Rice: Why Should Gun Owners Pay a Conservation Tax When Buying Self-Defense Firearms and Ammo?

Exactly! These days, most guns are made on with CNC machinery and have much better tolerances than guns of the past. A Hi Point is built much better than the pocket pistol knockoffs(of European designs) that were made here in the US as a result of the 1968 laws prohibiting Saturday Night Specials.
Just the product liability laws on all manufactured goods means that a gun should shoot properly. I certainly recommend shooting your defense weapon before you really need it just to make sure, but any gun sold in the US should fire right of the box with some accuracy.

The Missouri Department of Conservation operates The Andy Dalton Shooting Range (100 yard Rifle/pistol range, $4 per hour per booth for adults. Children 6 – 15 shoot for free.) I think there’s 2 or 3 others I haven’t used.
They also provide several free ranges, scattered around on Conservation Land and in state parks, without range officers.
Near K.C. and St. Louis they offer Women’s Pistol Craft Courses for free and pointedly don’t ask if the ladies plan on hunting.
If your state’s conservation agency’s not growing the number of gun owners, it probably needs some outreach and guidance.

thoroughly agree. I dont trust the govt one iota and see most taxes as not going for any real benefit as was hoped when they were first instituted. For example there was a tax put on the wages of workers here in australia that was to fund the age pension. We still pay that tax today but no one my age will ever see a single cent of it as not only have they removed it from your tax return form as to how much you have paid in to that fund but the separate fund for the age pension was moved into consolidated revenue with well over 400 million in the fund this was only 10-15 years after it was first put in place. Ever since i started working i have had to have “mandatory” superannuation (like a pension fund) but seeing what i have seen over the years I have no doubt whatsoever that it wont exist when i get to retirement age and that there will be no retirement for me unless i put things in place now for myself. Trust govt for anything…. GFY!!!!

Jim from LI,

First and foremost, I vehemently disapprove of the Pittman-Robertson tax, even though I am an avid hunter, for all the reasons listed in this article and the comments.

Having said that, in direct response to your question, I am nearly certain that states have used that money to open and operate shooting ranges. There is a VERY nice new outdoor shooting range about 30 minutes west of me that my state conservation agency operates which is free to the public. So, some of that tax money is a benefit to you (or at least people in my state). Nevertheless, that does not make the tax right and I still believe it should not exist.

Sounds like a lawsuit is in order for misappropriation if funds.

Either your state is illegally using funds or you are misinformed. I would wager the latter unless you can provide sources for your claim.

The $8 million a year that must be used for it isn’t $8 million EACH STATE. It is $8 million of the money must be used from the federal grant program across the states. The feds decide which states get how much.

if it was $8 million per state per year, that is $400 million a year or $24.8 billion since the act was signed in to law. Or more than twice the taxes generated by the act.

No, it is a minimum of $8 million over the whole US. States are within their rights (under the act) to ask to use the monies however they want. The federal grant program administrators simply have to approve at least $8 million in funding to range construction or improvement projects every year.

Indeed. I’m reading Al Bagdahdi was chased down with dogs and he was literally crying like a wee piglet.

Cliff, I didn’t say you couldn’t say you couldn’t kill someone with it. You can kill someone with a steak knife. That don’t make it a Randall # 1. My opinion of the AR wasn’t something I pulled out of my ass this morning. My experience with that weapon began in 1979 and didn’t end until I retired five years ago. I’ve got a little trigger time on that platform. I even think about buying one now and again for a truck rifle. If it gets stolen at least I won’t loose one of my real rifles and I’ll only be out $1000 +/-. Just can’t bring myself to do it.

Merle, I don’t believe a word of it anymore, a more likely proposition is that Al Bagdahdi simply retired from the CIA’s acting department and a new boogieman will replace him.

Geoff, I’m sure your right, but I have no experience with traffic reports. I drove two hours from the beach house yesterday (after spending a couple of days) to the camp where I spent the night. Sitting on the deck now with a small fire in the pit. Anyway, only saw a couple of red lights the whole way. Spent a little time in most every city east of the Mississippi from Miami to NYC. Wouldn’t live anywhere that I needed a traffic report.

