(GunReports.com) — A summit meeting last week brought together professionals from state fish and game agencies and leaders of the firearms, ammunition, archery, and fishing and recreational boating industries–all of which pay excise taxes to support the American tradition of outdoor recreation.
NSSF President Steve Sanetti urged the audience to keep on telling positive stories that affect the image of outdoor recreation and to use facts that are routinely ignored by national media—that sportsmen and women are the country’s major supporters of conservation and that violent crime continues to decline while at the same time firearms ownership has significantly increased, demonstrating that responsible, law-abiding gun owners are not responsible for the criminal misuse of firearms.
The first is of obvious interest to state agencies, but the latter is important as well because ownership of AR-style modern sporting rifles—the most popular rifle in America and one increasingly used for hunting—has been banned in several states even though rifles of any kind are used in only about 3 percent of homicides.
Restrictions on owning certain types of firearms as well as proposed bans on traditional ammunition containing lead components would negatively impact the amount hunters provide for conservation through their purchases of firearms and ammunition under the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act. Sanetti also told the group that industry opposes any diversion of P-R funding for any purpose other than originally intended—to fund state efforts toward wildlife restoration, range construction and hunter safety.
Reaffirming the firearms industry’s support for state agency professionals, Sanetti said it was up to them to make wildlife-management decisions based upon local conditions and sound science; such decisions, including those on traditional ammunition, should not be made by agenda-driven organizations like CBD or in Washington, D.C.
Sanetti said that industry has supported the use of alternative ammunition where state wildlife agencies found it appropriate. For alternative ammunition to be a viable alternative, however, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives must rescind its threatened ban upon solid projectiles as “armor piercing ammunition” and grant sporting-purposes exemptions to alternative ammunition designed for hunting and target shooting.
