Or, Good Things to Remind your political representative of.
Murdoc at GunPundit points to some very interesting, and quite probably very unknown facts from Outdoor Life
• Spending by hunters and anglers is more than the revenues of Microsoft, Google, eBay and Yahoo—combined! ($76 billion vs. $73.6 billion).
• More people hut and fish than watch the nightly newscasts of the three major networks—ABC, CBS, NBC. (34 million vs. 27 million)
• Hunters spend more on their activity than the total revenues of McDonald’s ($23 billion vs. $20 billion).
• All this spending adds up to support close to 600,000 jobs—more than the number of people employed by McDonald’s corporation.
• Hunters spend $2.4 billion on guns and rifles annually.
• Every year hunters and shooters pay millions in Federal excise taxes: $5.3 billion since 1939. In 2007 hunters and shooters paid $233 million in excise taxes. In fact they annually provide more than 80% of the funding for most state fish and wildlife agencies.
• Through Federal Duck Stamp purchases, hunters have generated more than $700 million, all of which goes in to the National Wildlife Refuge System. This money has been used to purchase more than 5 million acres of land for outdoor recreation and wildlife watching opportunities around the country.
• 80% of sportsmen consider themselves “likely votersâ€. 8 in 10 sportsmen state that a candidate’s position on sportsmen’s issues is important in determining whom they will vote for.
• 73% of Americans approve of hunting.
• Only 3% of Americans live the animal rights philosophy.
Yet the animal rights/eco-socialists get to set policy that the rest of us have to live by. Talk about gunnies not doing their civic duty.
Also, Caleb at Ahab points to a few things from the National Shooting Sports Foundation. I’ll just point out one of these and you can read th rest
NICS Background Checks Up 5.3% in January
Christmas? No, that was the month before January.
Let’s see the bigots try and explain that one away while telling the MSM than “The Gun Culture” is in decline.
UPDATE: It looks as though Mr. Completely has the dates set of the 3rd Annual Gun Blogger’s Rendezvous in Reno, NV.
Believe it or don’t I’m actually going to make it this year. The wife has given me the thumbs up to go (provided I fly and not drive…grr) and I feel really crappy about bailing on the first two year’s events that I’m going to bite the bullet, so to speak, and let the TSA search my person without beating them senseless for being bad actors in the Big Brother production of Security Theater (though I promise to say mean things about them upon my return).
How was that for a run-on sentence?
Anyway, with Boomershoot, The Rendezvous, and spending part of August in Montana doing a few gunnie things, I think I can say that I am solidly in the above dollar figures listed above (though neither the Rendezvous or Boomershoot are actually “expensive”). And if I had more available vacation time, I’d be doing more.