When I was commuting to south Tampa from Polk county on a daily basis, traffic reports on WFLA were a sanity saver…

Don’t need a traffic report on my gravel road. In dry weather I watch for the dust cloud. In wet weather the creek is probably up so I can’t go anyplace anyway. (low water crossing)

Geoff, family in Tampa. Always happy to see them. When they drive up here. The furthest south I drive is just this side of Crystal River for an offshore trip with Mike.

Merle, a man after my own heart. My go to battle rifle is my H&K 91. Forget how many have passed thru my hands over the years. Owned FALs too. Great rifles. Never an M-1A. Some experience with the M-14 when Uncle Sam was buying the ammo. Again, nice rifle. Did own a Beretta BM-62 for a decade or so. Very nice rifle. Even a Galil in 7.62 for a short time. Gave it up when I couldn’t find spare mags for it. My rule of thumb is ten mags per rifle. Minimum. Oh, and an M-1 rifle (rebarreled in 7.62, thank you very much) and a Springfield 1903. (I prefer the A3 variant). No gun safe is complete without one of each. As to the AR. My unfortunate experience with them continued well into the last twenty years. Your right about the mags. They have improved. Significantly. The gas impengment system still sucks. Always will. Had a conversation with my cousin night before last after dinner and over a whisky. We were at the beach house without the girls and watching old westerns and WWII movies. ARs came up. His experience began in ’78 with the 101st. Mine in ’79 with another unit. He lives in Boston and has to jump through hoops, but he owns several ARs. Same opinion. Gas system sucks. Since that’s the heart of the rifle…

Many GI were indoctrinated during the 80s with the made “Mattel Toys” BS. Typically by halfass (now senior) NCO retreads left over from Vietnam. Mostly repeating gossip from the early fielding period. They were (mostly) full of crap and of were of the “must have machined steel/hardwood” FUDD segment.

neiowa, no negative influence from senior NCOs. They talked up everything we were issued from a C rat to a hand grenade. I was only 21 but I knew when someone handed me a turd. Looked like a piece of shit, performed like a piece of shit, but, got to admit, it was accurate when it went bang. Just wouldn’t go bang often enough. An AR is a poor weapons system. Just because it’s cheap and available today doesn’t make it good.

Yea, the M-16 is such a turd that it’s only the longest serving main battle rifle in American history.
The 5.56 Ball out performs the 7.62×52 Ball in penetration, is lighter so service members can carry more ammo, and is easily capable of being fired accurately by pretty much anyone who can lift 10lbs. Oh, and it’s not horrible in recoil when fired in full auto.
But please, regale is with your tales of how much of a turd it is…

Hydguy, just because it’s been in service a long time still doesn’t make it any better than it is. Never issued or owned an AR that didn’t malfunction sooner or later. No matter how well I maintained it. Don’t recall any of my other rifles malfunctioning. Ever.

As a hunter, sportsman, range user, and firearms owner, I can say that on top of the P/R taxes, those other fees are already in effect. My annual hunting /fishing license runs $180.00.
That’s before I put in for any tags I try to draw. So, add another $50.00+/- on top of that.
The range I belong to runs $150.00 per year. (That’ll drop a bit when I turn 62).

So, I contribute to fish and wildlife and their environment twofold. I also help with upkeep of the range I believed no to.

What services provided by the govenment could not be done better and cheaper by private actors? The Feds are ignoring their one job, to defend our borders. But hey, we can waste plenty of tax money shipping welfare to Israel, defending Saudi, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Poland and Ukraine.
Nothing done by the state and local governments is useful any any way, shape or form.

so how did the govt manage prior to about 1914 when there was No Income Tax and very little of any other forms of tax either other than import and export duties for the federal govt and only tax on business at the state level (business has the ability to make a profit, the worker only exchanges time and labour for money)

Military to start with. Police and emergencies services for another. Roads.

Anything that is a natural monopoly is generally better served either by the government providing the service or at least tightly regulating it (yes, that means electrical, sewer, water and what should be things like cable/internet, which aren’t and which is also why the US consumer typically pays about 2-5x as much as people in other developed countries for worse/slower services and typically has the option of maybe 1, occasionally 2 and rarely 3 providers for internet service. Where as most developed countries providers are tightly regulated and you have the option of many in most cases).

Overseeing environmental regulations. Food and drug quality. Etc.

Now you might not think that is all necessary, but before the pure food and drug act that founded the FDA and such as that, tens of thousands of people in the US were dying from adultered or pure fraudulent drugs, bad food, etc.

