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Notes -
The Colorado Gazette reports:
It's not clear if this was the actual intent: some of the Senators that sponsored that particular amendment claim that it wasn't, and they can credibly point to Democratic concerns that school resource officer funding being used to arm on-school police. Of course, the senators voicing concerns were the supposedly pro-gun side of the legislative debate; a different sponsor considered the entire bill "an exercise in sheer brute political force".
It's also not clear that matters. Legislative intent isn't exactly in vogue, and even if it were, the structure of judicial review for funding decisions make it exceptionally difficult for a challenge to survive first contact with the courts. Congress could change the law to be more specific... but I'd bet that they won't.
ESEA funds are not the whole source of funding for local schools and other covered groups, or even the sole source of federal funding. Schools that want to keep running archery and hunter education programs might be able to redistribute state spending from other matters, though they'll face extra scrutiny. Schools that don't will have a lot of reasons to absolutely smother these programs. And there's a lot more of the latter than the former.
I've spoken before about an older version of this problem, but it's also worth pointing out that, contemporaneously to the bill's discussion, this wasn't even on the list of concerns. But it seems interesting beyond that as a boring and trite example of the by-all-means war over institutions and culture, no matter the cost to civil trust.
What makes you say so? If you assume that the intent of all firearms legislation is to antagonize political enemies, you will rarely be surprised the text of the bills or the outcomes thereof. If you try to figure out how the legislation is expected to stop bad things from happen, you'll frequently wind up puzzled by how anyone could think that's going to work. Surely there haven't been any mass bow attacks of late! Bolt-action rifles aren't exactly the ideal choice for school shootings. Passing legislation that results in doing away with helpful, pro-social hunting and marksmanship programs seems unambiguously bad, unless the goal is to antagonize political enemies, in which case it seems almost perfectly well-suited to the task.
I don't think it's actually the case. The Left wants the Right not to have guns - but not to piss them off. Of course, pissing them off is an added value, but it's not the reason. The reason, depending on the fraction, would be either nobody except the Government should have guns, because nothing good ever comes from any aspect of power not being controlled by the government, or specifically the Right should not have guns, because they are bad people and bad people having guns is scary for the good people. As for "how the legislation is expected to stop bad things from happening", remember those are people who still think socialism is going to work if only you do it right, and releasing criminals from jails is actually the best way to fight crime. Their way of making projections and conclusions is a way that allows that to make sense, so it also allows whatever they think of guns to make sense in the same way.
That said, I think this particular outcome is purely "antagonize the outgroup" scenario, but I disagree that all gun legislation is only that. A lot of it is actually much worse.
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