The eco-munitionary subject: Conservation with and of firearms

Abstract

The Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 was a transformative piece of legislation for wildlife management and conservation in the United States, incentivizing the creation of state wildlife agencies and establishing funding mechanisms for these agencies. The legislation directs an excise tax on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment to a fund to support wildlife restoration projects by state wildlife agencies. In 2021 alone, this generated more than $1 billion in project funds. Although commonly framed as a user pays model of conservation whereby hunters fund wildlife management, most of the excise taxes collected on firearms and ammunition are now associated with non-hunting uses. Despite this disconnect, many firearms industry groups continue to support and promote their relationship to Pittman-Robertson. Here, we examine the role of Pittman-Robertson in shaping the relationship between firearms and conservation and seek to understand how this relationship is reproduced. We examine this shifting relationship through an analysis of amendments to Pittman-Robertson since its creation and a discourse analysis of contemporary materials from web sites of firearms, hunting, shooting, and conservation organizations. Drawing on the concept of environmentality and diverse ecologies, we argue that Pittman-Robertson has contributed to the production of, and been re-shaped by, a distinct environmental actor: the eco-munitionary subject.

Keywords

Environmentality wildlife conservation guns governmentality

Introduction

In 2019, Congress amended a key piece of legislation that provides funding to state wildlife agencies: the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act (FAWR), commonly referred to as the Pittman-Robertson Act. Since 1937, Pittman-Robertson has been a cornerstone of conservation in the United States, directing an excise tax on firearms, ammunition, and archery equipment to a dedicated account for use by state wildlife agencies. This legislation sought to create a continuous source of funding for the management and restoration of wildlife species and their habitats, particularly those that benefitted hunters (Kallman, 1987). The relationship among firearms, hunting, and conservation, however, has transformed greatly in recent decades. Increasing gun sales for non-hunting purposes, declining hunting participation rates, and increasing non-hunting outdoor recreation have disrupted the assumed relationship between firearms sales and wildlife management (Casellas Connors and Rea, 2022). Even as gun sales and hunting decouple, the firearms industry has generally embraced, often endorsed, and sometimes sought to expand taxes that go into the FAWR account. Rather than seeking to dismantle Pittman-Robertson, a long lobbying effort by the firearms industry, wildlife agencies, and sportsmen groups has sought to “Modernize” Pittman-Robertson to reflect contemporary trends in gun use and hunting. In 2019, these efforts culminated in several amendments to Pittman-Robertson to allow funds to directly support the promotion of recreational shooting and to make it easier to use the funds for the creation of shooting ranges (16 USC § 669).

These recent changes to Pittman-Robertson continue a process of reconfiguring the relationship between firearms, hunting, and conservation and have created new mechanisms to support the reproduction of gun use in general. Of course, firearms have long held a place in the discourse and practice of conservation and resource management; firearms are tools for hunting and culling wildlife populations and are also used to enforce human exclusion from conservation areas (Duffy, 2014) and related resource dispossession (Jacoby, 2001, 2008; Taylor, 2016). Pittman-Robertson, however, formalized a fiscal linkage between guns and conservation, using sales of firearms as a mechanism to reproduce wildlife and wildlife management. Transformations over recent decades have expanded Pittman-Robertson to also support the reproduction of a population of hunters and now a population of gun users.

The changes in the social context surrounding Pittman-Robertson illustrate a phenomena known as “policy drift,” whereby the effectiveness of a policy shifts—and often declines—because it operates in a new context (Hacker, 2004; Mahoney and Thelen, 2010). Pittman-Roberson, however, also demonstrates that efforts may be made to maintain and retool a policy by fitting it to its new context and expanding its mission through a process of policy “layering” (Hacker, 2004; Mahoney and Thelen, 2010) and “stretching” (Wellstead et al., 2016). In this paper, we document the ways that Pittman-Robertson is being layered upon and stretched by legislators and interest groups to support a new set of firearms activities, users, and sales. We show how these changes have reconfigured the assemblage of actors drawn into relation with environmental management, and the technologies of power involved in drawing all firearms consumption and use into the sphere of conservation governance. In particular, we explore how recreational shooting and shooters—not just hunting, hunters and wildlife—have become objects of management for federal and state wildlife agencies. In addition, we demonstrate the discursive production of the firearms industry as a partner and constituent of wildlife agencies.

To understand the (re)production of this assemblage of conservation agencies, wildlife, gun producers, and gun users, we draw on Fletcher's (2020) analytical framework of diverse ecologies, which bridges neo-Marxian and Foucauldian approaches to the analysis of environmental governance. Fletcher builds on Gibson-Graham's concept of diverse economies (Gibson-Graham, 1996, 2006) to understand the diverse and always hybrid articulations of capitalist and non-capitalist socioenvironmental processes (Castree, 2006; Hodge and Adams, 2012). We draw on this framework to explore how shifts in the political economy of conservation produce and operate through different environmental subjectivities (Fletcher, 2020). The case of Pittman-Robertson and the changes to its attendant principles and practices illustrates a co-constitutive process of the firearms industry supporting environmental management and environmental agencies supporting the growth of the firearms industry. We argue below that the reproduction of this relationship also involves the cultivation of a specific environmental subjectivity that understands firearms and conservation as inextricably linked and necessarily cooperative. Thus, we demonstrate how efforts to layer and stretch Pittman-Robertson have helped to produce a distinct form of environmental subject: the eco-munitionary subject.

The remainder of this manuscript is organized into four sections. First, we review the literature on environmentality and its relationship to scholarship on neoliberal natures, with particular attention to the ways that changes to political economic structure reshape diverse governmentalities, and the ways diverse governmentalities likewise reshape political economic structures. Second, we undertake an analysis of Pittman-Robertson amendments over the past fifty years, with particular attention to the changes codified in 2019, to document the formal legal changes in policy over time. Third, to capture the shifts in principles, practices, and subjectivities behind these legal changes, we critically examine the contemporary discourse surrounding Pittman-Robertson through an analysis of websites and documents produced by organizations affiliated with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) and congressional reports for proposed amendments to Pittman-Robertson. This analysis demonstrates a clear expansion in the scope of Pittman-Robertson over time to support a broader swath of firearms uses. It also reveals a discourse that constructs the firearms industry as a partner and investor in conservation, entailing certain expectations for benefits to the industry from this relationship. Fourth, we show how these changes in Pittman-Robertson establish a mutually constitutive relationship characterized by conservation agencies acting in service of the firearms industry and the firearms industry advocating for state-led conservation. We introduce the concept of the eco-munitionary subject to describe those acting to reproduce this linkage between conservation and firearms to achieve an expansion of wildlife management and gun use. With Fletcher (2017, 2020), we argue that a full theorization of environmental governance—and the politics of firearms and of conservation in our specific case—requires attention to the co-constitution of environmental subjectivities and the political economy of conservation.

