If you know much about the progressive Biden agenda, they are wholly against gun ownership and the Second Amendment. But it’s something that not all Democrats can agree to any longer.
Take Democratic Montana Senator Jon Tester, for example. As a Democrat and one who votes with Biden’s agenda about 91 percent of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight, you’d expect him and Biden to be on the same page about firearms.
However, as an elected official of Montana, a vastly rural and mountainous state, things are not that simple for Tester.
Problem number one for him is the Biden administration’s rather new policy on withholding federal funding to schools that include hunting and/or archery programs as part of their curriculum.
Naturally, the progressive agenda says that such programs create a more dangerous school and community environment, literally putting dangerous weapons in students’ hands or training them to use dangerous weapons, i.e., the potential for more mass shootings.
Yes, you read that correctly. Liberals fear gun and archery safety programs because of mass shootings…
Thankfully, even die-hard Democrats like Tester can’t see this logic.
As Tester recently wrote in an opinion piece published by Fox News, this further proves that most of Washington and the Biden administration have no idea what rural America and his state needs or wants. Neither do they understand how important shooting sports and hunting are to communities far and wide across the US.
“In Montana and across rural America, our schools have long offered shooting sports and hunter safety classes that teach our students gun safety and personal responsibility. But recently, the Biden administration and folks in Washington who don’t understand our Montana values decided to block funding for these important gun safety programs.”
He described just what a “poor decision” he thought that was.
I have to agree wholeheartedly.
Whether liberal Dems understand the “Montana values” or don’t like them, cutting off precious resources to schools and communities like this is just dangerous.
As Fox News points out, programs like this offer an incredible opportunity for students nationwide.
Take archery, for example. According to Tommy Floyd, president of the National Archery in the Schools Program, some 1.3 million children in 49 states and nearly 9,000 schools are enrolled in archery courses. Here, they are taught invaluable life skills, such as providing for one’s family and ethical hunting rules and regulations, as well as how to safely use the tools of the trade.
In addition, these students, much like in any other “sport,” become part of a team with coaches, role models, and friends that become a community and a place for students to become more engaged in healthy life skills.
And the same can be said of gun-related shooting sports and hunter education courses.
As Fox News says, more than 500,000 students become certified in hunter education each year. That means these courses are a massive outlet for students who want to participate in such activities to learn to do so safely and with proper instruction.
As a result of these courses, studies show that hunting accidents and mishaps have decreased dramatically over the years as safer and more ethical hunters are created by these programs.
Secondly, as Tester noted, in most rural communities, hunting and shooting sports are as much a tradition, often carried by generations of family members, as just a hobby.
This means that if schools suddenly stop teaching these skills to maintain much-needed federal funding, those traditions and family past times will not be lost. Families will step up and lead those firearm and archery safety. In fact, most already do.
So, what this new policy is actually doing is just hurting schools and communities. As Tester wrote, “Limiting these important and long-established training classes does nothing to improve safety. Instead – to put it bluntly – the administration has it completely backward.”
And that’s precisely why he and several others are putting forth a “Defending Hunters Education Act,” which would require the Department of Education to reverse its decision on pulled funding.
Ensure your Congress members know how important this issue is to you and your community.
