Biden’s Escalating War on Hunters:
Blocking Funds for School Safety Programs
Fresh off his efforts to ban lead ammunition on public lands, Joe Biden is once again escalating his war on hunters, this time by withholding routine funds provided to our children’s schools that are used for hunter education, firearms safety classes, shooting teams, and even archery programs.
This key federal funding has been historically earmarked for schools with hunting, shooting, and archery programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965. With this move, popular programs frequently offered in schools across rural, and sometimes even suburban America, may be coming to an end.
The justification for this action comes from a sinister interpretation of the so-called Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which Congress passed last summer. While heralded as part of Biden’s promise of stricter gun control in the wake of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Gun Owners of America led the opposition effort, warning that this hastily crafted legislation would not only infringe on Constitutional rights but would also yield other serious unintended consequences.
Just as GOA had predicted, the antigun Biden administration has taken the BSCA to its furthest interpretation and is going after the next generation of hunters, recreational shooters, and even archers.
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Architects of the BSCA, like Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), have written to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona advising him that his agency is misinterpreting the law. Amazingly, their own negligence in crafting this language, like so many provisions in this so-called “compromise” bill, has resulted in our children being the first in several generations to not have access to these popular programs.
Over the last 58 years, hunter education programs in schools have taught millions of American children about hunter safety, ethical hunting practices, wildlife management and history, safe firearms practices, and archery. While in some communities these programs are administered by private entities and local community partnerships outside our schools, even many of those programs depend on schools to recruit participants. Furthermore, large numbers of American children only have access to these programs directly and entirely through school.
Often viewed as part of physical education and sometimes implemented as after-school activities, these programs have proven to be wholesome and popular, while also providing alternative opportunities to build self-esteem. Many children who cannot compete in more traditional sports, like football or basketball, can excel in other forms of competition, such as shooting sports and archery.
Just look at the long tradition of American hunting and shooting excellence in both college and Olympic competition. Plus, the exponential growth in popularity of these sports has not gone unnoticed. Today, clay pigeon shooting is the fastest growing individual sport in American schools, and school archery programs boast 1.3 million members nationwide.
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Before you think of this as an attempt to reduce government spending, rest assured that the Biden Administration is not cutting these programs for that reason. It’s likely they actually cannot avoid spending the school funds in some way. Rather, instead of directing these funds towards traditional hunting and shooting programs, they’ll instead go towards other “less traditional” activities, such as more of the questionable curricula that have yielded understandable backlash from parents in school board meetings over the last several years.
It is past time for America’s hunters and recreational shooters to wake up and realize our very way of life is under attack by this president. The writing is on the wall, and it is clear that the Biden Administration’s ultimate goal is to reduce participation in hunting and shooting sports, both by halting the use of cheap traditional ammo on public lands and by cutting education funding for our own local schools.
Make your voices heard in Congress and tell them that Biden’s excuse for this latest attack is a weaponized interpretation of 20 U.S.C. 7906(7) as enacted by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and this statute has got to go away!
Hunters and gun owners will not accept a weak legislative fix. We need the problem addressed and the statute repealed or entirely defunded! Demand that your members of Congress do everything they can to ensure this Administration doesn’t destroy America’s great hunting and shooting tradition for the next generation.
Contact your members of Congress by clicking here!
Mark Jones
Certified Wildlife Biologist®
National Director, Hunter Outreach
Buffalo, Wyoming
P.S. Please act today to send a message to your members of Congress telling them to stop the Biden Administration from destroying school programs designed to teach children hunter education, firearms safety, and archery!