On this episode of The Bespoke Parenting Podcast, host Julie Gunlock speaks to IWF Senior Fellow Gabby Hoffman and Wyoming mom-of-five and media figure Cathy Holman about a new Department of Education effort to defund school archery, shooting sports, and hunting programs by withholding federal funds. Julie and her guests discuss the benefits of these school-based programs, how these programs encourage kids to be active outdoors and teach firearms safety, and the reality that ending these programs is a naked and aggressive attack on American culture and traditions rather than a well-meaning plan to keep kids safe.


TRANSCRIPT

Julie Gunlock:

Hey, everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, host of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families, themselves, and most importantly, their kids. Today, I’m talking to Gabby Hoffman. She’s a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum, and Cathy Holman, you all know Cathy. She’s a regular on the show, and she’s better known as the Prairie Wife. Cathy is a mom of five.

She’s a writer and a media personality living in Wyoming. Today, we have a very narrow issue that we’re going to be talking about, and both of these ladies have great expertise on this issue. We’re going to be talking about a new plan by Biden’s Department of Education to kill school archery, shooting sports, and hunting programs. The way they’re going to do that is by withholding federal funds. They say it’s for safety reasons, of course. Gabby, let’s first get the download from you. What’s going on?

Gabriella Hoffman:

Yes, you correctly diagnosed the fact that the Biden administration is defunding school archery and hunting programs. This is not by accident. Outside of this topic, in particular, we have documented at Independent Women’s Forum that the Biden administration has been going after hunting and fishing, outdoor recreation opportunities because it doesn’t fit with their climate alarmist position. This is part of the prong to fulfill that agenda.

They say, “Well, no, no, we love sportsmen and women,” but they are slowly, but surely and kind of deceptively going after conservation and pastimes, like these activities, through these means. Excuse me. But in particular, the defunding resulted from the passage of a law called the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and this was billed as a moderate gun control piece of legislation.

It has a lot of components, but relevant to this discussion and how it relates to defunding school programs is the fact that there’s a provision in the Elementary School and Administrative Act, it has a funny acronym, but it’s the ESEA, that’s a 1965 law, and it says that hunting programs and school archery programs were longstanding and they were fine. They were not perceived as dangerous weapons or activities using dangerous weapons.

This law gave the Biden administration ammunition, no pun intended, to proceed with determining that these activities involved so-called dangerous weapons, and therefore they have to be defunded. That is why we’re in the situation we are today, even though there are many enumerable benefits to these activities, which we’ll discuss later, but this is where it came from.

A memo from last fall in November 2022 said explicitly their justification for proceeding with defunding, and they said that upon the passage of the law signed into law by President Biden, this is when it went into effect, June 25th, 2022. Immediately upon the passage of this moderate gun control piece of legislation, this proceeded. That is why we are talking about this topic today.

Julie Gunlock:

Gosh, it’s terrible. Cathy, I do want to switch over to you, but just really quickly, Gabby, and just to be clear, so this is happening.

Gabriella Hoffman:

This is happening.

Julie Gunlock:

This is happening. Okay. Cathy, first of all, I love that you’re in your car. You’re doing a total mom thing. Before we came on, you said you’re at a sports event?

Cathy Holman:

Yeah. Our school started this week and my daughter’s at a volleyball tournament. I just got to watch her play. We’re doing this, and then I’m actually off to football. Mom life.

Julie Gunlock:

Well, it’s funny because Cathy actually apologized before. She’s like, “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m in my car.” I’m like, it’s a parenting podcast. We get it. Cathy, you are the mom of five kids. You live out in Wyoming. I mean, I think it’s funny because I think Gabby and I, who both live in northern Virginia, right outside of Washington, DC, we’re not surprised by this stuff.

But this is culturally kind of a shock to do this in a state like Wyoming where archery, where hunting, this kind of stuff is common. It’s in the schools. Kids take these classes. It’s very much, again, a culturally normal thing. What’s your reaction to this?