Background

Environmentality

This work draws on Foucault's concept of governmentality (Foucault, 2008), which has been widely applied to analyze changes in the technologies of power of the administrative state (Dean, 2010; Oksala, 2013; Rose et al., 2006) and to understand related questions of environmental politics (Fletcher, 2017; Rutherford, 2007). In brief, Foucault's approach to governmentality emphasizes understanding the mechanisms that direct the conduct of individuals or groups toward a particular end, especially in the service of advancing the interests of the state and other powerful actors (Foucault, 2008, 2009). Environmentality extends Foucault's concept of governmentality to understand how the environment and people's relationship to it are governed. Luke (1995: 65) first introduced the term environmentality to describe how political actors develop “instrumental rationalities in the policing of ecological spaces” (also see MacKinnon, 2020). Research on environmentality has since expanded to address how governments organize societies and orchestrate the behaviors of populations to produce particular environmental outcomes, for example, climate change reduction (Luke, 1999) and adaptation (Grove, 2010), biodiversity conservation (Salafsky et al., 2001), and forest conservation (Hanson, 2007). Agrawal's (2005a, 2005b) study of forest management in the Kumaon region of India built upon the concept of environmentality to describe the formation of environmentally minded subjects through disciplinary techniques. Research drawing on this formulation of environmentality has demonstrated how environmental governance operates through the internalization of identities associated with environmental values and the practice of social norms related to the environment (Agrawal, 2005a; Jepson et al., 2012).

More recent scholarship on environmental governmentality has drawn on Foucault's (2008) later work that emphasized governmentality as a diverse collection of practices to direct the conduct of conduct (Rutherford, 2007). In this work, Foucault emphasized the multiple intersecting governmentalities that may co-occur in a given context. In addition to sovereign (state-centered) and disciplinary (self-imposed) forms of rule, Foucault identified the construction of knowledge and truth as a means of governing and motivating self-disciplinary behaviors and rationalizing the authority of some over others (Foucault, 1991; Rutherford, 2007). Foucault's later work also identified an additional form of governmentality that relied on techniques to manipulate external conditions to constrain and motivate particular behaviors, beyond direct control. This neoliberal governmentality operates through subjects motivated by economic interests that respond to interventions primarily by civil society vis-à-vis markets (Foucault, 2008). Extending this concept to environmental governance, neoliberal environmentality is characterized by strategies to create incentives and markets that motivate “environmentally friendly” decisions (Adams, 2015; Fletcher, 2010). From this lens, neoliberalism is but one form of governmentality that strives to organize economic activities in a particular way. A neoliberal governmentality generates and operates through a neoliberal subjectivity that is oriented toward self-care and personal responsibility (Lemke, 2011) and motivated by entrepreneurialism and competition (Foucault, 2008). These different forms of governmentality (e.g. sovereign, disciplinary, neoliberal) operate together, but also produce contestations leading to political struggles over appropriate and effective means of governance (Foucault, 2008).

Fletcher (2010, 2017, 2020) has extended this concept of multiple governmentalities to examine neoliberalism and environmental politics. This work builds from a Foucauldian framework to better understand market-based practices for environmental management and the commodification of environmental services, which have been broadly labeled as “neoliberal conservation” (Igoe and Brockington, 2007; Sullivan, 2006). In light of observations of neoliberalism's heterogeneity, context specificity, dynamism, and frequent departures from economic doctrines (Brenner et al., 2010; Castree, 2006, 2010; Dempsey and Robertson, 2012), Fletcher (2020) proposes bridging the concept of multiple environmentalities with Gibson-Graham's (1996) conceptualization of “diverse economies.” Fletcher describes the principles, policies, and practices that follow from different “philosophies,” including sovereign, disciplinary, truth-based, neoliberal, and communal governmentalities. Following Foucault (2008), Fletcher (2020: 489) emphasizes that multiple governmentalities “overlap, lean on each other, challenge each other, and struggle with each other” and argues that “what we call politics consists largely of debates concerning the relative merits of—and potential for combining—these different strategies.” As a practical and methodological matter, it follows that a researcher can attend to the philosophies, principles, policies, and subjectivities that shape governance processes and observe how these intersect with different economic activities—characterized by different forms of labor, transactions, property, enterprise, and finance. This framework thus seeks to provide a conceptual link between discursive framings, subject formation, and political economic structures.

We engage and extend this framing of diverse ecologies to examine environmental politics as efforts to reconfigure the assemblage of actors involved in environmental management and to represent the interests of different actors as environmental interests (see also Moulton and Popke, 2017). The basic conflicts of environmental politics and political ecology are thus more than contests between overlapping governmentalities made visible in their attendant policies, philosophies, practices, and subjectivities (cf. Fletcher, 2020); they are also the processual feedbacks and interaction between governmentalities and the structural political economic changes they (re)produce.

To illustrate the point, we turn to Pittman-Robertson and its remaking over the past several decades. We analyze how this fiscal mechanism is continuously re-constituted as an institution and how changes in Pittman-Robertson reconfigure the socio-environmental assemblages and the subjectivities that link firearms and conservation. In this fashion, we contribute to scholarship that reveals the ongoing involvement of the state to establish and maintain markets, coordinating programs associated with neoliberalism, such as privatization and enclosure of resources (Berlanga and Faust, 2007; Birch, 2015; Kay, 2018). In the spirit of Moulton and Popke (2017), we also show how these political economic changes create new “complexes of humans and things” (Lemke, 2015: 201) and produce new environmental subjectivities. As a fiscal institution, Pittman-Robertson establishes policy mechanisms that link guns, wildlife, land, state and federal agencies, and private industry in this socio-environmental complex. Within this assemblage, eco-munitionary subjects are motivated to act on behalf of both firearms and environmental interests, with implications for the political economy of conservation, wildlife management, and gun use in the United States.

Pittman-Robertson—Linking firearms, conservation, and the state

In this section, we provide a brief overview of the relationship between conservation, firearms, and hunting in the United States and highlight the changes in Pittman-Robertson over time. Our discussion is based on a systematic review of changes to U.S. Code, Title 16, Section 669, the section of the U.S. Code that codifies Pittman-Robertson into law and which is modified as legislative changes stretch and layer upon Pittman-Robertson over time. We obtained the current and past versions of 16 USC § 669 from the Office of Law Revision Counsel's web site (https://uscode.house.gov) for amendments since 1994 (1994, 2000, 2006, 2012, 2018, and current versions). We used a difference checking tool (https://diffchecker.com) to identify changes in text among these documents and to ascertain when changes took place. We also compared these to the original text from 1937 and amendments made in 1970 and 1972. These versions of the code were obtained from the Library of Congress online archive. In the following sections, we describe these changes and the resultant shifts in the relationship between firearms and conservation.

