Is the NRA Selling Us Out?

In 2005, House Natural Resources Chairman Richard Pombo, R-California and Congressman Jim Gibbons, Chairman of the Energy and Mining Subcommittee, successfully tucked 1872 Mining Law amendments into the $50 billion House Federal Budget Deficit Reduction Act, H.R. 4241. The measure that was narrowly approved by the House, 217-215, in the early morning of November 18 allowed the sale of public lands to mining companies for $1,000 per acre in an attempt to reduce our congressional deficit and generating income.

This amendment was designed to lift the 11-year Clinton moratorium on mining patents, eliminate requirement that mining claim holders demonstrate valuable mineral deposits under the land and eliminate federal royalties. The amendment would have also removed the requirement that the new owners mine the lands once they have been purchased. The Pombo/ Gibbons amendment would have allowed new owners to do whatever they want with the land including subdivision development. Furthermore, H.R. 4241 would have allowed lands contiguous to mining claims to be sold without proof that they contain valuable deposits. Mining companies could potentially purchase public lands merely by showing that someone once had an adjacent mining claim.

John Leshy, former Solicitor for the Department of Interior, stated that the Pombo/Gibbons amendments could open millions of acres of public lands for sale and that the bigger losers "are the hunters, anglers, hikers, ranchers, and millions of American families who could soon find locked gates on previously public lands."

Despite the fact that the NRA endorsed many of the 217 members of congress that voted for H.R. 4241 with the Pombo/ Gibbons amendments, NRA was silent on the attack on our nations public lands. After returning from their Thanksgiving recess in December, and after a barrage of opposition by conservation groups and many western sportsmen’s groups Pombo and Gibbons dropped their attempt to sell off our public land.