Prior to 1914 the US also had income taxes during the Civil War. The 16th also changed the constitution so that taxes did not need to be apportioned. So any “it isn’t constitutional” arguments are totally wrong. It was tricky based on the original constitution to do an income tax fairly (though it was done from 1862-1872), but not outright banned by the constitution. After the 16th, no constitutional issues at all.

Also excise taxes and tariffs used to be significantly higher than they are now (well, prior to Trump throwing around tariffs on seemingly everything anyway). Which is a passed on cost and not that dramatically different than a federal sales tax in the end.

“Anything that is a natural monopoly is generally better served either by the government providing the service or at least tightly regulating it (yes, that means electrical, sewer, water and what should be things like cable/internet, . . .”

I’m not convinced that government is the answer to natural monopolies.

First, I’m not at all convinced that most natural monopolies are persistent. We thought telephone service was a natural monopoly until technology changed and competition in a given area became practical. Once government either provides the service or regulates the hell out of it, the monopoly remains long after technology changes to remove the natural barriers to entry.

Second, there is a choice to be made. Pick a service; whether it be water or internet. Do you want government to run the natural monopoly as in-efficiently as it will? Or, a private interest running it as efficiently as it can to wring-out the maximum profit?

You are choosing between the waste of government vs. the profit of the private monopolist. The waste of government will go on forever. The profit of the private monopolist always remains vulnerable to an interloper who will try to capture his share of the high profit. Do you really prefer the waste of government forever?

The recent thought, that is exciting, is ever-increasing economies of scale. The development of technology has made us aware that more and more industries are becoming capable of ever-increasing economies of scale.

Here is an example. When I was a kid TVs and radios ran on vacuum tubes and were hand-soldered by human beings. Once the transistor was invented the integrated circuit soon followed. Now, suddenly, the TV/radio manufacturer who could build the biggest factory had much lower costs of production per unit. Prices dropped. Monopoly actually favored lower prices to increase volumes.

The same happened in the steel industry in the 19’th century.

That’s what made the computer industry explode. The telecom industry exploded as well. We replaced copper wire with fiber optics made from sand! When I was a kid an international long distance phone call cost me $1/minute. Now, we vidio-phone for free – wirelessly. Is free too high a price for you to pay? Would you rather have a monopolist charging you for the cost of copper wire?

When this phenomena – ever increasing economies of scale – applies, the optimal solution is to ALLOW a monopolist to do what he is naturally driven to do. That is, to use his monopoly power to build ever-increasing capacity to get the lowest possible cost of production so he can sell to more customers at ever decreasing prices. This optimal policy just doesn’t happen when government monopolizes the market; or regulates the hell out of the private monopolist.

Occasionally, the monopolist is the best solution to the difficult market problem. Ironically, sewer service in my home village was a private association of consumers. Sort of a co-op. Government had nothing to do with it. The service cost $5/year per household. Nobody was interested in making a profit. My dad was the association president and he did his few hours of work per year for free.

Often rural areas had a mom & pop phone company which had a monopoly over the territory they decided to serve. Because they ran the business efficiently they could afford to provide the service at a cost consumers were willing to pay. Had government tried to offer the service they would have been so inefficient they would have had to charge such a high price (or charge higher taxes to subsidize the phone business) that consumers couldn’t afford the service (or the taxes).

If you really believe in state-control and centrally-planned economies then move to a country where this philosophy is held by the voters. See if you are happy. Conversely, if you believe that free-enterprice, for all its faults, is a little more efficient, then stick to this policy here.

Taxation is government endorsed extortion.

The 16th amendment is in constitution but that doesn’t make it moral. Just because the government robbing us is widely accepted doesn’t make it right. Prohibition was the law of the land at one point and time.

Ton E: You poor thing. You have no clue.
The federal government was given the power to levy taxes by the founding fathers. However, those powers to tax were not authorized to include an income tax.
You should try to educate yourself on the subject, so you don’t continue to look like a moron. But you won’t do that.

The determination of what is or isn’t theft predates the constitution by quite a few millennia. Taking something from someone against their will is theft regardless of who does it or how many people vote on it. The government doing it or the Constitution authorizing it doesn’t make is legitimate.

