Beneficiaries Of The Supreme Court Ruling On Gun Ownership

How is wildlife affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling on gun-ownership?

What so many of us don’t seem to get is that both handguns and bullets pay into the federal Conservation Fund. The victim of the gun discharge is irrelevant to the flow of money to the government. When there is a suicide using a firearm, when there is a drug murder using a firearm, when there is a home invasion fatality as a result of a firearm, money ends up in the Conservation Fund.

How? Excise taxes on firearms and ammunition are collected at the point of import or manufacture in the US. Those taxes are then doled out to the states depending on the number of hunting licenses they sell relative to their population. That gives states like Alaska, which has a relatively low population, but a high percentage of hunters, a chance to get a large share of the money in order to promote even more hunting.

Don’t think for a second that there isn’t a money flow in this misguided and perhaps politically motivated decision.

Of the 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, 55% of them were due to suicides, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A good investigative reporter (if there are any left) should look into any pressure from the hunting interests, starting with the USFWS. After all, they are the only beneficiaries.

According to an AP report:
The CDC research on guns and gun-related injuries, allocated more than $2.1 million a year in the mid-1990s. The agency cut back research on the subject in 1996 after Congress ordered that none of the CDC’s appropriations be used to promote gun control. The agency no longer funds gun-related policy analysis.

C.A.S.H. has been informing our readers and the public through letters to editors that the excise tax on firearms and ammunition should be used to pay victims of gun crime and their families and not to promote more use of firearms (as in hunting and general gun proliferation).