It's no secret that this is a nest of snakes...as this thread clearly illustrates!
The heart of this issue is THE MONEY (good heavens, isn't it always?). Hunting is declining and will continue to decline, not because of antigun sentiments, but because of fundamental social "megatrends" that are pretty much beyond anyone's control — suburbaniztion/urbanization, increasing demands on declining leisure time, a proliferation of activities in the leisure time category, liability laws and the litigious nature of present society, etc.
The shooting sports, OTOH, are growing like crazy. The categories we might lump together as "collecting," whether it's black rifles or Glocks, is growing like crazy. Training is growing like crazy.
HOWEVER, 99+% of the industry's not-insubstantial monies are going toward hunter recruitment and retention. The numbers would STAGGER you. In several presentations — including to one of the largest hunting gatherings ever a couple of years ago — I pointed out that if just 10% of the money we're pouring into an ultimately futile effort to boost the hunting market was "deiverted" to the shooting sports, we would see an unprecedented renaissance in American shooting.
My concept, which I designed along with Paul Erhardt (now the Marketing Director for SIGARMS) for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, was to use what we called the two-tier, or step, approach to satisfy both sides. We KNOW how to get people to the range, so that's where we'd focus our efforts, aiming for a 10-fold increase in sport shooting over a 5-year period. We would then aim the hunter recruitment and retention programs at the NEW SPORT SHOOTERS, where we calculated the hunter programs would have a much, much higher success rate.
Essentially, Paul and I were interested in barriers to participation. There are two HUGE barriers to participation in hunting — purchasing a gun and killing an animal. However, there is only ONE barrier to sport shooting (or collecting or training), purchasing a gun. From our standpoint, baby steps made more sense that asking someone to make a big leap.
Considering that Paul and I had created and run one of the most successful programs in industry history...the NSSF Media Education Program...you'd think there would have been some interest. Instead, we got out of Dodge just ahead of the ole necktie party!
Here's the dirty little secret — the excise tax monies we all pay on firearms, ammunition and components is a big number, and state wildlife agencies have become addicted to the $$$. The tax as written included a provision for building ranges, yet by my research, NOT ONE PENNY of the excise tax money has gone into ranges.
Who pays the tax? According to the industry, the vast majority of the excise taxes comes from "hunters." However, the more we looked into that claim, the more we saw it no longer passes the sanity check. The situation has tipped...sport shooters, collectors, people involved in training are now paying the majorty of the excise tax, and we are without representation and have quite literally ZERO input on how our tax money is used.
HMMMMM...I've heard something like this before! Didn't it go something like, "Taxation without representation is tyranny"? And didn't it end vey badly for the taxing authority?
We can head this off before it reaches its inevitable end — a nasty schism between the shooting and hunting sides of the industry. But that will require our representatives to open their eyes.
Michael B
A lot of them have shown me that they are willing to sacrifice one in hopes that the other will be spared not realizing or naively thinking theirs will be left alone.