Th founding fathers, while having many great ideas, and embracing liberty on a scale perhaps never before seen, were still men raised in a culture and given an education in which governments had been propagandizing people to justify their own existence for a long time. They still believed that some coercive monopoly of force was necessary. But they were able to set the stage and move the overton window to the point where later philosophers and thinkers, and economists would demonstrate that not only is government not necessary, it is in fact the source of the vast majority of problems, and whether it caused a problem or not government always makes it worse, and ALL TAXATION IS THEFT.

The constitution, while it may be supposed to be the be all and end all of American law, is not the be all and end all of philosophy and morality. And we see clearly today that as Lysander Spooner famously pointed out the Constitution either authorizes the current situation OR has been powerless to prevent it.

to address the discussion on monopolies going on above, there is no such thing as a “natural monopoly”. Free entry into the market and lack of any means to prevent others from using your ideas prevents that. Government restricts free entry into the market and creates the idea of “intellectual property” and this is what allows monopolies to develop.

If you study history, any time you find a monopoly or cartel if you dig a little deeper you will find either that it didn’t really exist or that government policy was behind it.

Perhaps you have heard of at “Republic”? or look it up.

Exactly. It’s foolish to complain about taxes in principle. If we want any sort of government we have to pay for it.

How much government we want is a matter for political debate.
Where we want government and where we don’t want government is likewise legitimate.
In any case, there will be some form of tax; and we can debate wise vs. foolish tax policy.

There is something to be said for socializing the tax burden for things we want government to do. E.g., assuming the public wants the ATF then the ATF ought to be paid for by the public that wants it.

There is something to be said for directing taxes at those who benefit by what is done by the money. If a tourist area wants to tax to promote tourism then levying a tax on hotels and restaurants makes some sense.

When, decades ago, the gun-buying community was predominantly composed of hunters, it really DID make some sense to tax guns and ammo to promote conservation. We gun owners (our grandfathers) largely consented to be taxed because we supported the purpose to which the funds were put.

This makes very little sense today. Gun owners for self-defense or marksmanship development probably mostly have some sympathy for conservation and hunting; enough to not oppose the guns and ammo tax. But, these segments of gun owners are not likely to graciously consent to onerous taxes to crush the gun culture; nor to pay for criminal law enforcement.

I do not want the ATF and it is a crime and a sin to tax me to pay for it.

Now is not the time to reverse, undo, nullify, or try to remove Firearm Laws, when communists control the House of Representatives. The change we desire for gun freedoms will be hijacked for communist purposes against us.

Only when we have an all Republican majority Congress with a Republican President does the power exist to change gun laws beneficial to gun owners. But nothing will occur that benefits gun owners and strengthens the second amendment unless a good plan exists and the will to execute the plan exists. The money for effective lobbyists must also exist. History shows us the Republicans to be lacking in the ability to plan and execute those plans as one body. Instead they fight among themselves so nothing gets done that benefit the people. Our two party Republic is a most ineffective and inefficient system that has done little to preserve our individual freedoms as the constitution defines. Since the second amendment was written and became law is has been chiseled away by congress of both political parties. The few tiny gains have come via the courts or new restrictive gun laws have been blocked effectively by Republicans.

Unfortunately I see my country is drifting toward communism, which means a troubling future for gun rights in America.

Oh, I “get it” all right, and our points of view are not that far apart, if at all.

We both agree (at least I think we do) that the solution does not lie with the courts, but in the legislative process. Getting rid of P-R would take no more than passing legislation, a much simpler and more realistic goal than passing an amendment a la 24 just to make a tax on guns and ammo unconstitutional issue. Either way, its the legislative process that gets the job done, not the legal process.

Lizzie Warren has already gone down that road and proposed increasing taxes to punitive levels. The city of Seattle has already driven every gun shop out by adding taxes. There are other examples. The difference between these taxes and P-R is that they are clearly and unmistakenly weaponizations of the tax codes. The rates are excessively high, and the collected revenues are not dedicated to a “higher” cause like conservation. The money just gets dumped into general revenues.

It is very unlikely that any court challenges to these taxes will carry the day, even though they are clearly designed to be infringements on the 2A. The best hope of overturning them lies with the legislatures, and that, of course, means crushing the Democrats next year (unless they crush themselves, which they seem hell bent on doing).

Yes, I agree; I think we are not far apart.

It occurs to me that Roberts is apt to take the view that if citizens want to elect legislators who will tax them for something (like ObamaCare) then it’s the citizens’ problem if they don’t like the result.