Reproducing wildlife and hunters

The North American landscape has been transformed by hunting and firearms (Cronon, 1983; Jacoby, 2001; Taylor, 2016). By the 18th century, overhunting and habitat destruction had contributed to the extirpation of many species across the eastern United States (e.g. Isenberg, 2000). This devastation spread and accelerated as European settlers expanded their occupation and colonization of lands in the western United States. Enhancements to the power and accuracy of firearms contributed to both this expansion and the decimation of wildlife populations, supporting indiscriminate killing of bison and other species for commerce and recreation. Efforts to eradicate wildlife served a dual purpose for colonizers: removing perceived threats to agrarian livelihoods from predators and perceived pests and also destroying the livelihoods and sources of sustenance of Indigenous Peoples (Jacoby, 2001; Taylor, 2016). As such, firearms, laws to govern firearms use, and hunting were important tools in the conquest of human and nonhuman populations across North America.¹

The eradication of wildlife, particularly large game species, raised concerns among government officials and an elite class that valued recreational hunting for sport (Cronon, 1996; Taylor, 2016). In an effort to restore the species of concern, many local and state governments restricted or completely prohibited hunting in many areas (Belanger, 1988; Foster et al., 2002).² By the late 19th century, every state had some form of hunting regulations in place, and game commissioners were common at the county or state level (Belanger, 1988). Many states and the federal government also began to set aside land as game reserves to support growth of wildlife populations and to support recreational hunting, even when this involved forcible removal of human populations from these areas or alienated the poor from their livelihoods (Dowie, 2011; Jacoby, 2001; Spence, 2000; Taylor, 2016).

Despite the emerging regulatory landscape related to hunting and wildlife management, there was little funding available to support wildlife restoration projects or the monitoring activities of wildlife wardens and commissioners. Most states had limited requirements for hunting licenses at the time and these funds were commonly diverted to purposes other than wildlife management. In 1937, the Pittman-Robertson Act transformed the funding model for wildlife agencies in the United States. This legislation transferred revenues from an existing 10% excise tax on “firearms, shells, and cartridges,” exclusive of “pistols and revolvers,” to a fund dedicated to wildlife restoration projects and required states to have a centralized wildlife management agency (some did not yet have these) and to use all hunting license fees exclusively to support these agencies. Since its establishment, Pittman-Robertson has generated $14 billion (not accounting for inflation) and in 2021 alone, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (USFWS) apportioned over $1.1 billion in funds through Pittman-Robertson (USFWS, 2022).

In its original form, the Pittman-Robertson Act allocated funds directly to states for wildlife restoration activities, including land purchases for wildlife recovery, land improvements for wildlife management, wildlife research, and wildlife reintroduction. The original legislation defined wildlife restoration projects as:

The selection, restoration, rehabilitation, and improvement of areas of land or water adaptable as feeding, resting, or breeding places for wildlife, including acquisition by purchase, condemnation, lease, or gift of such areas or estates or interests therein as are suitable or capable of being made suitable therefor, and the construction thereon or therein of such works as may be necessary to make them available for such purposes and also including such research into problems of wildlife management as may be necessary to efficient administration affecting wildlife resources, and such preliminary or incidental costs and expenses as may be incurred in and about such projects. (Pub. L. 75-415)

Since its creation, amendments to Pittman-Robertson have expanded the set of goods taxed to fund wildlife restoration and the permissible uses of these funds. During the first three decades of its existence, Pittman-Robertson changed very little, but major changes occurred with the FAWR Amendments of 1970 and 1972. These amendments redirected excise taxes on archery equipment, handguns, and handgun ammunition to Pittman-Robertson (Crafton, 2019). The amendments in the 1970s also expanded the acceptable uses of Pittman-Robertson funds beyond wildlife restoration activities and dedicated a portion of Pittman-Robertson funds to hunter safety and education programs. With these changes, the allowable use of funds included “the construction, operation, and maintenance of public outdoor target ranges, as a part of such program” (Pub. L. 91–503). This marked a shift in Pittman-Robertson from strictly supporting wildlife restoration projects to also directly supporting hunter education and training. It is also the beginning of the use of funds for construction of shooting ranges, although at the time these ranges were required to support hunter education activities.

Reproducing firearms use

Pittman-Robertson is widely celebrated for stabilizing funds for wildlife agencies and supporting the recovery of numerous species across the United States (e.g. Arnett and Southwick, 2015; Belanger, 1988; Duda et al., 2010). These accomplishments are presented as a success of the users pay model (Arnett and Southwick, 2015; Geist et al., 2001; Organ et al., 2012), in which those that benefit from the use of a resource bear the primary costs of its management. Though not explicitly framed as such, the original Pittman-Robertson legislation reflected the logic of users pay as it focused on the taxation of guns and ammunition used by hunters and the use of funds for conserving and restoring wildlife habitat (Belanger, 1988; Kallman, 1987). Existing histories of Pittman-Robertson commonly argue that Pittman-Robertson intentionally sought to tax the wares of hunters to generate revenue for the maintenance of the resources that they utilize (e.g. Crafton, 2019; Williamson, 1987). The amendments to Pittman-Robertson to include excise taxes on handguns and revolvers in 1970, however, expanded the legislation to weapons primarily used for non-hunting purposes, thereby establishing all gun users (vis-à-vis manufacturers) as payers.

Alongside the shift in the items taxed by Pittman-Robertson, trends in hunting and the reasons for firearms ownership have also changed. The number of hunters in the US peaked at 17 million in 1980 but subsequently dropped to 11.5 million by 2016 (USFWS and USCB, 2016).³ Overall, hunting participation has declined from about 8% to 4% of Americans.⁴ Meanwhile, gun and ammunition sales have dramatically increased, generating record revenues for Pittman-Robertson in recent years (Casellas Connors and Rea, 2022). The growing firearm sales generally represent increasing sales for “defense” and “security” purposes (Southwick Associates, 2017) and correspond to increasing sales of handguns and AR-style rifles, also called modern sporting rifles. The combination of these trends has disrupted the assumed relationship among hunting, guns, and conservation that undergird the Pittman-Robertson model (Casellas Connors and Rea, 2022).

