Presidentish Joe Biden’s crackdown on hunter education in schools is being met with an act of defiance in Wyoming, best summarized with two words in ancient Greek familiar to American gun owners: Molon Labe.
“Come and take them.”
Back in July, it was revealed that Biden’s Department of Education (Motto: “You Don’t Need No Education”) was “blocking key federal funding” for troglodyte K-12 schools with hunting and archery programs for their students. The Department found that the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) forbids federal funding for archery and hunting training. Because God forbid students learn basic safety and proficiency with rifles or bows and arrows.
ASIDE: Going to junior high and high school in Missouri in the ’80s, I did take those basic classes. We were taught on very basic .22 rifles (I can’t remember the model) and a strictly monitored and limited supply of rounds. When it came to archery, our bows were to actual hunting bows what two tin cans connected by string are to an iPhone 15 Pro, except our string wasn’t as strong. But guess what? I still remember all my range safety rules and I’m a responsible gunowner who never shot anybody. My story, such as it is, is hardly unique.
Two Republican Senators, John Cornyn of Texas and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis, complained in a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona that his department was “misinterpreting” the BSCA amendment prohibiting federal funding for “training in the use of a dangerous weapon.”
Related: Biden Administration Is Withholding Funding From Schools With Archery and Hunting Programs
It’s a stupid amendment in a stupid law but it looks to me like Cardona interpreted it just fine. Maybe Cornyn could try reading his legislation — he was one of 20 senators in the BSCA working group — before voting Yea on it next time.
Washington hijinks aside, Wyoming’s Cowboy State Daily reported on Monday that “despite the Biden administration’s efforts to defund school hunter education and archery programs as ‘dangerous weapons training’ for students, Wyoming will go ahead with expanding those programs in public schools throughout the state.”
The state’s Game and Fish Department will begin offering “hunter education certification for public school teachers possibly as soon as next fall,” and also plans to “sponsor and promote archery classes in public schools.” That’s according to statements made at a Monday press conference announcing the statewide programs.
Wyoming Republican Sen. John Barrasso, who voted against the BSCA, said at the presser, “I’m going to do everything I can to stop Washington politics from getting into Wyoming classrooms.”
There’s a lesson here, one I’ve repeated many times and yet bears repeating once more.
Back when the Vikings were busy pillaging English villages, the English raised a special tax called the Danegeld — as in “Danish gold.” The Vikings would show up, and either they’d collect the Danegeld or get on with the serious business of raping and pillaging. The locals could put up a fight but it was usually easier to pay up. Once the Danegeld was paid, however, the Vikings knew which villages were easy marks — and they’d be back for more.
Hence the old expression, “Once you pay the Danegeld, you’ll never be rid of the Dane.”
With our modern Goliath State, the formula is reversed. Washington dangles free money at states and localities, and always with noble-sounding purposes like “education” or “infrastructure” or “payoffs to local notables.”
But the “free” money always comes with strings attached. Worse, the strings only increase over time. And even worse than that is the implicit threat that the money will stop. That’s what Biden’s Department of Education is doing to archery and hunting programs: do as we say or you don’t get the money.
The modern American formula of the old English expression is, “Once you take the Danegeld, you’ll never be rid of the Dane.”
Folks in Wyoming seem to understand this, and they’re learning in this one small way to do without. If more states would follow, we might even see a return to the federalism envisioned by the Founders.
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