Don’t overlook the politics of your state wildlife departments and projects they may be looking to fund soon. The Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Program allows funds to be used to support public shooting ranges, and there’s lots of money to go around.
A record $882 million will be distributed to states this year for fish, wildlife and recreation projects, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Thursday. …
Due primarily to increased sales of firearms and ammunition over the last year, the wildlife fund will provide an unprecedented $522.5 million to the states. The previous high was $473 in 2010.
Pennsylvania is slated to receive $19.1 million. If you want to know how much your state will get, check out this list.
Washington State also tacks on a fee to our CPL to pay for ranges that are supposed to be available to the public To date almost every dime is used for Police Ranges and the public is denied access.
The federal government is usually pretty strict about making sure the rules of these grants are met. Just ask Mitt Romney who tried to swipe the state hunting license money for general government spending and then ended up with a nasty gram from feds telling him to put it back or be faced with repaying the federal dollars. During his stump speeches on the issue, he would only talk about how he “saved” the money and made sure funding was secured.
Pittman-Roberson money? Doesn’t matter. The states tend to raid those funds anyway. Very few states are good about it. Mine is surprisingly.
I don’t even mind paying the excise tax if the money goes to what it’s supposed to go to. But it doesn’t.
Same problem as most govt programs………