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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.
It is the actual intent.
Liberal white women are afraid of guns, and want to ban all of them, to include hunting and sport firearms. You can't reason them out of this, because they didn't reason themselves into it.
They know the population, to include many Democrats, won't go for a total ban, so they keep slicing the salami. Ban a trigger guard here, an archery class there, and hopefully over the decades they'll end up with a total ban.
The Red Tribe has noticed the salami slicing, and has come to the conclusion that the only way we can survive is total unity - total opposition to any restriction on anything anywhere. We assume that any such legislation is proposed in bad faith, and oppose it.
While offering broad agreement, I will offer some slight pushback on this. Liberal women have not reasoned themselves into the fear of firearms, but I will say that I've had luck persuading a couple of them to be much less afraid by having a conversation about why I have guns and taking them shooting. You can't fix everything all at once, but people can be won over on guns by being a gun nut that isn't actually a nut.
Yawn yawn yawn. Wow, sure is amazing that all of your opponents (or the women anyway) are irrational idiots who will find their way to your correct opinion with some gentle guidance. Anyway, how is 'why you have guns' at all relevant to a policy discussion. Policy is made for aggregates, no-one should care on more than a personal level why you in particular have guns.
Dial down the snark.
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