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Snapshots

On October 26 President George Bush achieved a policy milestone long sought by the firearms industry when he signed the "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act," though challenges to the law have just begun. At press time the City of New York had opposed motions to dismiss its lawsuit against gunmakers despite the law, and that case was scheduled for trial in late November. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence announced that it intended to fight the constitutionality of the law in New York based on the decisions made in the city's case.


This past year during the Parker Gun Collector's Association's annual meeting in Virginia, members paid a visit to the nearby National Firearms Museum-and left a $10,000 contribution. The gift will support the National Firearms Museum Endowment of the NRA Foundation. Art Wheaton, PGCA chairman, said, "Our world is changing rapidly, and we must do our part to ensure that the freedom to collect, trade and obtain firearms be preserved."

The National Firearms Museum has more than 2,000 firearms of historic importance on display and receives tens of thousands of visits each year. A recent exhibit of early pinfire guns included examples from such makers as James Purdey, Charles Ingram, Edmund Pope, Thomas Turner and Westley Richards. To learn more about the museum and its mission, visit www.nationalfirearmsmuseum.org.


The National Shooting Sports Foundation has teamed up with the shotgunning resource guide Black's Wing & Clay Waterfowl to offer a new Website directory for wingshooting preserves across the country. With the launch of www.wingshootingusa.org, NSSF President Doug Painter said that promoting the convenience and quality of the preserve experience would encourage experienced hunters to spend more time afield and introduce newcomers to the sport. The Website offers a map-based search of hunting preserves by state, and listings include many guides and lodges as well. As a start-up promotion, the site is sponsoring a sweepstakes offering nine free trips, with prizewinners to be drawn at the end of February.


The US Fish and Wildlife Service's annual report on nationwide sales of hunting licenses found some good news in its survey for 2004: More paid license-holders than the preceding year. At 14.8 million, the number was just a .3-percent increase over 2003's, but that small uptick is welcome relief from the steady decline of recent years. The amount spent on hunting licenses and tags across the country increased by 3.5 percent, to nearly $704 million.

The number of licensed hunters peaked at 16.8 million in the mid-1980s, representing 9 percent of the population. The '04 numbers show that about 5 percent of the country currently buys hunting licenses.

It began with a precipitous decline in the number of bird hunters in Queensland, Australia's northeastern state, with 1,800 licenses for duck and quail hunting issued in 1984 and just 376 in 2004. That trend was compounded by the cancellation of the '03 and '05 seasons for what the Queensland Environmental Protection Agency termed "poor seasonal conditions and low populations of waterbirds"-although in the interim the fewer than 400 hunters reported taking 12,030 ducks and 3,002 quail, an average of almost 40 birds per hunter. In August, with support for hunting bled down to the last holdouts, the Queensland government ended all bird hunting through a regulatory ruling that will let a five-year conservation plan expire with no renewal. The state joined New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia with its bird-hunting ban.

The EPA's announcement cited drought and habitat loss as factors pressuring bird populations-even while acknowledging that hunting had little impact. The real rationale? "This is not an appropriate activity in contemporary life in the Smart State," announced Premier Peter Beattie. The number of citizens who wrote letters opposing recreational hunting was nearly twice that of the number of licensed hunters, and when the matter went before an Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, it "advised that the likely rate of wounding was unacceptable and consequently the level of pain and suffering through wounding would be unreasonably high."

The government's official announcement concludes that "With this finding, the Queensland Government has determined the recreational hunting of duck and quail cannot be conducted humanely and it will no longer be permitted in Queensland." The one source cited in justification is the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, "which has suggested for every duck shot and killed, 10 are injured and die a slow death." As specious as that "suggestion" may seem to anyone who has ever hunted ducks, the government does point out that hunting for feral pigs and cats is still allowed, and retriever trials for "registered gundogs" may continue with the use of "humanely killed feral pigeons."


The anti-hunting Committee to Restore the Dove Shooting Ban in Michigan revealed that it had raised $272,000 by late 2005 to repeal dove hunting in the state and spent more than $112,000 for professional signature gatherers to put the issue on the state's November 2006 referendum ballot. There are no campaign contribution limits for organizing issue groups in Michigan referendum campaigns, and the Humane Society of the United States already had contributed more than $153,000 to the anti-hunting cause.

For more information about how to help protect Michigan's dove hunt, contact the US Sportsmen's Alliance at 614-888-4868; www.ussportsmen.org.

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