Biden signs bill into law that reverses his admin's defunding of school hunting, shooting programs

President Biden signed bipartisan legislation Friday that reverses his own administration's decision to defund school shooting sports courses nationwide.

The president signed the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act, which restores federal funding for elementary and secondary school hunting and archery programs after the Department of Education began withholding such funding earlier this year. According to the White House, the legislation "clarifies that Federal funds may be used to provide certain weapons or training in the use of weapons within educational instruction or enrichment activities."

"The President supports a legislative solution to ensure ESEA funding can be used for valuable school enrichment programs, such as hunter safety and archery," Stefanie Feldman, the director of the White House's Office of Gun Violence Prevention, said in a statement last month.

In September, the legislation passed unanimously in the Senate one day after the House approved it in a 424-1 vote. The bill had been championed by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who argued that the Education Department misinterpreted a 2022 gun control law to restrict students' access to enrichment programs like hunting safety, archery and even culinary classes.

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"Montanans sent me to the Senate to protect our rural way of life, and that’s exactly why I stood up to the Biden Administration’s decision to block the use of federal dollars for hunter safety classes," Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said in a statement Friday. 

"As a third-generation Montanan, I had the opportunity to learn about the importance of responsible gun ownership and hunting from these longstanding hunter education courses – and it’s critical that our kids and grandkids are afforded that same opportunity," he added. "I’m glad to see the President sign my commonsense solution into law, and I’ll continue to go to bat in Washington to make sure D.C. bureaucrats never shoot down our Montana way of life."

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After it was revealed in July that the Biden administration had started withholding federal funds for schools with hunting and archery programs, Tester introduced a bill to reverse the policy.

Senators John Cornyn, R-Texas; Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz.; and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., introduced the Senate version of the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act in early September. The House version was introduced in August by GOP Rep. Mark Green of Tennessee.

Fox News Digital reported in July that the Department of Education shared federal guidance to hunting education groups highlighting that hunting and archery programs in schools would be stripped of funding. The guidance explained that the administration interpreted the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) to mean that such programs could no longer receive taxpayer funds.

In the guidance, obtained first by Fox News Digital, senior agency official Sarah Martinez wrote that archery, hunter education and wilderness safety courses use weapons that are "technically dangerous weapons" and therefore "may not be funded under" the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is the primary source of federal aid for elementary and secondary education across the country.

According to advocates, many schools that offer such courses have already nixed them from curriculums due to the federal guidance. 

BIDEN ADMIN CONFIRMS IT'S WITHHOLDING KEY FUNDS FOR SCHOOLS WITH HUNTING COURSES, GOP CALL IT 'SHAMEFUL'

The BSCA included an amendment to a subsection in the ESEA listing that prohibited uses for federal school funding. That amendment prohibits ESEA funds from helping provide any person with a dangerous weapon or to provide "training in the use of a dangerous weapon" but, according to the BSCA's sponsors, was included to prevent ESEA funding for school resource officer training.

The Department of Education, however, doubled down on its interpretation of the BSCA, saying that it would only reverse course if legislation were passed explicitly revising the 2022 law to allow funding for shooting sport programs in schools.

"As an organization that has invested nearly $2 million in school archery and hunters education programs, we recognize the role these programs play in developing the next generation of safe and effective conservationists," the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation said in a statement. 

"Schools that deliver these programs should not be penalized by the Department of Education because of a misinterpretation of Congressional intent," it added. "We support Senator Tester’s legislation to correct this and keep school archery and hunting programs strong."

The BSCA — a bill that was criticized as a "gun control" bill but touted by proponents as an effort to promote "safer, more inclusive and positive" schools — was passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in June 2022 after mass shootings at a grocery market in Buffalo, New York, and a school in Uvalde, Texas.

Cornyn, Sinema and Tillis — the Senate sponsors of the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act — were three of the four sponsors of the BSCA. The fourth sponsor, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., signed onto a letter on September 5 to Senate Appropriations Committee leaders, asking for the issue to be fixed in the upcoming government funding package.