In recent years, these changes have inspired transformations to the Pittman-Robertson Act to both increase hunting participation and to support a wider group of firearms users. Amendments to Pittman-Robertson in 2000 dedicated $3 million to multistate conservation grants, which support regional programs, including hunter recruitment and retention programs. The prioritization of projects supported by these multistate grants is overseen by AFWA, a professional and lobbying organization founded in 1902 “to advance favorable fish and wildlife conservation policy and funding” (AFWA, n.d.). Specifically, AFWA organizes a committee comprised of fish and game department heads, conservation organizations, sportsmen organizations, and industries that “support or promote hunting, trapping, recreational shooting, bow hunting, or archery” (16 USC § 669(h)(2)(b)). These changes thus drew private organizations directly into the decision-making process about the use of funds, albeit a small portion.

This amendment also introduced the term “recreational shooting” into Pittman-Robertson for the first time and made it easier to use the funds for the promotion and practice of recreational shooting. A subtle change in 2000 removed prior language that tied shooting range projects to hunter education, thereby expanding opportunities to leverage funds for shooting infrastructure. More recently, the Target Practice and Marksmanship Training Support Act (signed into law in 2019) and the Modernizing the Pittman-Robertson Fund for Tomorrow's Needs Act (included in the House Appropriations Bill, H.R. 1865, in 2019) amended Pittman-Robertson to make it easier for states to take on shooting range projects by extending the time period to accumulate and access apportioned funds from two to five years for range projects. The 2019 amendments also decreased the matching fund requirement for shooting ranges from 25% to 10% and allowed for in-kind matches in the form of land. Finally, the 2019 amendments explicitly permit states to purchase land for range construction and encourage coordination with federal agencies to construct ranges on federal lands.

The amendments in 2019 continued the stretching of Pittman-Robertson beyond its initial wildlife restoration and later hunter education objectives. The most recent version of Pittman-Robertson explicitly states the intent to support recreational shooting in its introduction: “one of the purposes of this chapter is to provide financial and technical assistance to the States for the promotion of hunting and recreational shooting” (16 USC § 669). Prior to 2000, the words shoot, shooter, and shooting never appeared in Pittman-Robertson. The 2000 text of Pittman-Robertson, however, included the term “firearm shooting range” three times and “recreational shooting” once, and the 2019 version includes “shooting” and “shooter” 26 times, including 11 references to “recreational shooting.” The 2019 amendments also dedicate $5 million “exclusively for making hunter recruitment and recreational shooter recruitment grants that promote a national hunting and shooting sport recruitment program, including related communication and outreach activities” (16 USC § 669(h)(2)(b)). This $5 million fund is part of a revised Multistate Conservation Grant Program and thus can only be used for projects on the priority list created by AFWA (in collaboration with a board of partners, including the firearms industry, as described above). In the following sections, we consider how this shifting relationship between firearms and conservation has been mobilized and rationalized. We examine how AFWA and its partner organizations present this relationship between firearms and conservation and discuss the implications of this discourse.

Environmentalism and guns

AFWA has been central to Pittman-Robertson since the law's inception. The organization advocated for the passage of Pittman-Robertson in 1937 and has lobbied for recent amendments. In its current form, AFWA includes member organizations that are classified as governmental, affiliate, and contributing members. Governmental members of AFWA include U.S. state and territory wildlife agencies, federal agencies (e.g. U.S. Department of Agriculture, USFWS, Bureau of Land Management) and Canadian wildlife management agencies. Affiliate members include organizations representing wildlife management professionals, university wildlife programs, and fisheries managers. Contributing members include over forty private organizations, spanning an array of conservation, sportsmen, and trade industry groups. These organizations contribute to the Association through their membership dues and support the objectives and mission of AFWA, but are not allowed to vote on some matters.

Given the important role of AFWA and its members in (re)shaping Pittman-Robertson over time, we examined how contributing member organizations present the relationship between conservation and firearms. We identified all contributing member organizations from the AFWA web site and then used an advanced Google search of each organizations’ website to identify materials mentioning “Pittman-Robertson,” “P-R,” or “Wildlife Restoration Act.” We focused on the contributing members to understand the discourse emanating from groups immediately affected by the tax. From our initial search, we selected documents and content that specifically addressed the relationship between conservation, hunting, firearms, and/or shooting sports. This process yielded a total of 143 documents from 14 organizations.

Data were analyzed in an iterative, abductive process (Timmermans and Tavory, 2012). Building from our theoretically informed focus on the evolving relationship between conservation, hunting, and firearms, we first undertook in vivo coding (using nVivo 12) of the documents to identify statements related to the relationship between conservation and firearms, as well as Pittman-Robertson. This round of coding maintained the terminology and voice used by the organizations themselves (Thornberg and Charmaz, 2014). We then followed this with focused coding, reviewing the documents based on significant and common codes from the first round of open, in vivo coding (Thornberg and Charmaz, 2014). At this stage, we identified five broad overarching themes: Conservation and the 2nd Amendment, Gun Sales as Conservation Practice, Preserving Outdoor Traditions, Political Processes, and Institutional Processes.

After coding the AFWA documents, we reviewed materials from two other sources based upon the aforementioned themes. First, we reviewed the videos on the website for Partner with a Payer (PWP), a program established by the National Sport Shooting Foundation (NSSF) through the support of a multistate conservation program grant.⁵ The program arranges visits between fish and wildlife agencies and the manufacturers of the goods taxed under Pittman-Robertson. Programming includes “facility tours” of firearms factories by fish and game staff and “field tours” where industry representatives visit projects funded by Pittman-Robertson. The documented field tours included visits to wildlife restoration projects and shooting ranges. The videos include many clips of interviews with representatives from state and federal agencies, firearms manufacturers, and trade industry organizations. At the time of our analysis, six of the videos on the web site were relevant to Pittman-Robertson (others concerned the Dingell-Johnson Act). We undertook descriptive memoing and transcribed relevant quotes while watching the videos (Creswell and Poth, 2018; Thornberg and Charmaz, 2014). We focused strictly on the spoken elements of the videos and did not incorporate visual representations into our analysis (c.f. Rose, 2016). In addition to the aforementioned themes, Tax Payment as Partnership, and Tax Payment as Investment, also emerged as themes. Second, we utilized the Office of Law Revision Counsel's web site to obtain Senate and House reports related to the Modernizing Pittman-Robertson Fund for Tomorrow's Needs Act, the Target Practice and Markmanship Training Support Act, and other related bills (a total of seven reports).⁶ These reports provide statements of purpose and some background for relevant bills, offering insights into the objectives of lawmakers.

