It’s not much of a secret that the Obama presidency was a boon to the gun industry. Leaving aside the gun-control politics of his presidency, gun owners acted as if the apocalypse was upon us and bought firearms and ammunition in record amounts.
It was not uncommon for gun dealers to limit how many boxes of rimfire cartridges an individual could purchase, for instance, as each new shipment was scooped up by anxious gun owners concerned that strict new limits on firearms were imminent.
Sales peaked in 2013, after the horrific mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. That’s when talk of new gun-control regulations peaked, though it ultimately didn’t amount to any substantive changes in gun laws.
Of course, what’s a boon to the gun industry is also a boon to wildlife in the U.S., and 2013 was about as good as it gets. The Pittman-Robertson Act raised $523 million in 2013 for wildlife management, based on the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s estimate of more than $8 billion in sales of long guns, handguns and ammunition.
Passed in 1937, at what is considered the low point for wildlife conservation in the U.S., Pittman-Robertson places an excise tax on all firearms sold (11 percent for long guns, ammunition and archery, 10 percent on handguns). That money is directed to the restoration and management of wildlife through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The money stays in a separate account and is metered out using a formula based on license sales and the size of the state. The states have to come up with matching funds to qualify for the federal dollars, and that’s where our hunting and fishing license dollars come in.
By the way, the Dingell-Johnson Act that was passed in 1950 places a 10 percent excise tax on fishing equipment, raising $360 million in 2013. For decades, hunters and anglers have paid more than their fair share of the cost of fish and wildlife management. We are still waiting for other outdoor industries to step up with similar programs for outdoor equipment, but they have fought off efforts to add excise taxes for products such as tents and camping gear.
As fears of gun restrictions subsided after 2013, sales fell a bit, and so did the dollars collected for wildlife management. There are signs the decline in gun sales will increase now that there’s been a change in the White House and President Trump is perceived to be more friendly to gun owners/manufacturers than the previous president.
As the Washington Post reports:
“There’s been some indication that gun sales have receded in the wake of Donald Trump’s election. The go-to metric for gun sales — a figure that isn’t directly compiled by the government — is the number of federal background checks completed during a month. The biggest month for such checks tends to be December, as people buy firearms as Christmas gifts. In December 2015, the FBI conducted 3.3 million background checks. In December 2016, after Trump’s win? 2.8 million.”
Background checks aren’t a perfect measure of gun sales. They’re also needed for things like concealed carry permits, but the numbers suggest what many have predicted: some gun owners are going to stop hoarding weapons and ammunition in the way they did during the Obama presidency.
The problem for wildlife management is that those Pittman-Robertson funds are almost certain to decline, at least for the next four years. Hunters, as a percentage of the population, are declining as well, though the total number of hunters is more stable. But the way we fund wildlife management in this country faces challenges, and that is made doubly so by the increasing attention that non-game species require of our wildlife managers.
We’re going to need folks beyond the hunting and angling communities to pick up the slack.