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Zeroing In on Lead in Hunters’ Bullets
New York Times ^ | March 15, 2012 | DOUGLAS M. MAIN

Posted on 03/16/2012 7:24:49 AM PDT by Greystoke

Citing risks to birds and to human health, roughly 100 environmental groups formally asked the federal Environmental Protection Agency this week to ban or at least impose limits on lead in the manufacturing of bullets and shotgun pellets for hunting or recreation.

The use of such ammo by hunters puts about 3,000 pounds of lead into the environment annually and causes the death of 20 million birds each year from lead poisoning, said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate at one of the groups, the Center for Biological Diversity. Consumption of meat from animals that are shot with lead bullets also contributes unacceptable levels of the metal into people’s diets, Mr. Miller said in a phone interview.

(Excerpt) Read more at green.blogs.nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government
KEYWORDS: alinskytactics; ammo; backdoorguncontrol; banglist; corruption; democrats; envirofascism; epa; fraud; guncontrol; lead; leadbullets; liberalfascism; progressives; propaganda; undertheradar
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To: Greystoke

” the death of 20 million birds each year from lead poisoning,”

Yeah, the high velocity strain of poisening.


41 posted on 03/16/2012 9:32:40 AM PDT by CSM
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To: Bushbacker1
Didn’t they ban lead in shotgun shells a number of years ago? This is trying to ban lead in bullets!

Yes and No

In 1976 EPA regulations that came about due to lead in paint. It was one of those protect the women and children things.

Ammunition (shotgun & rifle) was exempted, due to the fact that hunters and target shooters were organized against it. Lead used for fishing was not exempted. Fisher persons did not see the handwriting on the wall.

Now for the rest of the ammunition story or death by a thousand paper cuts started here in Missouri.

Only 4 years later The Swan Lake Zone was created. No lead shot for waterfowl. The same for the other waterfowl hunting areas controlled by the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC).

Within a very few years it was expanded to statewide, no lead shot for waterfowl because ducks were diving down and digging the lead shot buried in mud and eating it . The same for geese, they could tell the difference between a ear of corn and a #2 lead bird shot . All this was done in the name of safety for the ducks and geese.(/s)

After the bans steel shot was the only choice for a number of years. After using lead shot, steel shot was like shooting ping pong balls at ducks and geese, due to the lower muzzle velocity and much lower sectional density of the steel pellets IMHO. More crippling and lost birds occurred.

About the year 2000 along came Bismuth and then HeavyShot loads. Duck and goose hunters now had the equivalent of lead shot at 3X to 5X the cost, but they did the job!

On to the next paper cut. About 5 years ago MDC said that hunters had to use steel or approved shot shells on 7 other areas they owned for doves, turkey etc. These were not waterfowl hunting areas. The number of MDC steel shot areas may have increased in the last 5 years.

Dove hunting with shot shells that cost 16 cents each vs shot shells that cost up to $1.25 each is a whole different ballgame for someone who shoots like I do.

Here in Missouri about 98% of the land used for hunting is privately owned. Will the next paper cut be no lead on private land?

On the subject of lead in rifle bullets. The MDC agrees with the studies make by the state of North Dakota that a deer harvested with bullets that contain some lead poise very little if any danger to those who eat the deer meat.

So far there have been no changes in the Missouri rifle regulations vs the wacko laws in a state like California.

42 posted on 03/16/2012 11:36:00 AM PDT by TYVets (Pure-Gas.org ..... ethanol free gasoline by state and city)
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To: Greystoke

What is best for Moonbats? If the wookie gets a second term in the White House, open season will be declared


43 posted on 03/16/2012 11:40:37 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 ..... Crucifixion is coming)
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To: nobamanomore
On another thread here on FR or from the NRA it was reported these 100 groups were using the figures of 3,000 tons for hunters AND 80,000 tons for target shooters.

Bird shot from skeet, trap or sporting clay ranges is reclaimed and sold as recycled shot for reloading.

I am sure the same is done on rifle ranges if it can be dug up.

These wacko groups and the EPA do play fast and loose with the unsubstantiated numbers they pull of out the blue.

44 posted on 03/16/2012 11:55:33 AM PDT by TYVets (Pure-Gas.org ..... ethanol free gasoline by state and city)
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To: Greystoke

Hunters and their families average 12% less lead in their bloodstreams than the general population.

They’re like the original “Organic Dudes”, man....


45 posted on 03/16/2012 12:07:11 PM PDT by buffaloguy (uab.)
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To: Greystoke

Wheel weights? Free?

Nobody gets them free. It has been two decades or so since that was the case.


