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http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/epa-reviewing-request-ban-led-bullets

The amount of lead put back into the ground from lead ammunition is so minimal, I dont see how it could make an environmental impact.

Its almost like saying the gunpowder igniting from the bullets firing contributes to global warming.

ShivanAngel wrote:The amount of lead put back into the ground from lead ammunition is so minimal, I dont see how it could make an environmental impact.

Its almost like saying the gunpowder igniting from the bullets firing contributes to global warming.

Really? Then why are shooting areas usually declared toxic after they've been shut down? And why do we use tungsten shot for waterfowl hunting?

Ok i should rephrase that.

In popular hunting areas/shooting ranges I could see this as being an issue, but this is where people are shooting hundreds to thousands of rounds a day.

In an area where 2-3 shots are fired daily the impact is not noticeable.

So the price of ammo will rise.

Vindicator#9 wrote:So the price of ammo will rise.

I dont see that as a huge deal personally....

Shooting skeet will become a lot less popular, however even on a good day of bird hunting you might go through 50 shells (and thats a pretty good haul, or you are a terrible shot).

Hell for my deer rifle i bought 6 years ago i still have the same box of cartridges i bought when i got it.

Sportshooting will take the biggest hit.

We banned lead shot for fishing in the UK.

Better buy ammo now, so you can beat the price raise be better prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse....

ShivanAngel wrote:Hell for my deer rifle i bought 6 years ago i still have the same box of cartridges i bought when i got it.

How can you own a gun for 6 years and not even put a box of cartridges though it?

Well i personally like to go out and practice alot with my guns before i go out and hunt. I mean i can see where you are coming from maybe it wont be any big deal but it will for a short period of time cause the price of ammo to soar until more companies go from the transition of lead to tungsten or whatever other metal.

Kilkrazy wrote:We banned lead shot for fishing in the UK.

Dynamite is still ok for fishing though, right?

ShivanAngel wrote:

Vindicator#9 wrote:So the price of ammo will rise.

I dont see that as a huge deal personally....

Shooting skeet will become a lot less popular, however even on a good day of bird hunting you might go through 50 shells (and thats a pretty good haul, or you are a terrible shot).

Hell for my deer rifle i bought 6 years ago i still have the same box of cartridges i bought when i got it.

Sportshooting will take the biggest hit.

Lawsuit city and violates the First Amendment.
Steel shot in shotguns is one thing. The only current variant in rifles/pistols is generally solid copper. It is substantially more expensive (2x-4x) and dangerous in that penetration capacities are "enhanced".

Pffft. Lead isn't a killer. Dihydrogen Monoxide is. We should ban that instead!

Gwar! wrote:Pffft. Lead isn't a killer. Dihydrogen Monoxide is. We should ban that instead!

I honestly don't see this passing. Even if it does, you can't remove every last home owned lead melter from this country.

You can make the sale of lead illegal though.

True.. but what would you do about lead wheel weights??

It is the prefered, cheap, lead source for most casters such as myself.

Lead has many legitimate uses outside being propelled at high velocity into squishy organic beings. Banning the sale of lead wholesale would be silly.

Gwar! wrote:Lead has many legitimate uses outside being propelled at high velocity into squishy organic beings.

Wait... what?

jp400 wrote:True.. but what would you do about lead wheel weights??

It is the prefered, cheap, lead source for most casters such as myself.

Do you seriously think the EPA cares? Thats just more lead pollution you meat eating barbarian.

LoL.

I'd need to be convinced that it is really that much of an issue. Furthermore, I don't understand why EPA would be interested instead of OSHA or state occupational health agencies. The amount of lead that is distributed around from hunting couldn't be that great, as you're talking about a relatively small amount of firearms being discharged. Firing ranges are another matter, but the *environmental* concerns are mitigated by the fact that the lead is going to end up in more or less one place, which in an outdoor range is typically an earthen berm. An indoor range is a different matter, and I've been more than a little curious about how much airborne lead is present in some of the indoor ranges I've been to.