After this initial coding and memoing process, we utilized Fletcher's diverse ecologies framework to support a Foucauldian discourse analysis (Hajer, 2005; Waitt, 2010). In this analysis, we sought to identify the “storylines” and “subject identities” advanced in the discourse (Hajer, 2005), and how these rationalize the relationship between firearms and conservation. Thus, we built upon Fletcher (2020) by examining the principles and subjectivities that support and reproduce the firearm industry's position within this conservation complex.

Gun use as benevolent conservation

Many of the documents we reviewed advanced a discourse that positions gun users and the gun industry as benevolent and voluntary contributors to conservation. Although excise taxes on firearms and ammunition are mandated by the federal government and payments are made by manufacturers, AFWA affiliates frequently presented these payments as willing contributions to conservation by hunters and gun buyers in general. For example, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership (2017) argues that “sportsmen are consistently willing to tax themselves to contribute more.” NSSF expands on this idea of willing, rather than compulsory contributions:

… this user pays, public benefit model is extremely successful because sportsmen and women and the industries that serve them have always been willing to pay extra to enhance, expand and protect America's hunting, shooting and conservation heritage. (NSSF, 2021)

Through this refiguring of the tax mechanism as a voluntary contribution, gun and ammunition buyers are imagined as philanthropic donors to environmental causes. Hunters and shooters, through contributions to Pittman-Robertson, are presented as central forces in the salvation of the environment. As NSSF puts it,

Healthy wildlife populations and habitat ARE NOT a product of nature … The abundant wild game populations and productive habitats we enjoy today would be a historical footnote if not for the financial intervention of hunters and shooters like you. (NSSF, 2016)

Or, in the words of the National Wild Turkey Federation (NWTF), as quoted on the NSSF website:

Hunters were the first conservationists. Their work and support is responsible for the comeback of the wild turkey and many other wildlife species. The sportsmen and women of this country have done more for wildlife and their habitat than any other outdoor group. Because of this fact, NWTF is more than a conservation organization. They’re also a driving force in protecting the hunting heritage for this simple reason: Without shooting, you wouldn’t have hunting. Without hunting, you wouldn’t have conservation. Without conservation, you wouldn’t have wildlife. (NSSF, 2017)

Although hunters and gun users are frequently presented as the donors, industry is also recognized for its role. In a video for the PWP program, one USFWS employee explained the relationship between ecosystem health and the firearms industry: “We have healthy ecosystems that are managed scientifically and it's directly because of the funding provided by manufacturers” (PWP, 2022). In this framing, healthy ecosystems and habitat are produced through the support of the firearms industry and all gun buyers. One article on the Ducks Unlimited web site describes the willingness of industry to take financial risks to restore nature:

The shooting sports industry strongly supported [Pittman-Robertson], even at the risk of losing sales, at a time when most Americans had little money to spend on recreation. The USFWS distributes the tax revenues to state conservation departments, which partially match federal funds, largely with money raised from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses. In this way, all gun buyers and participants in the shooting sports—even those who don't hunt—directly support wildlife habitat conservation. (Young, n.d.)

The idea of voluntary payment, rather than taxation, constructs the identity of a conservationist gun user and conservationist gun industry. The conservationist gun user is presented as a benevolent donor and consenting participant in wildlife management programs. This distances Pittman-Robertson from compulsory taxation and reframes firearms purchases as financial contributions, which signal a commitment to conservation. As in the assertions above that “hunters were the first conservationists” (NSSF, 2017), the discourse evokes a sense of pride in their contributions and provides a moral distinction between hunters and other outdoor recreationists and industries. The discourse from AFWA and its partners maintains the agency of all gun users and morally elevates them. Other outdoor-related industries and groups, by contrast, are painted as free riders, benefiting from the benevolence of firearms manufacturers and gun users: “We are still waiting to see the financials on what anti-hunting interests contribute to conservation. I wouldn’t recommend holding your breath in the meantime” (Sportsmen's Alliance, 2014).⁷

The conservationist gun user identity provides a rationale for the continuation and acceptance of the current model, even though a large and growing fraction of gun users are not hunters (Casellas Connors and Rea, 2022; Duda et al., 2021). In this manner, sportsmen groups and the firearms industry have cemented the rhetorical and symbolic linkage between guns, hunting, and conservation centered on a shared lifestyle that involves firearms use and environmental philanthropy, but not necessarily hunting or wildlife “use.” In the words of the NSSF, “The funds generated from your purchase of firearms and ammunition can have a direct impact on the future of our hunting and shooting lifestyle” (NSSF, 2016). The production of this identity also seeks to bolster continued support for payment into a user pays model of wildlife conservation, even where the payers are increasingly disconnected from the use of wildlife, and seeks to unite conservationists and gun users (hunting and non-hunting) against a common threat: losses of Pittman-Robertson revenue due to declining gun sales and regulation.

Partners in growth

An emerging discourse goes beyond celebrating this contribution to actively advocating for the generation of these funds by expanding firearms use. This process is intertwined with the recharacterization of excise tax payments and taxpayers as discussed above. Framed as a donor with reasonable expectations and interests, the firearms industry is able to assert that it has a legitimate claim to participate as a partner to fish and wildlife agencies in the process of monitoring and prioritizing the use of their contributions. PWP, in particular, advances this understanding of the relationship between the firearms industry and wildlife agencies, and materials from this program repeatedly draw attention to this “partnership.” As one USFWS employee states in a PWP video:

I think Partner with a Payer and the opportunity to experience these tours of manufacturing plants is so important to state and federal agencies because we are ultimately a partnership. These manufacturers are critical and it is an opportunity for all of us to learn about each other and to learn what contribution they make to this partnership. (PWP, 2022)

Partnership, however, also suggests an expectation of reciprocal benefits. Partners are entitled to certain levels of engagement in decision-making, such as selection of grant recipients in the multistate grant program, and benefits from programming. In this manner, Pittman-Robertson is expected to provide clear benefits to the firearms industry and tax contributions are presented as investment in industry. In another PWP video, an employee of a gun manufacturer explains, “my feelings toward the excise tax, I mean if there's no animals out there, there's gonna be no need for the firearms in the hunting market. It's only gonna help us for the future of the firearms industry” (PWP, 2022). In this narrative, excise tax payments sustain hunting by way of support for wildlife agencies, thereby supporting the sale of hunting supplies and supporting the firearms industry.

