Bob | Tribune-Review
Shooters, and not always hunters as in the past, are fueling the surge in Pittman-Robertson funding.
The numbers are tremendous.
If you saw Sunday’s Tribune-Review, or read the story here or online here, you know that the unprecedented surge in the sale of firearms and ammunition has been amazing for wildlife and hunting. Pittman-Robertson funding is through the roof.
In looking back at my notes, a couple of things that didn’t make the final version of the story – for space reasons — stand out, and I wanted to share them.
First, the story notes that many of the people behind the gun boom are not hunters. They’re shooters, but not necessarily people heading into the woods after deer and other game.
That’s new.
Realizing that, the Pennsylvania Game Commission, with help from Penn State University, conducted two focus groups in May. Participants were target shooters – none of them hunters – pulled from among the 11,000-plus who hold a permit to use game lands ranges.
The commission wants to know who those people are, what they want and how it can serve them, Holmes said.
“We offer our public ranges to target shooters. But beyond that, we don’t offer them much. And if they shoot at a private range, we don’t even know they’re out there,” Holmes said.
“I think this is going to be a huge eye opener for us. I think this is an audience that we need to investigate and see where it takes us.”
Second, it’s not just wildlife and hunters benefitting from the rise of the gun.
The economy is, too.
A National Shooting Sports Foundation report looking at the “economic contributions of the arms and ammunition industries” shows they accounted for about 263,000 jobs, $14 billion in wages and $43 billion in economic impact nationally in 2014.
Here in Pennsylvania, the report said, they supported 9,458 jobs paying out $473 million in total wages and accounting for $1.433 billion in total output. They also resulted in more than $30 million in federal excise taxes.
That ranked the state in the top seven nationally for jobs and taxes paid, top eight for wages and top 10 for economic output.
That’s perhaps not surprising.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, five states have larger populations than Pennsylvania.
But only three – Texas, California and Florida, in that order – had more federally licensed firearms dealers in 2014. Pennsylvania had 6,325, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
There are plenty locally.
Allegheny County ranked first statewide in 2014 with 134, followed by Westmoreland with 132, according to that year’s Pennsylvania State Police firearms annual report. The next closest county was York with 101.
There are lots of shooters out there, too.
Rob Southwick, president of Southwick Associates and a fish and wildlife economics expert, said there were an estimated 985,513 target shooters and 774,930 hunters in Pennsylvania in 2011.
There’s “quite a bit” of overlap between those two groups, he said. But nationally the state ranks third and fourth, respectively, for shooters and hunters.
Where guns are sold
Every one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties had at least six licensed firearms dealers in 2014. Some had far more.
Here’s how the top five ranked, and the number of dealers in some other counties of interest.
1. Allegheny: 134
2. Westmoreland: 132
3. York: 101
4. Bucks: 91
5. Montgomery: 89
Others: Butler, 59; Washington, 56; Beaver, 46; Fayette, 45; Indiana, 45; Cambria, 38; Somerset, 30; Armstrong, 27; Lawrence, 26; Greene, 12.
Source: Pennsylvania State Police, 2014 Firearms Annual Report