Lead is persistent, and even today, long after leaded fuel was phased out in passenger automobiles, you'll still get lead hits in samples near roadways. For that very reason, I think it is silly to consider something like this unless you can conclusively prove ( which is going to take an enormous amount of sampling) that ammunition is contributing in any meaningful way to lead exposure when compared with other sources such as disposed batteries, airborne lead from industry, lead from roadways, etc. The money and time is better spent trying to remove lead paint from living spaces, which is indeed a very serious environmental and public health issue, particularly in lower income neighborhoods.

jp400 wrote:

Gwar! wrote:Pffft. Lead isn't a killer. Dihydrogen Monoxide is. We should ban that instead!

I honestly don't see this passing. Even if it does, you can't remove every last home owned lead melter from this country.

It doesn't really matter, the vast majority of civilian used ammunition in this country is bought and sold on the market, and such a move is unlikely to create a black market of lead ammunition. I'm sure plenty of people will still press their own casings, but in the end if passed the regulation would have it's intended effect. I'm not too certain of the ability of this to pass though, it's not a contentious enough issue to really fight for.

About 10-15 years ago, the EPA was investigating the hydraulic shop where I worked at the time. The guy that came to check out the shop freaked out when he was taking soil samples in part of the yard that was rarely used. Apparently the lead content was through the roof. We spent the better part of a day trying to figure out what the reason was until we remembered that the owner of the building was a gunsmith with a shop in front and had been there for the better part of two decades. He used that part of the yard for testing his custom chokes for shotguns. When we passed this on to the EPA guy he basicly just laughed and wrote it off. I always thought it was odd that it was apparently no big deal once he found out it was from lead shot. You'd figure that lead is lead regardless of the source, but I wasn't about to argue with him.

Frazzled wrote:

jp400 wrote:True.. but what would you do about lead wheel weights??

It is the prefered, cheap, lead source for most casters such as myself.

Do you seriously think the EPA cares? Thats just more lead pollution you meat eating barbarian.

The EPA gives no gak about lead weights.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Maelstrom808 wrote:About 10-15 years ago, the EPA was investigating the hydraulic shop where I worked at the time. The guy that came to check out the shop freaked out when he was taking soil samples in part of the yard that was rarely used. Apparently the lead content was through the roof. We spent the better part of a day trying to figure out what the reason was until we remembered that the owner of the building was a gunsmith with a shop in front and had been there for the better part of two decades. He used that part of the yard for testing his custom chokes for shotguns. When we passed this on to the EPA guy he basicly just laughed and wrote it off. I always thought it was odd that it was apparently no big deal once he found out it was from lead shot. You'd figure that lead is lead regardless of the source, but I wasn't about to argue with him.

Lead will also dissipate with rain and other environmental effects. He was probably more concerned that it was a current and recurring problem rather then one that is long gone and that you were not in any way liable for.

Grignard wrote:I'd need to be convinced that it is really that much of an issue. Furthermore, I don't understand why EPA would be interested instead of OSHA or state occupational health agencies. The amount of lead that is distributed around from hunting couldn't be that great, as you're talking about a relatively small amount of firearms being discharged. Firing ranges are another matter, but the *environmental* concerns are mitigated by the fact that the lead is going to end up in more or less one place, which in an outdoor range is typically an earthen berm. An indoor range is a different matter, and I've been more than a little curious about how much airborne lead is present in some of the indoor ranges I've been to.

Lead is persistent, and even today, long after leaded fuel was phased out in passenger automobiles, you'll still get lead hits in samples near roadways. For that very reason, I think it is silly to consider something like this unless you can conclusively prove ( which is going to take an enormous amount of sampling) that ammunition is contributing in any meaningful way to lead exposure when compared with other sources such as disposed batteries, airborne lead from industry, lead from roadways, etc. The money and time is better spent trying to remove lead paint from living spaces, which is indeed a very serious environmental and public health issue, particularly in lower income neighborhoods.