The growth in the firearms industry, however, is increasingly associated with the sale of firearms for non-hunting purposes, and there is an understanding that Pittman-Robertson can support the growth in these other gun uses and the firearms industry as well:

… decades of sound investment, wildlife management and conservation, and increased recreational access have significantly helped the shooting sports industry grow to where it is today. The excise tax program is an investment in the continued growth of our industry. (NSSF, 2021)

Here, Pittman-Robertson becomes an object for market expansion, providing a return on investment for firearms manufacturers. The industry is explicit in this line of thinking; a report from an industry research firm estimated the profitability of several Pittman-Robertson funded projects, including grant funds for improvements to a shooting range in Oklahoma, which “provides industry a 358% return” (Southwick Associates, 2020). As the report states:

Every wildland, field or marsh that has been maintained or restored, every hunting site that has been “opened,” and every range that has been developed using [Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration] investments provides another opportunity for more hunting, shooting sports, and archery enthusiasts to enjoy their passion. And that translates into more equipment sales …. The formula could not be simpler: invest in the resource, improve your bottom line. (Southwick Associates, 2020: 7)

The logic of economic growth and support of private industry also undergirds changes to Pittman-Robertson and decisions about fish and wildlife agency activities. From this position, the increased support for shooting ranges are also sensible investments to support increased use and sale of firearms and ammunition, thereby increasing revenue for both industry and wildlife agencies. The Senate report accompanying the Target Shooting and Marksmanship Training Support Act clearly states this intent:

The objective of this legislation is to help address a deficiency in opportunities for Americans to engage in recreational and competitive shooting safely on both public and private lands by allowing states to allocate a greater proportion of their federal Pittman-Robertson wildlife funds to the development and maintenance of public shooting ranges. Ultimately, these opportunities should increase sportsmen's participation and generate more overall funds that can then be allocated through Pittman-Robertson. (U.S. Senate Report 116-8)

This is a divergence from the historical conceptualization of users pay that focused on benefits flowing to wildlife users, specifically hunters. This reframing imagines benefits flowing back to the payer-partners, who are framed as industry or gun users, not just hunters and other outdoor recreationists. The discourse surrounding user pays has thus shifted from a focus on a particular resource and its users to a focus on who makes payments—the firearms industry and gun users—even as most gun use is decoupled from hunting. User pays is thus inverted from a model where who uses a resource should pay to support its management to a model where who makes payments should receive support for their desired uses. This logic is apparent in recent amendments that stretch and layer upon Pittman-Robertson to extend resources to support recreational gun use.

A shared threat—Gun regulation

The discourse above shows how Pittman-Robertson works through the identity of the conservationist gun user, which bridges hunting and non-hunting gun uses through a supposed shared interest in a lifestyle related to firearms use. Gun users, conservation groups, and wildlife agencies are discursively linked through an interest in crafting an infrastructure that supports a right to access, carry, and use firearms. This imaginary of a common lifestyle and identity among hunting and non-hunting gun users is, in turn, bound up with ideas about shared threats from gun regulation.

Given the direct financial linkages between firearms and conservation, firearms regulations that would reduce gun sales would also reduce conservation funding. A technical review published jointly by the Wildlife Society and Boone and Crockett Club articulates this point, linking the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution directly to the success of conservation:

The ability of private citizens in the U.S. and Canada to own firearms has in no small way shaped the course of conservation application of the [North American] model [of Wildlife Conservation]. In the U.S., the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution clearly establishes the lawful basis for firearms ownership and use, including hunting. Suppression of firearms ownership would functionally eliminate hunting as a management concern and as a management tool, and hunters as the primary advocates and funding source for conservation …. Restrictive firearms laws at the federal level in Canada and in some states (e.g., Massachusetts) may inhibit recruitment and retention of hunters. Legal access to sporting firearms for all citizens in good standing is essential to maintaining a core base of wildlife conservation advocates and a critical funding source. (Organ et al., 2012: 25–26)

Although Pittman-Robertson has always entangled guns and conservation, the changes in recent years and the emerging discourse reflect the growing use of this legislation to directly support a particular understanding of Americans’ right to bear arms. This is apparent in the senate report on the 2017 Hunting Heritage and Environmental Legacy Preservation (HELP) for Wildlife Act⁸:

…. because of Pittman-Robertson excise tax payments, sportsmen and associated manufacturers are the largest financial supporters of wildlife conservation throughout the United States…. Despite such contributions and the growing popularity of recreational shooting, Pittman-Robertson funds have not always been used in a manner that encourages such opportunities …. If anything, there is a shortage of money and support for the building and expansion of public target ranges on national forest and Bureau of Land Management lands. Conversely, providing states with increased flexibility in the use of Pittman-Robertson funds for projects would increase opportunities for the country's growing population to embrace treasured public lands and their 2nd Amendment rights. (U.S. Senate Report 115–168)

Whereas industry and sportsmen groups present Pittman-Robertson Act as supportive of Second Amendment Rights and the firearms industry, other taxes on firearms are commonly framed as a threat to gun rights, industry, and conservation. Some organizations suggest that other (proposed) taxes on firearms and ammunition are unconstitutional and would jeopardize revenues to Pittman-Robertson. In reference to an editorial in the New York Times proposing a tax on ammunition, NSSF stated:

… this tax would have an adverse effect on wildlife conservation funding. If hunters cannot afford ammunition then there is no need for hunting licenses, which are the primary source for conservation funding. Critics so often forget that hunters are the greatest champions of wildlife conservation. But not just hunters would be adversely impacted. Shooters, who buy more ammunition would be hit even harder by the price increases, drive them off the firing line leading to shooting ranges shuttering. The money for conservation that goes into the Pittman Robertson Trust Fund from the sale of ammunition to both hunters and shooters would also decline as sales drop due to price increases to cover the tax. Furthermore, taxing ammunition to the point where the average person cannot exercise a fundamental right is an unconstitutional restriction. (NSSF, 2012)

Pittman-Robertson links various groups together in a shared concern for preserving and expanding sales of firearms and ammunition, which is bound with the practice of environmental conservation as well. In the following section, we argue that the foregoing patterns are indicative of diverse environmentalities and that together these overlapping “arts of government” are produced by, and help produce, a distinct form of subjectivity: the eco-munitionary subject.

