The Biden administration has launched a two-pronged attack against the right to bear arms in America – and Congressional Republicans made it possible. Regardless of what certain lawmakers intended, and despite all their assurances this wouldn’t happen, the Biden administration is using the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) of 2022 to both bribe states into creating red flag laws and withhold federal funding for schools with hunting and archery programs. So the Biden administration is buying gun control at the state level. Shocked? Don’t be. This isn’t the first time federal funding has been used to control the states.
Safer Communities Means Less Education?
In what experts are calling a “direct attack on hunters’ ability to pass down hunting to the newest generations,” the Biden administration is blocking federal funding from the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 for schools with hunting and archery programs.
Tommy Floyd, president of the National Archery in the Schools Program, told Fox News Digital that it’s a negative for children. “As a former educator of 30-plus years, I was always trying to find a way to engage students,” he said. “You’ve got every fish and wildlife agency out there working so hard to utilize every scrap of funding, not only for the safety and hunter education, but for the general understanding of why stewardship is so important when it comes to natural resources,” he continued. “Any guidance where it’s even considered a ‘maybe’ or a prohibition for shooting sports is a huge negative.”
Floyd’s organization boasts 1.3 million students from almost 9,000 schools across 49 states who are enrolled in archery classes. Some of these schools have already canceled their archery or hunting courses because of the new federal funding guidance. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Thom Tillis (R-NC) – both of whom voted for the BSCA – are concerned the Education Department is misinterpreting the cited provision. According to them, it was meant to prevent ESEA money from being used to train school resource officers because the new law includes another fund specifically for that. It was not, as the Department of Education claims, to stop teaching students how to use dangerous weapons safely and responsibly.
But the letter of the law doesn’t exclude these programs – and that’s a problem the senators evidently didn’t consider when crafting legislation that would be implemented and enforced by an anti-gun administration.
Buying Gun Control – Every State’s for Sale!
One of the more controversial parts of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was the incentive for states to pass extreme risk protection laws that could see Americans disarmed by court order without so much as a criminal conviction. Liberty Nation called this a “red flag law slush fund,” explaining that it allows the federal government to bribe states into enacting strict gun control for it.
Sen. Cornyn took exception to such claims. “Law-abiding gun owners are not the problem,” he said in a statement attached to a “myth vs. fact” explainer to correct the record. “That was a red line for me,” he continued. “Unless a person is adjudicated mentally ill or is a violent criminal, no one’s Second Amendment rights will be impacted by this legislation. Period.” Here’s what the senator had to say about the red flag slush fund:
“This forces states who use grant funding for red flag laws to comply with strict and comprehensive due process requirements written into this bill, including:
- The right to be represented by counsel;
- The right to an in-person hearing;
- The right to an unbiased adjudicator;
- The right to know the opposing evidence and present evidence;
- And the right to confront adverse witnesses.”
He also claimed it does not “require or incentivize states to adopt red flag laws.” Now, however, congressional Republicans have noticed that the Justice Department handed out federal funding to states that did not meet these minimum due process criteria. In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, several senators accused the Biden administration of ignoring Congress and demanded to know why grants to at least eight states and territories with no qualifying red flag laws on the books received federal funds.
“Since the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, no states have revised their statutes to comply with the ‘due process’ requirements imposed by the 117th Congress,” the letter states. “Nevertheless, the Bureau of Justice Programs has funded every state that applied with a ‘red flag’ gun confiscation law on the books without enforcing Congress’ ‘due process’ requirements.” Imagine that.
Perhaps the biggest laugh line in the letter was a declaration that “the federal government should have no part in funding state level gun confiscation programs which violate the due process rights of gun owners.” Funny, that’s precisely what those opposed to this new gun control law said a year ago.
Who Didn’t See This Coming?
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
As the bill was being discussed, LN and many others warned of such outcomes – especially the effects of regulating federal funding to the states. After Prohibition was repealed, it was left to the states to determine what the minimum legal age for buying and possessing alcohol should be. Most states opted for 21 – which was basically the age of adulthood in the US at the time. After the voting age was dropped to 18 in 1971, however, 30 states dropped their minimum legal drinking age to 18, 19, or 20. So how did we get to a nationwide restriction for folks under 21? The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 changed funding requirements so that any state that didn’t raise its age to 21 would miss out on millions in federal highway money. By 1988, every state was in compliance.
The 117th Congress saw a Democrat majority in the House and a 50-50 split in the Senate. With Biden and Harris in the White House, that meant the Senate was the only place a progressive gun control bill could be stopped. The amended Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 became law only because 15 GOP senators joined all 50 Democrats for a 65-33 passage vote. Senate Republicans may have held the line against other, more obvious attempts at strict gun control – but in the summer of 2022, they failed to protect the Second Amendment rights of the people.
