Protecting Hunting Heritage
“The People’s House”, the dedicated solons of the US House of Representatives, headed home for an extended Christmas Vacation last Friday. It’s not as if there aren’t critical “irons left in the fire” while they jet off to their Aspen ski vacations.
The government will run out of money in January. If Grandma doesn’t receive her Social Security check, there will be hell to pay.
Ukraine will run out of ammunition soon. Putin is already licking his chops over that one.
Aiding Israel might convince them that flooding those tunnels in Gaza while they contain hostages might not be the best idea.
Fortunately, House Republicans got to the really important stuff before adjourning for 2023. They passed the Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act. As stated in the Congressional Record, “This act authorizes the use of federal elementary and secondary education funds to purchase or use dangerous weapons for purposes of providing students with educational instruction or educational enrichment activities, such as archery, hunting, other shooting sports, or culinary arts.”
“Current law prohibits the use of these funds to provide any person with a dangerous weapon or training in the use of a dangerous weapon. The act specifies that this prohibition shall not apply to the use of these funds for permissible program activities that provide students with educational instruction or educational enrichment activities, such as archery, hunting, other shooting sports, or culinary arts.”
Let’s deconstruct this:
Congress will divert money from purchasing books to purchasing guns so 3rd graders can obtain “educational enrichment” by learning how to shoot straight. Why can’t kids today learn how to shoot each other the way that we did, on the streets?
How does knowing how to operate a “dangerous weapon” help in that well-known “educational enrichment activity” — culinary arts? “For your Culinary Arts Final exam, kids, you not only have to brine and roast a Thanksgiving turkey, you have to go out in the woods and shoot one. The new 12 gauge shotguns kindly provided by Congress are stacked by the door.”
As American students fall even further behind in math and language arts, it is reassuring that our 3rd graders will be trained to out-shoot their foreign contemporaries.
By Ed Dufton
