This is an opinion piece.

If you tuned in here last week, you read about the Biden Administration’s decision to block federal funding for schools that offer archery and hunter education programs.

More than 400 Alabama schools offer archery as part of its physical education program. An unknown number of schools offer voluntary hunter education. Millions of students participate in those programs nationwide nationally.

The DOE’s interpretation of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was based on language that prohibits federal funding from providing “training in the use of a dangerous weapon.”

In advising the DOE in its stance, Senior DOE agency official Sarah Martinez wrote that archery, hunter education and wilderness safety courses utilize weapons that are “technically dangerous weapons.”

You should get a copy of that act and read it. That act was passed in 2022 to make our communities, and schools, safer. In a rare move, the act was passed with bipartisan support of Democrats, Republicans and Independents.