Biden withholding funding for schools with hunting programs :: 07/31/2023

President Joe Biden talks a big game about trying to make our communities safer. There’s not a single mass shooting–or any high-profile shooting, really–that doesn’t get him riled up enough to call for an assault weapon ban or some other bit of gun control, often before the facts have even started to trickle in.

For a lot of people, that’s all the evidence you need that he’s about safety.

However, it seems that a recent move by the administration should call all of that into question.

The Biden administration is blocking key federal funding earmarked under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 for schools with hunting and archery programs.

According to federal guidance circulated among hunting education groups and shared with Fox News Digital, the Department of Education determined that, under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) passed last year, school hunting and archery classes are precluded from receiving federal funding. The interpretation could impact millions of American children enrolled in such programs.

“It’s a negative for children. As a former educator of 30-plus years, I was always trying to find a way to engage students,” Tommy Floyd, the president of the National Archery in the Schools Program, told Fox News Digital in an interview. “In many communities, it’s a shooting sport, and the skills from shooting sports, that help young people grow to be responsible adults. They also benefit from relationships with role models.”

“You’ve got every fish and wildlife agency out there working so hard to utilize every scrap of funding, not only for the safety and hunter education, but for the general understanding of why stewardship is so important when it comes to natural resources,” he continued. “Any guidance where it’s even considered a ‘maybe’ or a prohibition for shooting sports is a huge negative.”

Now, this is bad news for outdoor programs, obviously, but there’s another avenue here that may actually be more detrimental: Actual gun safety.

Hunting programs generally have at least some component of gun safety education involved. The reasons should be obvious–a kid sitting on a deer stand with a loaded rifle should be well and truly educated on just what they should and shouldn’t do with that rifle.

Yet that goes beyond their time on a stand. Those are basic, general lessons on gun safety. They involve kids learning how to safely handle firearms which means they’re also less likely to mishandle a firearm found in a bush somewhere or play with their parent’s guns and hurt or kill someone.

This is a good thing.

What the Biden administration is doing, though, is playing into this idea that if children aren’t made afraid of guns early and often, they might actually become gun owners or worse, Second Amendment supporters.

And, in fairness, that’s actually possible.

Hunting and archery programs at public schools aren’t a threat. They don’t make our communities less safe. Quit the contrary, in fact.

But the Biden administration just doesn’t like rural America, and that’s what this is really and truly about.

You’d think a guy who has covered up for one Hunter so often might be open to there being a whole lot more hunters in the future, but here we are.

https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2023/07/31/biden-hunting-program-n73062