Cathy Holman:

I think first of all, I just want to point out that as a parent with five kids, hunting is how we feed our family. When we shoot elk, antelope, and deer, that provides meat for our family to eat all year. What we don’t consume, we donate to local food programs, to our church. We have neighbors that sometimes are in need because they didn’t get one. There’s this whole ecosystem where wild game is actually… It’s Food for Thought Project. You can look into it. They work with people and organizations around the state to feed hungry kids, our school programs.

I mean, it’s a big deal. It’s not just a recreational thing in Wyoming, it is a family tradition. It’s something that my kids look forward to. My husband, we’ve got horses, so they pack in 30 miles a week and a half. This is what we do. Now, hunter safety has to be done. You have one year when kids are old enough where they can go with someone that has it and they don’t have to have their hunter safety. But otherwise, it’s illegal for these kids to be doing that because we recognize it’s important for them to learn the laws, to learn how to be safe, to learn what to do in an emergency.

Because Gabby, I think a lot of people don’t understand, besides the firearm safety, we’re talking about wildlife management in these classes. My kids are learning conservation, wilderness survival. They’re learning appropriate field care of the meat. They’re learning laws about trespassing state land versus pride… I mean, there’s so much that goes into these education programs. It’s not just about the firearms, because in Wyoming, this is a way of life. For our oldest two kids, we had to spend hours and hours and days and weekends to get them that hunter safety.

My third child, my middle son, he’s 13, he was able to do it at school through our outdoor ed program. What a life saver it was for our family. It saved us on the cost of running back and forth into town. It saved us the time, the energy, the stress. Our little guy has been talking all year because he’s in fifth grade and usually fifth grade, middle school, is when they start these programs. He’s been looking forward to getting his hunter safety all year because he can go with dad, he can go with his older siblings.

It’s a big deal, and it’s going to be a loss. We have just in the last year 554 kids received their hunter safety through school programs. That’s a big deal, especially when you think that just a little over 4,000 throughout the entire state got hunter safety last year. That’s a big percentage in schools.

Julie Gunlock:

It is a big percentage. I want to switch this because I think there are some practical issues here about the loss of how important these classes are. But I want to talk to you a little bit about isn’t the point here to make guns and shooting and hunting and some of these activities just, I mean, not normal or not a part of the culture. Isn’t that really the point here?

Gabriella Hoffman:

I think that’s the point. That’s what they’re trying to accomplish. They’re trying to divorce the sporting heritage from actual gun safety. I want to preface by saying that hunting is not guaranteed by the Second Amendment, but there’s a lot of intertwining between firearms usage, excise taxes collected on guns from purchases. It all is combined in a law called Pittman-Robertson, which I think I talked about in our last segment that we did together.

But those two are inextricably linked, even though there are distinctions and there are separate laws that protect the right to hunt and fish separate from the Second Amendment. You see that in Wyoming, here in Virginia as well. But it is to divorce the country essentially from this, and they’re doing it incrementally. They’re not overtly saying, “We’re going to abolish hunting and shooting sports outright,” but they’re doing it through these backdoor deals, and that is what we’re seeing.

Julie Gunlock:

I also find it really interesting, Gabby and Cathy, you may also have some thoughts on this too, because we’ve seen over the last couple of years the left has really is starting to target kids, whether that’s in the schools, whether it’s this effort to break the bond between parents and children and set government officials up as the actual authority in a child’s life. We see these attempts, and I see this a little bit here too. It’s like they’re going to go at it by going to school programs.

They’re targeting the youth to make it sort of a foreign thing. By taking out these educational programs, you are not going to then teach children about firearms and hunting in a way of life, really. It’s interesting how they’re going about it by targeting the youth. Cathy, have you heard about this in your community? Are there concerns?

Cathy Holman:

Oh yeah. People are very upset about it because it is, like I said, it’s a monetary weight off parents’ shoulders. It’s convenient. My kid’s at school, it’s handled. I can check it off the list and I know they can be ready to go with their dad in the fall. It’s just one less thing to worry about. It’s, again, making it harder for parents to access these programs. It’s putting one more roadblock. I have to say, people that don’t know my backstory, I’m originally from Milwaukee. I came out here because I wanted to marry a cowboy, not knowing what that encompassed.