It would take a dramatic change of heart for SCOTUS to decide to dig into tax policy. They might take a case if there were a different wrinkle. E.g., this tax is so egregious a violation of the 1A, Commerce Clause, etc.

Our problem is that voters elect legislators. So, legislators will do as they please as long as they think their respective voters will re-elect them.

I don’t think we can get at this problem of gun rights by dealing directly with legislators. We can’t cure the problem other than by dealing with their voters.

We can stop legislation in the Senate, but not in the House. But stopping legislation in the Senate is good enough.

Conversely, we can’t push a change through that we want without both the House and Senate, plus the President.

So, our best shot is to gain control over the Senate. We have 42 Right-to-Carry states which send 84 Senators to Washington. We only need 60 Senators to block legislation. Why can’t we convince voters in Right-to-Carry states to make their Senators gun-friendly?

I think the threat to raise taxes on guns and ammunition to prohibitive levels is actually a lever for PotG to introduce as the philosophical answer to the general gun-rights/-control debate.

Well, Mr. & Ms. Voter. There is your opportunity. If you don’t want guns then tax them out of existence. Make it so that only the rich can afford self-defense, pest control, hunting. Is that what you want? Does that accord with your understanding of rights under our American governmental principles?

It’s consistent with Democrat policies of banning all handguns except those that are too expensive for the poor to buy. The bans on all models except the Army/Navy models. The bans on “Saturday Night Specials”. Who suffered under these bans?

Taxes won’t do anything to control criminals. They will still make, smuggle, steal or borrow guns. Don’t imagine that somehow taxing guns will make smuggling impractical. So, you and your fellow middle-class and working-class neighbors will be priced-out of the self-defense “market”. When seconds count you will all have to call dial-a-prayer.

Shall we deal with the opiate crisis by taxing pain medication? The auto-accident crisis by taxing cars to prohibitive levels? Hate speech by taxing internet connections?

There is a reason our grandparents passed a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit poll taxes. Such taxes as a means of rationing Constitutional rights just don’t accord with our values as a nation.

Perhaps this line of reasoning will register with voters. In stead of thinking about what gun-control might work (UBC, waiting periods, licensing) they will get the bigger picture. Guns for all the people? Or, guns only for the wealthy?

Beautiful! You won the interwebs award for the year on this one!

This is a succinct argument that strikes at the heart of a moral principle of equality under our system of government.

Quite unlike the English tradition of noblemen and commoners, we suffer no distinction of rank as a matter of principle. To say that one man may vote but his wife may not is repugnant to our principles for more than a couple of generations.

To argue that Michael Bloomberg and his squires may carry a gun but his cleaning lady may not is repugnant. But THIS argument then gets confused by arguments about how great retired NYC police officers are at marksmanship and how poor his cleaning lady is at marksmanship.

You have reformed the equality argument cleanly and simply as a TAX issue. Bloomberg can pay the taxes for his squires’ guns; and, pay the taxes for them to vote. But, he won’t pay the tax for his cleaning lady to defend herself; nor to vote!

Classism and racism are at the heart of modern liberalism. And in order to hide their racism they project that racism onto those who disagree. For instance, everybody (in their minds) knows that poor blacks and Hispanics are too dumb to figure out how to get a free government issued ID card, so requiring them to get one in order to vote is an act of racism because you want to take the vote away from blacks and Hispanics. So not being prejudiced constitutes racism and being prejudiced constitutes caring for the poor, stupid people of color. You’re never going to actually reason with these people, at least not until they’ve been mugged.

For slightly more reasonable people, you need to drive home the concept that what you’re talking about is not the right to possess a dangerous weapon, but the right to self defense, which isn’t even a human right but a natural right. After all, does the mother bear not have the right to use violence to protect her cubs? So if you have a right to self defense you logically have a right to prepare for your defense. Now taking up karate can be a fun and rewarding hobby, but it’s not much use when confronted by a man (or men) with a gun(s). The only defense against men with guns is to have a gun yourself. The bargain was supposed to be ‘give up your guns and we’ll disarm the criminals’ but it’s never worked that way and when the citizen has submitted to that Faustian bargain it usually results in the government itself being the entity he needs protection from.

Understand, I guess my underlying concern is anytime a tax like this is scrutinized, there are forces at work trying to bastardize the original intent into something that more suits their end game.