decline in our culture, a culture that no longer teaches personal responsibility and morals, but prizes victim hood and dependency.
Yes, and Washington D.C. High Schools used to have competetive rifle teams – for women*. And the Girl Scouts used to have a marksmanship badge*. And what amusement park or large carnival did not have a shooting gallery**?
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* Shorpy.com searches
** personal experience through the 1950s, in Rhode Island
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When I was in high school (1945-1949) we had a rifle club. We met regularly in one of the gymnasiums for matches, and got awards and medals from the NRA. I think it’s tragic that today’s students can’t have the same experience.
I hate to be a Debbie Downer, much as a high school with a “target machine gun” is an intriguing concept, but I think the article has a typo in it. It probably wasn’t a machine gun for target shooting, but more likely an automated target retrieving or scoring system, a “gun target machine” perhaps.
That said, we lost a lot when the schools went politically correct and ended marksmanship competition. I’ve seen a photo of the team for Galileo High School (in San Francisco of all places) which in the 1940’s had a team competing with, if memory serves, .30-06 Springfield Model 1903 rifles. No .22 rimfires for those kids!
In the UT Tower shooting back in 1966, one of the first things the police did was disarm the students who were shooting back at Whitman. Long ago it was not even notable to have a deer rifle in your dorm room or on a rack in your pickup truck. That has changed. The desire for the government to disarm ALL has not.
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