When my husband and I first started dating, I said, “Our kids are not going to have guns in the home. They’re not even going to have play guns because I came from Milwaukee. I came from guns kill people. Food comes from the grocery store.” Well, thankfully, he educated me, but I feel like a lot of the things that are happening now are just continuing to widen that divide between the coasts and rural.

I think maybe I have that perspective because I was the person that thought a bunch of rednecks and why do you need to hunt? But then, I mean, it’s such an important tradition out here. If I’m going to be honest, most of the hunters I know are the most avid conservationists in the world.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes, Gabby talks about that all the time, and there’s data on that. I mean, we know that. That is true actually, Gabby.

Cathy Holman:

They get their conservation stamp. They’re donating hundreds of dollars to that. They have such a respect for the land. They’re out there in it for weeks on end seeing the impact that… I mean, don’t even get me started on grizzly bears. We’re not even going to go there.

Julie Gunlock:

I love that topic. Another time.

Cathy Holman:

And wolves, I tell you what. But again, my perspective has fully shifted. Fully shifted. I wish that instead of throwing policies like this and creating a bigger divide, we had more education about this is what hunter ed safety is. This is what we are doing. It’s not a bunch of rednecks forming a militia. It’s teaching an 11-year-old boy how to be safe, how to treat a wound, how to survive if dad gets bucked off the horse, which believe me, it’s happened, and is unconscious. These are good things for our kids to know how to do.

Julie Gunlock:

Gabby, you have written about this, about how gun owners tend to… I do, I want to talk a little bit about the food issue too, because you always get these attacks on farmers, and actually farmers are some of the best environmentalists out there. They are not going to abuse the land when that is their source of money.

Gabriella Hoffman:

Why are you going to hurt your cow that’s giving you milk and money?

Julie Gunlock:

We talk about dairy farmers.

Cathy Holman:

And same with hunters.

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah, same with hunters. If you’re really concerned about gun violence, then you should have these programs which educate people about gun safety and many other things. If you’re an environmentalist, you should be for these programs because again, hunting off the land. Gabby, I know you share those thoughts, but you’ve written about this so extensively.

Tell us how there’s this gap. I think what Cathy said, the only thing it’s going to do is create these rifts between the urban and the more rural areas of this country. I will stop. That’s not exactly a question, but I just want you to expand on this.

Gabriella Hoffman:

Yes, I’ll happily expand. As someone who has lived in suburbia and urban areas or really close to urban areas my entire life, first in California and now in Northern Virginia, and I don’t have kids yet, I’m not married, I’m single, but I have a niece and nephew who are…

Julie Gunlock:

I don’t know how that’s possible. By the way, she’s like the coolest girl ever.

Cathy Holman:

I can hook you up with a cowboy.

Gabriella Hoffman:

I know. Cowboys would be great. But as an aside, but the thing is what we’re seeing, yes, is that, but I also think you are starting to see, and I’ve documented this elsewhere and I just follow the trends too, you’re seeing urban hunting programs. We have here, Julie, I don’t know if you’re aware, I think I sent this to you and Larry, and maybe this will be something we could talk about in the future, but Arlington County is overrun by deer. It’s a metropolitan, very densely populated county right close to Washington, DC.

Fairfax County, where I live, has an archery program. You have to qualify, do training. I have half of the criteria, but I have to do the other half. Even in urban areas, believe it or not, they are encouraging people to go hunting. You just have to get the proper training, the proper licensure. It’s not that expensive. All things considered, it’s okay. It’s pretty reasonable. It’s better than not having that available, but it’s not like a huge roadblock in terms of accessing. It’s just a couple hundred dollars maybe in total.

But the thing is, yes, we have people in Washington and we have environmental… I call them preservationists. I call these preservationist special interest groups who are not conservationists. They want to kick off the public from land. They want to disconnect families and kids from these timeless traditions, which can supersede politics, supersede your region, supersede your economic standing. These activities should be bringing people together. We see policies that are creating a rift between forging this connectivity and even beyond teaching kids how to hunt.