Eco-munitionary subjects

Co-constitutive governmentalities

The shifts in Pitman-Robertson and the discourse surrounding it demonstrate multiple philosophies of governance, blending sovereign, disciplinary, neoliberal, and even communal governmentalities (Fletcher, 2017, 2020). For instance, the policies and practices of state and federal wildlife agencies reflect characteristics associated with sovereign forms of power. State-level wildlife management agencies leverage funds collected under the sovereign power of the U.S. Federal Government to reproduce life that is classified as the property of the state (game species). These agencies manage access to these animals through regulations and distribution of access rights (hunting permits) to a monitored group of resource users (hunters). These techniques of sovereign power are seemingly irreconcilable with the conservative political ideology of personal freedom and limited government associated with contemporary gun culture and conservative politics (Melzer, 2012; Warner and Ratcliff, 2021). Yet the firearms industry and sportsmen organizations continue to celebrate their “contributions” to Pittman-Robertson. AFWA has long advocated for Pittman-Robertson, and the firearms industry has even advocated for Pittman-Robertson to include taxes other firearms accessories (Duda et al., 2021). As we elaborate below, this does not suggest an acceptance of the sovereign power of the state; rather the discourse above directs gun users, state agencies, and the firearms industry to support and cooperate with this legislation through alternative philosophies of governance, notably neoliberal and disciplinary. These tensions help to explain shifts in Pittman-Robertson and its persistence as an institution.

The discourse surrounding the conservationist gun user identity does not depict a subject obedient to authority; instead, it depicts an individual whose fiscal contributions are motivated by self-discipline, self-interest, and collective responsibility for conservation and wildlife management. In the context of non-hunting gun users, acceptance of these regulations is framed as good citizenship in the gun community and a moral virtue. In this manner, taxation is reframed as gifting to support common property. This interest in collective responsibility for common property (and practices of commoning) reflects a communal governmentality.⁹ Meanwhile, materials from the firearms industry and the PWP program market this relationship and normalize firearms sales as a source of conservation whereby motivated individuals are voluntarily and rationally funding something that they value—indicative of a neoliberal governmentality. Educational tools promote the ongoing acceptance of this model and a sense of self-discipline and gratification from association with this program. Of particular importance are the ways that wildlife agencies, sportsman and conservation organizations, and firearms trade groups discursively weave the consumption and use of firearms together with resource stewardship and conservation. As the Boone and Crocket Club and Wildlife Society explain, “legal access to sporting firearms for all citizens in good standing is essential to maintaining a core base of wildlife conservation advocates and a critical funding source” (Organ et al., 2012: 26). This discourse creates a relational, sense-making dependence between environmental agencies and the firearms industry, thereby supporting the reproduction of the material, fiscal dependency between these actors.

Other studies have illustrated the ways that multiple governmentalities may interact (Fletcher, 2017), often leading to conflict or failure of policies (Youdelis, 2013). Our analysis similarly reveals how multiple and even contradictory modalities of governmentality comingle and intersect, but in so doing create broad-based support for particular policies. Nagle and Vidon (2022) have also noted the multiple governmentalities at play in bridging conservation and hunting, noting how the hunting industry discursively connects the sale of certain goods to conservation, thereby hiding the contradictions between neoliberal and disciplinary governmentalities. Their work highlights that hunters and anglers are constructed as conservation-minded subjects, but primarily act through consumption, reflecting a neoliberal environmentality. Our analysis shows a hybrid governmentality that also engages other groups beyond hunters, including firearms users, the firearms industry, and government agencies, in a mutually constitutive relationship. Similarly, Montes and Bhattarai (2018) recognize multiple technologies of governance interacting in completmentary ways to form a “variegated governmentality.” Here, we see Pittman-Robertson's persistence and transformations as supported by a variegated governmentality with elements of sovereign, disciplinary, and even communal governmentalities visible. All play important roles in shaping the ways that hunters, gun users, wildlife managers, and the firearms industry come to understand conservation and firearms.

Multiple governmentalities, thus, work together to form a coherent subject, the eco-munitionary subject, who acts to (re)reproduce the relationship between firearms and conservation. The eco-munitionary subjectivity that results is not singularly pro-gun nor singularly pro-conservation. Rather, eco-munitionary subjects may be pro-conservation by way of gun and pro-gun by way of conservation. Although they may seem to be contradictory, multiple governmentalities interact to direct the eco-munitionary subject toward reproducing the relationship between firearms and conservation and this particular conservation complex.

Eco-munitionary subjects and political compromise

Attending to the ways that policies like Pittman-Robertson help produce ideologically hybrid subjectivities helps explain otherwise surprising patterns of political contention and compromise. For example, in mid-2022, the House of Representatives passed the Restoring America's Wildlife Act (RAWA) with bi-partisan support. Companion legislation in the Senate had 16 Republican co-sponsors (Benshoff, 2022). The proposed law would amend Pittman-Robertson by adding an additional $1.3 billion annually to conservation funding from other funding sources and would require 25% of funds to be spent on species listed under the Endangered Species Act.¹⁰ As a matter of policy, the change would stabilize and increase the annual funds for wildlife restoration projects, including management activities for nongame species. As a matter of politics, the reforms could alter the existing relationship between conservation, hunting, and firearms interests. This legislation has invited attention to Pittman-Robertson from an environmental constituency with little-to-no history of lobbying for guns or hunting policy (e.g. The Nature Conservancy and Sierra Club).

RAWA would also reduce the proportion of funds for wildlife management derived from firearms. Nonetheless, many firearms and hunting advocacy groups have celebrated the bill's advance. The Boone and Crocket Club (2022) said that “RAWA is a critical piece of legislation that will provide substantial new funds for state and tribal fish and wildlife conservation efforts and has long been a priority for the hunting conservation committee.” Ducks Unlimited (n.d.) proclaimed that, “We thank our friends in the House of Representatives for prioritizing this landmark conservation legislation.” Even the National Rifle Association (2022) republished the Ducks Unlimited statement via its hunting-focused outlet, American Hunter. The concept of the eco-munitionary subject helps make sense of these patterns of political support and alliances. As much as Pittman-Robertson has woven support for guns into the politics of conservation, it has also woven support for conservation into the politics of guns.

Pittman-Robertson reflects a blending of governmentalities that have simultaneously bolstered wildlife conservation and the firearms industry. Although issues of conservation and firearms are often associated with competing political ideologies and parties in the United States, Pittman-Robertson has repeatedly succeeded in mustering bipartisan support. Nonetheless, this “success” also raises ethical concerns, as conservation benefits from social unrest, fear, violence, and racism linked to gun sales (see Casellas Connors and Rea, 2022 for elaboration on these ethical concerns). Pittman-Robertson also constrains participation and representation in environmental decision-making, giving a privileged position to the interests of hunters and firearms users even as other outdoor activities continue to grow. This analysis helps to explain the preeminence of firearms in conservation practice and speaks to the question of participation and representation in conservation policy and practice. Our analysis offers insights into how the idea of taxation meriting influence has emerged and shapes participation in conservation decisions. Understanding these changes and the governmentalities that support the reproduction of firearms use via conservation practice are essential steps to confronting the ethical dilemmas surrounding Pittman-Robertson.