When you can't something passed in Congress, when even the courts turn against you, resort to the EPA.

Maelstrom808 wrote:About 10-15 years ago, the EPA was investigating the hydraulic shop where I worked at the time. The guy that came to check out the shop freaked out when he was taking soil samples in part of the yard that was rarely used. Apparently the lead content was through the roof. We spent the better part of a day trying to figure out what the reason was until we remembered that the owner of the building was a gunsmith with a shop in front and had been there for the better part of two decades. He used that part of the yard for testing his custom chokes for shotguns. When we passed this on to the EPA guy he basicly just laughed and wrote it off. I always thought it was odd that it was apparently no big deal once he found out it was from lead shot. You'd figure that lead is lead regardless of the source, but I wasn't about to argue with him.

As someone who works in the field I think I understand what was going on. You explained the problem, and that explanation suggested it was isolated and limited to that one small area. If samples from a site showed up having high lead hits, you need to know if this is recent, if it is part of a larger problem, and who is going to pay for it if it is a remediation issue.

Note that last part is particularly important.

Frazzled wrote:
Lawsuit city and violates the First Amendment.

Is the use of lead shot some type of religious obligation?

Frazzled wrote:

Grignard wrote:I'd need to be convinced that it is really that much of an issue. Furthermore, I don't understand why EPA would be interested instead of OSHA or state occupational health agencies. The amount of lead that is distributed around from hunting couldn't be that great, as you're talking about a relatively small amount of firearms being discharged. Firing ranges are another matter, but the *environmental* concerns are mitigated by the fact that the lead is going to end up in more or less one place, which in an outdoor range is typically an earthen berm. An indoor range is a different matter, and I've been more than a little curious about how much airborne lead is present in some of the indoor ranges I've been to.

Lead is persistent, and even today, long after leaded fuel was phased out in passenger automobiles, you'll still get lead hits in samples near roadways. For that very reason, I think it is silly to consider something like this unless you can conclusively prove ( which is going to take an enormous amount of sampling) that ammunition is contributing in any meaningful way to lead exposure when compared with other sources such as disposed batteries, airborne lead from industry, lead from roadways, etc. The money and time is better spent trying to remove lead paint from living spaces, which is indeed a very serious environmental and public health issue, particularly in lower income neighborhoods.

When you can't something passed in Congress, when even the courts turn against you, resort to the EPA.

I think this is fear-mongering. The EPA isn't "looking to ban lead bullets", they're reviewing a request from some small environmental group that I've never heard of. I imagine that they can't just totally ignore something if someone requests something and has a sheet of paper with some data to back it up.

I don't think this is the big bad government trying to find a loophole, I think this is an example of a small group of people trying to use the government to find a loophole.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:
Lawsuit city and violates the First Amendment.

Is the use of lead shot some type of religious obligation?

No, lead is highly dense and therefore useful for purposes of kinetic energy. Tungsten is probably better but expensive. Bismuth alloys are sometimes used in shotguns to replicate the performance of lead shot but avoid toxicity. Steel is also very hard and is damaging to some older guns, whereas lead is soft.

Yeah the liability part wasn't on us, but it wasn't something that had ceased to be a problem. The gunsmith still actively used that area and did so until I left. From what I had heard, he was never asked to cease shooting in the area or provide any sort of containment. *shrug*

Grignard wrote:
No, lead is highly dense and therefore useful for purposes of kinetic energy. Tungsten is probably better but expensive. Bismuth alloys are sometimes used in shotguns to replicate the performance of lead shot but avoid toxicity. Steel is also very hard and is damaging to some older guns, whereas lead is soft.

I only asked because Fraz cited the First Amendment, which made me wonder if he felt the use of lead was a religious obligation, or some form of protected speech.