Fox News is reporting that President Joe Biden “is planning to sign legislation that explicitly reverses his own administration’s decision to defund school shooting sports courses nationwide,” a reversal of course which indicates the White House’s anti-gun zealotry is wearing thin.
The administration has been under fire through the summer since the June report that there would be new restrictions on the types of equipment hunters can use on federal refuges.
The turnabout comes after the House passed, by a vote of 424-1, the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act. Only one member, Texas Democrat Rep. Veronica Escobar, reportedly voted against the measure. Less than 24 hours later, the Senate unanimously voted for the legislation, sending a signal that Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill had suddenly figured out the Biden scheme would not play well at home.
Into this fray jumped the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, whose chairman, Alan Gottlieb, came out swinging.
“Joe Biden’s attempt to stop funding for these important school programs was yet another demonstration of just how extreme this administration can be when it comes to guns and even hunting,” Gottlieb said. “These are programs that not only provide valuable and genuine safety training, but they also contribute to teaching the next generation about wildlife conservation while passing along an American tradition.”
He surmised that House Democrats “are beginning to realize the gun issue will not play well during the 2024 campaign and that Biden’s attempt to cut off funding for school shooting sports could bring lots of angry sportsmen and women to the polls next November.”
Gottlieb accused the Biden administration of deliberately misinterpreting provisions of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, passed last year and touted by the White House as Biden’s gun control accomplishment after years of congressional inaction on guns.
He wasn’t alone in that criticism. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who co-sponsored the Senate version of the Hunting Heritage act, was quoted by Fox News noting, “The Biden administration’s shameful and deliberate misinterpretation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act has jeopardized students’ access to educational enrichment programs like hunting and archery. This legislation would ensure these valuable programs remain available in schools across the country, and I urge the President to immediately sign it into law and right this egregious wrong.”
“Hunting is a small, but important part of the much larger Second Amendment movement,” said Gottlieb, who just wrapped up the 2023 Gun Rights Policy Conference in Phoenix, “but the administration’s effort to withhold funds from this program shows how deeply the Biden White House resents anything even remotely connected to activities that may involve the lawful use of firearms.”
Gottlieb said Democrats scrambled aboard in a “damage control” effort to distance themselves from an “extremely anti-gun-rights administration.”
When the White House announced Biden would sign the legislation blocking his own plan, Gottlieb was delighted.
“Joe Biden may be incapable of reading the writing on the wall,” Gottlieb said in a news release, “but there is no question the House and Senate members who almost unanimously passed this legislation do not suffer from the same foggy vision.”
He offered kudos to lawmakers who acted swiftly this week to “nip this nonsense in the bud.”
“This overwhelming action on Capitol Hill sends a clear message to the Biden White House that the administration’s anti-gun fanaticism has crossed the line when it threatens school programs that teach genuine safety and valuable conservation to our children,” Gottlieb said. “CCRKBA is proud to have played a part in this clear victory of common sense over crass extremism.”
While this may be considered a small victory in what has turned into a major war on guns and gun owners by the Biden administration, which has been accused of weaponizing the ATF, FBI and even IRS to go after gun owners and dealers, it suggests Democrats in Congress saw trouble coming, not unlike how Democrats quickly turned against New Mexico Gov. Michell Lujan Grisham when she tried to suspend the Second Amendment right to bear arms in Albuquerque and Bernalillo County earlier this month as a “public health crisis.” A federal judge put a hold on that order, which Grisham subsequently withdrew and watered down.
Biden, a perennial anti-gunner, has spent the past couple of years pushing his gun control agenda, all the while claiming to be a “Second Amendment guy” because he owns a shotgun. His recent announcement of an all-new Office of Gun Violence Prevention with Vice President Kamala Harris in charge was met with incredulity at the Gun Rights conference, where activists from across the country almost unanimously opined she will take on the job with the same ineptitude that she has applied to the border crisis.
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About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
