courtesy assembly.state.ny.us
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The stigmatization and de-legitimizing of gun owners, their tools and their pastimes continue apace. The latest example is an effort in New York to ban public school rifle, trap and archery programs in the state. The majority of these programs are, of course, located in schools in upstate New York, a cultural and political world away from The Big Anti-Gun Apple. But it’s an Assemblywoman from Manhattan’s west side who’s trying to kill these programs for kids in the rest of the state.

Why? Because guns, of course.

Does it matter that recent studies have shown that participating in the shooting sports improves concentration and impulse control in kids with ADHD? No. No it doesn’t.

Does it matter that these programs teach responsible, safe gun use to hundreds of students every year? You bet it does. That’s exactly the kind of behavior that Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal wants to discourage. Fewer school-based target shooting programs now means fewer gun owners and less support for Second Amendment rights down the road.

As Rosenthal wrote:

Marksmanship programs in public schools were once popular, but a rise in gun violence and school shootings in recent years has spurred a long overdue re-evaluation of their place in our students curriculum. A number of schools which still operate marksmanship programs do so through grants from the National Rifle Association, including Parkland, Fla. high school where a former student and marksmanship team member murdered 17 students and teachers in February 2018.

Ah. There’s the problem. The NRA is involved. God knows we can’t have that.

In 1990, Congress passed the Gun Free School Zones Act to prohibit the possession of firearms on school grounds, but left exemptions for police officers and school security as well as students possessing firearms as part of an approved school program. Research shows that an increase in guns leads to an increase in gun injuries and deaths, whether intentional or not. To create a true, gun-free school zone we cannot allow students to possess and discharge firearms on school property.

And because Nikolas Cruz participated in an air rifle program — an NRA-supported air-rifle program — this kind of thing simply has to go.

Each winter, the New York State Public High School Association holds a regional rifle championship. One was held March 3 at West Point.

According to the New York State Sportswriters Association, there are nearly 60 trap shooting teams across the state that are about to begin their season in the New York State High School Clay Target League.

One of the league’s attractions is that that league is co-ed and provides adaptations for handicapped shooters. Teams are open to students in grades 6-12.

Don’t expect the wholesome co-ed, handicap-enabling nature of the programs to cut any ice with a Manhattan pol like Linda Rosenthal. Besides, her do-something bill will only inconvenience upstate kids. Let them eat gluten-free, organic cake. It won’t affect anyone in her open-minded, enlightened, progressive Assembly district.

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42 COMMENTS

  1. Nyc should be combined with CA, other major cities and liberal states and forcibly removed from the union

    • American soil should not be ceded to the Communists. We should declare such lands to be in Insurrection, and occupy the areas with troops accordingly.

        • Which message; the one that says we should strip all idiot liberals of their citizenship and then deport them to whichever “s-hole” country that might take them, or the one that says school shooting programs should be abolished?

  2. Want to talk about a state that should split up.
    I lived in Manhattan and left there when you had to register rifles. To live in a rural part 90 minutes drive away.
    2 totally different areas. Worlds apart.
    The NYC and LI area. Unfortunately with the most population control what goes on statewide.
    Outside the NYC area is a whole other state of NORMAL people.

  3. Are there any New Yorkers here?

    That person is from Manhattan. Can any NY people here explain how there ever were shooting programs in NYC schools given NYC’s gun-possession restrictiveness? What such programs exist for this law to ban?

    • When I went to High School in the early ’60’s, my school in the Bronx had a rifle team, later a rifle club.

      • Antonin Scalia was in a rifle program while in high school in NYC too. He talked about how he’d carry his rifle in it’s case on the subway to school. Guns were not so taboo in NYC before it went completely nuts.

        • I carried my rifle slung over my shoulder on my bike and nobody every gave it a second look. And that was in the Boogie Down Bronx.

    • Not me, but my dad was on the rifle team in high school, and I believe in college as well. He lived in the Bronx at the time, and took the bus , with his rifle to his high school in White Plains. College he lived in the bronx, and school was in the bronx. He took public transport with his 22 all the time.
      That said, while this pol represents NYC she’s putting forth a state wide bill. there are plenty of archery and shooting clubs/teams at any number of upstate schools that would be effected by this. Even when I was in HS in the 90s in Westchester County, NY, archery was a part of phys ed every year.

  4. “Research shows that an increase in guns leads to an increase in gun injuries and deaths, whether intentional or not.”

    And I am sure that similar research would show that the increase in privately owned automobiles has lead to an increasd rate of auto accidents and automobile related death.

    But even a mentally deficient New York Democrat should be able to acknowledge that driver safety courses in high school have had a positive impact on those numbers.

    Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot that this isn’t actually about making us safer but about creating a UK-style police state where even posting on social media about a dying child and the State that is letting him die to protect the reputation of their NHS could get you arrested.

    • “Research Shows…” . What research. Cite it. Unless the “research” was pulled out of your behind.

  5. Research also shows that the presence of bathtubs, toilets and buckets in homes leads to an increased incidence of toddlers drowning in the them. You know what to do, Assemblywoman. Do it for the children.

  6. Wow. We have us a real gen-u-wine winner here. From her NY Assembly web site, “On International Women’s Day, Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal (D/WF-Manhattan), announces new legislation, the TAMP (Total Access to Menstrual Products) Act, which would require every restroom in New York State to provide tampons and sanitary napkins free of charge.

    She missed a real opportunity. should have named it the TAMPON act (Total Access to Menstrual Products Of Newyork)

    • Secret is yellow cake and a bucket of chocolate frosting.

      There’s NYC and the Albany capital neighborhood, and then there’s the rest of NYS. Might as well be different planets. Actually that sounds like a good idea…

  7. Western NY here, just returned from shed hunting ( cast deer antlers ) found two, one fox Skull and one turkey feather , SW 9 on hip . Some schools around here have recently added skeet and trap teams .

    We had archery in high school ( ‘70’s) and guns in our cars to hunt after school .

  8. I hope this anti-gun socialist Bolshevik bitch gets her ass ousted next election!
    Traitors against our republic don’t deserve to serve in public office.

    • Nah, the “D” means she prefers free condom handouts in fifth grade, high school classes on alternative uses of a hairbrush, and laminated futtbuckin’ instructions posted in the gender-neutral restrooms.

      Y’know, for progress.

  9. “Marksmanship programs in public schools were once popular…”

    12,000 kids in Minnesota take issue with your brand of horseshit, lady.

  10. Keeping the kiddies ignorant and afraid of guns, but not the government, will insure they become malleable and compliant subjects!

    DrDKW

  11. So how does a nationwide movement to split these states get going? I am not a community organizer so I don’t know. But can you imagine if CA, NY, WA, IL, etc were split? Every split state would be politically moderate or conservative, elect two like minded Senators and.a governor, be a shall issue state with low welfare populations and low taxes, and most importantly the new Senators would assure a new Supreme Court. If these states could be split, it would literally change the entire country.

  12. Need to have NYC become like the movie Escape From New York.
    The rules are simple; nothing goes in, nothing goes out.
    Heck, the inmates already are in charge.

  13. NYC and California should be simply forcibly (they already seem to want it) split from the US and have whatever perverse interpretation of the Constitution they want without affecting the rest of the nation who respect the Constitution for what it is.

  14. How do people such as this woman manage to attain elective office is a question that puzzles me. By the way, I grew up and resided for many years in N.Y.C., departing therefrom permanently in 1967, when legislatively speaking, the city lost what little contact with reality it still then retained.

  15. Thank God for the Founding Fathers, if not for the electoral college people like this would be in control of the nation!

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