Always seems like the right commentary when they bring this up.
Posted on 08/03/2010 4:25:32 PM PDT by neverdem
Lead, for centuries the core ingredient of ammunition, is now coming under attack itself.
As the American military begins to embrace “green bullets,” environmental groups are pushing state and federal officials to ban the use of lead in hunters’ guns and fishermen’s tackle.
Their goal is to protect both the animals that scavenge the carcasses of hunted prey and the people who consume meat from hunting expeditions.
On Tuesday, the Center for Biological Diversity and the American Bird Conservancy plan to file a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency seeking a comprehensive nationwide ban on lead-based sporting ammunition and fishing tackle.
The petitioners argue that “it is now incontrovertible fact” that lead fragments in the bodies of animals shot with lead bullets or lead pellets are “a serious source of lead exposure to scavenging animals” and a health risk to humans who eat hunters’ kills.
Scientists have found that chronic lead poisoning in birds leads to “appetite loss, anemia, anorexia, reproductive or neurological impairment, immune suppression, weakness, and susceptibility to predation and starvation,” the petition said.
Lead’s toxicity has long been known, and most of the uses that led to human exposure, like the manufacture of lead paint, have been banned for decades. Lead ammunition consumed only about 3 percent of the 6.4 million tons of...
--snip--
“If we had to show major population-level effects on many species to evaluate anything that caused ecological harm, we’d never ban anything,” he said.
--snip--
Ammunition manufacturers have long experimented with alternatives to traditional bullets. Bullets made from copper, bismuth and various alloys have been under development for 20 years or more. In June, the Army announced that it was shipping one million rounds of a new 5.56-mm lead-free cartridge that had been in development for a decade to its troops in Afghanistan...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Lead is all over there are open veins of it.
Its only banned for waterfowl hunting in most states.
Ah, that’s it, then. Thanks for the clarification!
Prices have come down and supplies are plentiful. Now is the time to stock up on loaded ammo and components.
When a nature nazi shows up to get my ammo will be the time the revolution starts for me.
Environmental Nazi Groups Seek Ban on Lead in Sporting Ammunition.
More correct Title.
The next step will probably be to force through legislation that all bullets be made from gold, thus, making ammunition unaffordable for everyone.
Nope,,, I can buy all the #8, 6's, buckshot all day long at wally world here in Alabama..
Watch what’s happening in California, that’s the template.
Got alchemy? lol
Today there are far fewer ducks than there were in years past before the ban on lead shot. The reason is because there are far fewer duck hunters!
Without the hunter dollars for licenses, and state and federal duck stamps there isn't enough money to pay for duck habitat improvements that were funded by duck hunters.
The best think to help wildlife and the environment would be to hang all the eco-twits!
Gold and silver are both malleable, and would work well, but cost a tad more for weekend plinking. ;-)
SILVER? Have you ever tried to cast silver bullets?
I have and I can tell you the lone Ranger didn’t cast
his own. Silver requires a much higher melting point
with a consequent higher solidification temp.
Almost impossible to cast in bullet molds, it
freezes before filling the cavity.
Centrifical casting or sand or cuttle bone
molds would work.
I once melted down some silver a jeweler friend had
gotten on a trade, it was an ingot the size of a
loaf of white bread, Spanish treasure, proof marks etc
we cast it into smaller blocks so he could handle it.
I got the leftover bits and tried to cast bullets from
it but even preheating the molds was not successful.
No wonder there are so many werewolves.
Every year millions of animals die from high speed lead poisoning
Always seems like the right commentary when they bring this up.
Yeah, that works for me as well. ‘Sides, the idea is to accumulate wealth, not shoot it off. LOL
In air, like aluminum, it ‘rapidly’ oxidizes, to form an inert protective surface coating, which is why lead looks grey, unless a fresh surface is exposed, showing the bright silver-metallic color of pure lead. That was why “red lead’ and ‘grey lead’ coatings were routinely used on bridges & other structures to prevent corrosion.
MN (IIRC, though it may have been MI) recently did comprehensive tests for lead contamination of hunters’ deer carcases, and found any contamination in edible (as opposed to bloodshot) meat to be negligible, and well within government food standards...the enviroes have already lost that bet.
How was it ‘a damned dangerous thing’ for you? were you drinking lead compounds in solution, or breathing fumes from boiling lead? Sprinkling flakes of it on your cereal, mistaking it for colloidal silver?
Please tell us. Or, as another poster asked, was this sarcasm?
>>
How was it ‘a damned dangerous thing’ for you? were you drinking lead compounds in solution, or breathing fumes from boiling lead? Sprinkling flakes of it on your cereal, mistaking it for colloidal silver?
Please tell us. Or, as another poster asked, was this sarcasm?
<<
First off, thanks for the intelligent answer to my genuinely inquisitive question. It just seems to me that the properties that make lead ideal for ammunition aren’t all that magical - weight, softness / malleability, affordability. Look at the near miraculous nature of carbon fiber and all of the naturally occurring elements it can substitute for and outperform.
I had always wondered about potential for lead buildup in the environment from expended rounds. If you’ve seen research that concludes it’s not that big a deal then I can believe it. Lead isn’t really going to degrade out in the wild so I can see where that conclusion would be accurate.
So, if there’s no imminent environmental threat from spent rounds then a rush to find a substitute is not necessary. I’m pretty good with a rifle so I know tiny variations in the makeup of a round can have significant effect on its behavior. Even if somebody developed an ideal substitute I know a lot of folks would still prefer lead in the way that some people think vinyl records sound better than cds.
I was exposed to a massive dose of lead in aerosol in college when a dumbass dumped a pile of lead into a hot and nearly empty kiln vessel. I suffered permanent brain damage and still experience nerve pain because of the exposure. Heavy metals aren’t good for living things.
It does make sense though that spent ammo isn’t a big problem if there isn’t something in the environment that is going to cause it to break down.
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