aquascoot wrote on May 1
st, 2023 at 6:41pm:
...sales of ammo include a tax to fund national parks in the USA,
it is actually the major source of funding to preserve the wilderness
Maybe surprisingly, this is correct...
WILDLIFE RESTORATION (PITTMAN-ROBERTSON ACT).
The excise tax is set by law at 11% of the wholesale price for long
guns and ammunition and 10% for handguns. It is paid by
manufacturers, producers, and importers and applies to all
commercial sales and imports, whether their purpose is hunting,
sport shooting, or personal defense. This tax is handled by the
Department of the Treasury, which turns the funds over to the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) for apportionment to the states.
But... and that's a big but... logically of course this has no bearing
whatsoever on the "rights" supposedly granted by the 2nd
Amendment, nor does it in any way redress the ludicrously massive
numbers of firearms owned in the US (120 guns for every 100
Americans) or the equally massive numbers of unnecessary
firearms deaths and huge cost to society.
In an average year, gun violence in America kills 40,000 people,
wounds twice as many, and has an economic consequence to the
nation of
$557 billion.
This annual figure dwarfs the guns and ammunition tax—over the
76 years since its inception—at only
$7 billion or $92 million a
year. Which means, in effect, that the alleged national parks
benefits put forward by the firearms manufacturers and owners is
merely a publicity smoke screen. Tsk, tsk.
—Excerpted from
https://everytownresearch.org/report/the-economic-cost-of-gun-violence/ 19 July 2022.