… And Hates Bambi
What else are we to conclude? His election has been a boon for the hunting industry. Gun and ammo sales have gone through the roof, thanks to the fears of many U.S. gun fanciers that the government will soon be going after their Second Amendment right to bear arms. The good news for hunters is that the sales are yielding a federal windfall via the 1937 Pittman-Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act, which levies an excise tax (about 11 percent) on the sale of firearms and ammunition. That money is handed back to the states each year for habitat and range projects—i.e., the protection of hunting areas, and the promotion of hunting. It can't be diverted to other uses. Ammunition and firearm makers paid about $110 million in excise taxes in the first quarter of 2009, a whopping 43 percent more than they paid during the same period in 2008, according to the Treasury Department's most recent Federal Firearms and Ammunition Excise Tax Collection Report. The deer don't stand a chance.
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Steve Tuttle joined NEWSWEEK's Washington bureau in 1987.
Tuttle writes a bimonthly Web column while continuing also to report for the magazine on topics as varied as baseball, politics, and terrorism. He has contributed personal essays on surviving cancer, the decline of hunting, and the politics of Appalachia. He has taken on Crocs ("The case for ending our long national nightmare"), Facebook ("Being on Facebook is like volunteering to receive spam"), and Evel Knievel ("If you're a man of a certain age, then you spent a lot of Sunday afternoons building ramps and wearing capes").
In addition to his editorial duties, Tuttle oversees logistics for NEWSWEEK's coverage of the Democratic and Republican national political conventions, as well as the Olympics.
Tuttle graduated in 1983 from the College of William and Mary with a degree in English literature. He previously worked at The Recorder, a tiny paper deep in the hills of western Virginia.
He is the only NEWSWEEK employee who had a pet bear as a child.
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