Protecting Hunting Heritage and Education Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, I am really very pleased to be on the floor with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to talk about this.

As my colleague from North Carolina has pointed out, it was pretty clear--it was more than pretty clear; it was crystal clear--what the intent of this provision was. The intent was really designed to prevent gun violence. What this administration is doing with this interpretation is so far afield of where we were with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act that it is almost breathtaking.

I had an opportunity less than a week ago to be back home in Fairbanks, and I went to the Tanana Valley shooting range. I was greeted by about probably 25, maybe even 30 high school students from Hutchison, from West Valley, and from Lathrop who were all part of the rifle team. They were there, pretty proud of what they were doing and how they were doing it; but they wanted to know, they wanted to understand how we could possibly--we here in Washington, DC, we in the Congress could possibly be doing something that was going to be limiting or restricting opportunities to understand more about firearms and firearm safety and hunting safety.

This is hunting season in Alaska. It is moose season. It is duck season. We all have our firearms out as we are providing for our families. In my family, one of the first things that you learn in a household that has firearms is about gun safety, firearm safety. Those schools that have those programs that provide for hunters' safety, those are the ones we all want our kids to be part of. It is not just the hunters' safety, it is the archery programs.

Again, when you are thinking about programs that help build young people in strong ways--in leadership skills, in safety, in discipline-- that is what these kids from the Fairbanks area schools were telling me.

I said: What else do you learn other than, really, being a sharpshooter?

They said: A sense of discipline--discipline and respect. They said: Every single one of us--there is not one of us in this room here who has been subject to any kind of discipline from within the school. We kind of look out for one another. There is a respect that comes when you are operating around a rifle.

The other issue that they raised was, they said: We understand that the way the Department of Education is interpreting this is not only hunters' safety programs would be at risk, not only archery programs would be at risk, but culinary programs where you have to use a knife with a blade that is in excess of 2\1/2\ inches, I believe it is.

So how do you work with a student when you are trying to chop celery in a classroom if you can't use a chopping knife? What do you do in a rural school where all aspects, practically, of your curriculum surround those matters that are relevant to you, subsistence? So as part of your science class, you are cleaning or preparing a skin from a seal or a walrus, and you are using an ulu. Believe it or not, the Department of Education would say that that ulu that, basically, is preparing your food for your family, would be a dangerous instrument and you can't teach that in the classroom.

Trying to explain what the Department of Education has interpreted this to mean as separate from what we, as the lawmakers who help put this into law--trying to explain to them made no sense.

Do you know what their message was? Can you just fix it? That is what we are here on the floor to do today.

It has not only been the work that Senator Tester has done with his bill, the work that Senator Cornyn has done with his bill, the work that Senator Barrasso has done with his bill, the letters that have gone out--we have given the Department the ample opportunity to fix it on their own. But if they don't, we have got to do the legislative fix, and I am standing with my colleagues to do just that.

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