Zoe Callaway enjoys going to the rifle range to blow off steam, help fellow University of Delaware students learn gun safety and hone her sharp-shooting skills, but lately she and some classmates feel they are being targeted over their enthusiasm for firearms.
(FOX)- Callaway, who grew up around guns and is president of the school’s Students for the Second Amendment club, first sensed the campus-wide opposition to her hobby when the group applied for an extracurricular grant for ammunition. They were denied, then appealed and eventually received a $500 stipend. The victory was short-lived, however, as outraged students successfully pressed school officials to explicitly prohibit ammo funding going forward.
“The majority of our student body does not support our group,” Callaway told FoxNews.com, adding that classmates perceive members of the club as “crazy gun kids” who intend to “shoot up the school.”
The purpose of campus clubs like Callaway’s is to promote safe and responsible handling of firearms. Once a staple of collegiate athletic departments and intramural scenes, pistol and riflery clubs and competitions have come under fire in recent years.
Mass shootings and increasing politicization of the gun debate have left the activity marginalized, especially at eastern schools “staffed by liberals who have never touched a firearm in their lives,” according to the Young America’s Foundation spokeswoman Emily Jashinsky.
“[As gun issues] become a hotter topic and the more conservatives voice their opinions, the more liberals will try to stifle them,” Jashinsky said, adding that universities are “the most insulated bubbles of leftist thought.”
Members of student shooting teams may turn to off-campus sources of financial help when university officials withdraw ammunition funding. The NRA, which provides funding to nearly 70 universities, saw an 8 percent increase in requests between 2015 and 2016 for programs including shooting sports teams and clubs.
“Funding from the [NRA] Foundation often fills the gap when school budgets are not able to do so,” NRA spokesman Jason Brown told FoxNews.com in an email.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation has provided about $1 million in funding to shooting teams to alleviate travel and ammunition costs. That also has prompted criticism from students and faculty, who say groups that lobby against gun control should have no influence on campus.