I wish I had this in high school. We never had these programs in suburban Southern California where I grew up. I’d heard about this. I went fishing with my dad, so that’s how I was yoked into this early on and kept the negative forces at bay. I had those seeds of conservation planted into me through fishing, but I wish I had had this at my high school. We probably would’ve had it. It was a conservative area in Orange County. But the thing is, even urban kids are benefiting from even just learning how to do recreational archery.

We have kids of all racial backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses taking advantage of these programs. We can go into statistics more so later. But this benefits all kids and it’s an equalizer, whether you’re hunting or doing archery or shooting sports. They want kids to be inculcated with nonsense that has no bearing to their formative years. These activities can help steer them in a positive direction, cancel out the noise, not question their gender, not really fall into this confusion that we’re seeing with a lot of kids.

I probably was the last generation to not really see this so much before it really set in. I graduated high school in 2009, college in 2012, so it was right on that cusp I started to see these extreme tendencies play out even more. Younger kids today just aren’t exposed to this. They’re not exposed to home economics, to these activities.

Julie Gunlock:

They don’t even go outside, Gabby. They don’t even go outside.

Gabriella Hoffman:

No.

Cathy Holman:

They don’t know how to cook. They don’t know how to do anything.

Julie Gunlock:

No, which is a shame. I want you to add on to this because we have talked about that a lot on the show. Gabby, as you know, Cathy comes on a lot. The most amazing thing is just to hear Cathy talk about her children’s lives. On Twitter, I’m always asking, there was this… They brand the cattle. Remember the corners and the balls and I asked the question. I was like, oh, I really don’t want to know about that part of the cow.

But anyway, so it’s amazing what her kids just watching her on Twitter and watching her socials. Cathy posts and it is a different world, and it is a healthy world, and her kids are dirty. They’re out there and they’re helping with the farm or the ranch or whatever, and they’re on horseback and they’re going hiking. This is good for kids. The Biden administration, this is going to take away something at a time where kids are suffering. Cathy, I throw to you because I think you have a lot of great perspective on that.

Cathy Holman:

I think that one of the most pivotal things I’ve learned in my life, you can call it a long life or a short life, I’m 41, is that in the moments when you are uncomfortable is when the most growth happens. Let’s talk about when you’re holding a gun for the first time. It is uncomfortable, right? It is scary because you have all these different things, but then you have someone besides you that teaches you the respect you need to have for the power of it, but then teaches you how to harness that and use it to be self-sufficient and do something that is unique and unusual.

Same with the hiking, right? When you’re out hiking, there’s going to become a point when you’re uncomfortable and you’re going to have to continue because the granola bar’s in the car and you don’t have any other choice. You can’t just stop. You can’t just stop. You have to move through the uncomfortable. And then all of a sudden, you get back to your car and you’re like, “I did that.” Our kids need to experience that, because otherwise, you have all these adults that have never learned what uncomfortable feels like and how to move through it and that they can.

I think that the more we limit and expose them to things that are new and different, whether they ever decide to do it again after this high school class, the more we are limiting our children to be successful in every area of life, whatever that looks like for them. To me, that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned. I mean, that’s why the Prairie Wife brand started is because I was a city girl gone country, breaking ice nine months pregnant feeding while my husband was out of town, being like, “If I get through this, it’s a new Prairie Wife badge. If I get through this.”

And then now I’m like, bring it. What do you want me to do next? I’ve seen that growth for me. I’ve seen it in my kids, and I want all kids to have that. On college applications, we’re going through this with my oldest boy, they ask, what household chores do you do? Because your child’s ability to do things like that determine their success at college because the kids that have never done household chores are not going to make it through that first year and those universities know it.

Julie Gunlock:

Well, Cathy, one of the books that I always recommended to new parents is a book by Julie Lythcott-Haims called How To Raise An Adult, because that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be raising good people and good adults. Obviously for me, I want to raise a child who understands God and is a good Catholic. There’s a lot of things that we’re doing, but ultimately we’re trying to raise adults who can cope, who can live in the world, and who hopefully can make the world better.

Cathy Holman:

Problem solvers.