Political economic change and environmental subjectivity

This analysis reveals the complex interactions between the state and capital, and the co-constitution of identity and political economy (Fletcher, 2020; Goldman, 2001: 200; Salafsky et al., 2001). Rather than being strictly framed by a particular political ideology, the eco-munitionary subject demonstrates a hybridization and mutual reinforcement of differing (and sometimes competing) ideals. As seen with the example of RAWA above, these environmental subjectivities may also act back to reshape political economic structures and policy. This provides an additional mode of explanation beyond traditional political economic structures to understand how environmental policy takes shape.

In the case of Pittman-Robertson, the neoliberalism of the past several decades has not subsumed all of the environmental management process, but private industry is able to extract value from and even direct the labor of the state. The state continues to use sovereign power to extract funds to support management of land and resources envisioned as commons, but these projects also create infrastructure (shooting ranges, public lands, wildlife, and a gun using public) that facilitate private enterprise. This extensive ecological, legal, and civic infrastructure, maintained by the state, facilitates the circulation of firearms and ammunition. The discourse above demonstrates that the firearms industry is explicitly aware of the returns on investment yielded by the excise taxes it pays to fund this infrastructure. In similar ways, staff at state agencies may share an understanding of serving a united hunter and gun user citizenry, but they also operate within a set of conditions that incentivize efforts to support and even expand firearms use. With the decline in hunting in many areas, shooting ranges provide one opportunity to diversify revenues and to support demand for the products that generate tax for conservation purposes. This policy context creates a mechanism by which expansion of firearms use (through policies and infrastructure to promote it) is a rational and calculated strategy to increase funds for conservation. Nonetheless, Pittman-Robertson is still distinctly state-centric and characteristically non-capitalist. The state is active in extracting taxes and disseminating these to other state agencies for projects targeted toward the maintenance of state-owned resources viewed as a “public trust.” Meanwhile, hunters themselves provide funding and volunteer labor to the state—wildlife management agencies rely on the efforts of hunters to maintain wildlife populations at target levels, sometimes corresponding to other ecological objectives.

This persistence of non-capitalist human-environment relations can be interpreted through the lens of Gibson-Graham (1996) or Mies (2001; see also Collard and Dempsey, 2020). Whereas Gibson-Graham argued that the non-capitalist economic arrangements that always operate at the interstices of capitalism demonstrate opportunities for transformation, Mies argued that capitalism is propped up by these non-capitalist activities and uses these to extract greater surplus value. In other words, non-capitalist economic activities are often still exploited by and constitutive of capital. The case of Pittman-Robertson illustrates how environmental subjectivities can bridge and coordinate diverse economic activities toward such outcomes.

Eco-munitionary subjectivity bridges diverse environmental interests, assembling the relationships among a vast infrastructure of wildlife, institutions, individuals (hunters, conservationists, state employees, etc.), and the firearms industry. In this manner, practices to expand both the population of wildlife and gun users become interconnected. In line with a focus on political economy, this example illustrates that state conservation efforts may be made consonant with the dynamics of capitalism, accumulation, and growth. Nonetheless, Pittman-Robertson has been repeatedly reformed, and proposed changes (e.g. RAWA) provide a reminder that alterations to the fiscal models of conservation are possible and provide means to reshape the material and discursive relationships between guns and conservation. State-led and non-capitalist economic models can both reconfigure the socio-environmental milieu and the interests served through the reproduction of a specific set of relationships. As they do, changes to the political economy of conservation will necessarily be accompanied by the re-imagining of environmental subjectivities and the production of new environmental identities.

Conclusions

The relationship between firearms and conservation was understood for decades to be mediated through hunting. The expansion of Pittman-Robertson in 1970 to include handguns and the rapid growth of gun sales in the United States since the mid-2000s, however, have disrupted this relationship. With fewer firearms and ammunition sales related to hunting, the relevance of Pittman-Robertson to the firearms industry has also changed. The “modernization” of Pittman-Robertson in 2019 was a step toward realigning Pittman-Robertson with contemporary gun uses, offering more support for non-hunting activities like sport shooting. These changes (re)configured the relationships that constitute wildlife management practice in the United States, stretching and layering new objectives onto Pittman-Robertson and wildlife agencies. As Gibson-Graham (1996) highlight, however, social and economic relationships must be continuously (re)produced through discursive and material practices. Environmental discourses from wildlife agencies, the firearms industry, and sportsmen groups naturalize the relationship between firearms and conservation and reconcile this policy with other political and social positions. This discourse generates support for Pittman-Robertson by presenting an identity of a conservationist gun user who voluntarily participates in this tax program. We have argued that this discourse and these policies operate through and to (re)produce eco-munitionary subjects—actors that seek to reproduce a mutually constitutive relationship between firearms and conservation. The analysis of Pittman-Robertson demonstrates the ways that environmental subjects can serve to bridge competing logics of multiple governmentalities. In this manner, environmental subjectivities both shape and are shaped by political economic conditions.

Further, an attention to multiple governmentalities helps make sense of Pittman-Robertson's longevity and its ongoing place in environmental politics. The production of eco-munitionary subjects has allowed Pittman-Robertson to play an instrumental role in re-imagining the place of firearms, their manufacturers, and their users in conservation. In the context of these changes, it is important to recognize that Pittman-Robertson continues to direct significant resources to wildlife agencies for projects that reproduce wildlife and their uses. Nonetheless, this non-market mechanism's continued success is tied to its shared benefits for the firearms industry. Reconfiguring this assemblage is challenging, not only because of the financial ties (policies), but also because of the subjectivities and principles that reproduce the dependence of conservation on the firearms industry.

Highlights

Amendments to the Pittman-Robertson Act have shifted funding to support the reproduction of firearms use in general.

Multiple forms of governance interact to support and expand the relationship between firearms and conservation.

Discourse surrounding Pittman-Robertson positions taxes as voluntary contributions and constructs an identity of all gun users as conservationists.

Eco-munitionary subjects act to advance both firearms sales and wildlife management, and they support the reproduction of this relationship.

Changes in the fiscal models of conservation funding alter subjectivities, and these subjectivities, in turn, shape political economy of conservation.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the supportive and useful feedback from three anonymous reviewers.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University and the National Science Foundation (grant numbers NSF-1923668, NSF-1832191).

ORCID iDs

John P. Casellas Connors

Elizabeth A. Carlino

Notes

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