Tester, a Democrat, introduced the bill yesterday as an amendment to a key Senate spending package. The bill is co-sponsored by Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Bob Casey (D-Penn.), making it a rare piece of bipartisan legislation that addresses firearms.
“In Montana and across rural America, our schools have long offered shooting sport and hunter safety classes that teach our students safety and personal responsibility,” said Tester, who is in one of the most hotly contested re-election campaigns in the nation. “But bureaucrats in Washington who don’t understand our Montana values decided to block funding for these important gun safety programs. I won’t let that decision stand, and neither will the hundreds of students and gun safety teachers who benefit from these resources every year.”
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Tester’s bill would require the Department of Education to restore school districts’ ability to use federal resources for school archery, gun safety, and hunter education programs.
But bureaucrats in the Department of Education determined that a provision of the bill that prohibits funding for school resource officers and for programs that involve “training in the use of a dangerous weapon” would be ineligible for federal funding.
School administrators are worried that, by hosting programs like National Archery in the Schools and state-delivered hunter education classes, their schools could lose federal funding. The Senate bill is intended to preserve the federal funding source for schools that host firearms training and outdoor-skills programs.