Julie Gunlock:

This used to be the common idea behind parenting, and now I think there’s some things that have changed. But I want to talk, and I want to give some good news as we round this out, there is a possible solution. Gabby, I know that there is a bill that’s been introduced in Congress to basically solve this, bring these programs back. Tell us about it.

Gabriella Hoffman:

There’s actually two pieces of legislation now. We had weighed in on the Independent Women’s Voice side, excuse me, on supporting a bill from Mark Green and Rick Hudson of Tennessee and North Carolina respectively. It basically said that they want to change the definition of dangerous weapons so it does include archery and shooting sports in the mix. Then Claudia Tenney just introduced a bill, Claudia Tenney from Upstate New York, and I have to read and sift through it. I was told it’s a little stronger than their bill, but it’s not really that much of a differentiation.

There are measures, and I believe there will be a Senate compliment to both of those bills. I haven’t seen a Senate version yet, but there are House versions and the House, I believe, is where you can begin to play and do that. But you have a lot of bipartisan actually agreement over canceling these programs or being dismayed, excuse me, with the cancellation of these programs. A lot of the moderate Democrats, Sinema, who now claims to be an independent. You have Jon Tester.

You have Manchin. You have a couple others who were completely blindsided and said, “We didn’t craft the bill, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, to lead to the cancellation of these programs.” Even the biggest champions of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act were totally, totally caught off guard with this implementation of this move. Yes, I think we will see some bipartisanship, true bipartisanship here to correct this error.

But even if we see a potential veto or a veto override of the President, we could see both Houses pass this to restore this because people are recognizing the error of the Department of Education ways here. But the president, like he’s done with other things where there has been true bipartisan support, he will override that veto attempt.

Julie Gunlock:

He will, yes.

Gabriella Hoffman:

I don’t see anything happening unless perhaps there’s lawsuits, but we’ll see a couple pieces of legislation. We have, as an organization on the Voice side, have weighed in support on restoring funding because it really is important. While we typically shrug as conservatives and limited government types, we don’t want the government funding everything, but this is an exception.

This is not really seen as affront on parental rights, and this is perhaps a good stewarding of money in a rare case. The Department of Education is in desperate need of stewarding money well and not at the behest of Teachers’ Union. This is where I think Department of Education money can be put to good use under this law that was passed to obviously guarantee that. But we want to be cautiously optimistic.

I would hope that people across all party lines, urban, rural, states, they do come together and realize what a mistake it was to go through with this under the guise of a bipartisan law, which proved to not be bipartisan truly and was seen as something that does strip people of learning true gun safety and not preventing future mass shootings, making the overall wellness of communities worse off, not safer if kids can’t learn how to safely operate guns, and even adults too, because the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act affected mostly adults and it did affect kids here with this tradition.

Julie Gunlock:

Well, look, we all know the now Billboard number one song, the Rich Men North of Richmond. This is another example of Washington refusing to respect the cultural differences of Americans. You’re right. There are a lot of Democrats who hunt. This was a gigantic mistake, a huge misstep. I really hope there’s a solution to this. Gabby and Cathy, I can’t thank you enough. Cathy, you can go back and watch your kids play and good luck to them. Good luck to them.

Cathy Holman:

Thank you.

Julie Gunlock:

If there’s movement on this, Gabby, we would love to get us…

Gabriella Hoffman:

Independent Women’s Forum. Absolutely.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes, but also the three of us should update that as this moves forward, because I think this is a really critical area for particularly people who watch this podcast, but also just in general, moms and dads who care about their kids having safe and healthy lives. Thanks, again, ladies for joining me.

Gabriella Hoffman:

Thank you, Julie.

Julie Gunlock:

Such an important issue. I hope that those two bills in the House, and I hope there is a Senate bill as well, I hope there’s some resolution to this. It’s an absolutely horrible idea. Again, it is a loss for our kids at a time where kids are suffering mentally. No more important bills in the House right now. The Bespoke Parenting Podcast with Julie Gunlock is a production of the Independent Women’s Forum.

You can send comments and questions to [email protected], and please help me by hitting the subscribe button, leaving us a comment or review on Apple Podcasts, Acast, Google Play, YouTube, or iwf.org. Hang in there, parents, and go bespoke.