46 posted on 03/16/2012 12:14:22 PM PDT by buffaloguy (uab.)
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To: Greystoke

13.7 million birds die each day from natural causes. Even if the 20 million were corrct, which it is not, it wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans.


47 posted on 03/16/2012 12:22:12 PM PDT by buffaloguy (uab.)
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To: Greystoke
Questions: Lead is a naturally occurring substance. How is it that there's a problem? And we know that a gazillion birds die of lead poisoning exactly HOW? More Bravo Sierra science from the EPA?
48 posted on 03/16/2012 3:18:21 PM PDT by MasterGunner01 (11)
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To: gettinolder

Here is a little history regarding the near complete emasculation of our infantry along with a little info about what makes a round really lethal as compared to inconvenient, and how what you postulate has already occurred:

The round for the M16 that we used in Vietnam was the 55 grain M193. It was the most lethal military round ever devised that I know of. Read the following link to understand in more detail why this was, but in brief instead of being a hole-puncher it was a soft target destroyer. Muscle and soft organ hits produced mush or puree if you prefer; single hits to bone in a limb could and often did result in the limb being ripped off. This means that a single solid hit would nearly always incapacitate and often kill - which is what shooting someone in a war situation is all about. I’ve treated men stitched five times in an arc across the chest (right side of course) from an AK, but I never heard of a similar incident occurring in regards to the M16 Vietnam era M193 round.

And then post Vietnam this happened:

“During the 1970s, NATO members signed an agreement to select a second, smaller caliber cartridge to replace the 7.62 mm NATO cartridge. Of the cartridges tendered, the 5.56x45mm was successful, but not the 55 gr M193 round used by the U.S. at that time. The wounds produced by the M193 round were so devastating that many[6] consider it to be inhumane.[7][8] Instead, the Belgian 62 gr SS109 round was chosen for standardization. The SS109 used a heavier bullet with a steel core and had a lower muzzle velocity for better long-range performance, specifically to meet a requirement that the bullet be able to penetrate through one side of a steel helmet at 600 meters. This requirement made the SS109 (M855) round less capable of fragmentation than the M193 and was considered more humane.”(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.56%C3%9745mm_NATO)

As a piece of equipment the M16 was and is a miserable design - no one knows how many good men died in Vietnam or since because the sorry thing jammed, the only thing that made it worth using was the round it shot because it put the fear of God in the enemy. In Vietnam, fire fight frequency and duration plunged in areas where local units switched from M1 carbines to M16s - as soon as Charlie heard the sound of M16s the whole game changed because it is one thing to face a weapon that only punches holes but another to face one that will rip your arm off or turn your internal organs to mush while leaving an exit wound that looks like a mini-grenade explosion.

What was this Mother of a round? It looked like an overgrown 22 being a 5.56×45mm 55 grain copper jacketed Spitzer bullet with a lead core. The thing was it was fast, generally a shade over 3,000 fps, and when it hit it tumbled, to use the parlance we used back then, or yawed, as they say now. When it tumbled it was designed to break up, and because it had a soft lead core the pieces would also deform. This means that the kinetic energy of that fast moving bullet would be nearly instantaneously transferred to the surrounding tissue resulting in a little entry wound and a horrendous exit wound if there was one. Hollow points are poor cousins compared to what this round would do.

What it wouldn’t do was penetrated hard targets worth beans. But that was alright because it was the best anti-personnel round ever used and jungle fighting is most often up-close and personal.

The switch from the American 55 grain M193 to the European M855 with its steel penetrator tip and marginalized lead core was a step backwards from being a soft target destroyer back towards being just a hole puncher. It was an opening move in a deliberate campaign to emasculate our fighting forces.

This campaign was then escalated by the introduced of the M4 carbine, a sawed off M16 with a 14.5 inch barrel instead of the 21 inch M16 barrel. Anyone who knows anything about guns knows that they and their ammo must be design for each other. If you change the barrel length you must change the ammo. The 21 inch M16 barrel provided the environment in which the powder charge could accelerate that killing round to the velocity it needed to achieve the energy required to break up on impact and take the target down. The M4’s runt of a barrel can not do that. In the M4 the old 55 grain M193 would lose much of its effectiveness, with the 62 grain steel-lead core M855 the gun becomes so ineffective that even four hits to the chest may not instantly kill or incapacitate, but leaves an enemy combatant still fighting.

For our infantry this campaign of emasculation is just about complete: the pigmy barreled M4 has mostly replaced the M16, and in 2011 they switched from the marginal M855 to the M855A1 round.

The M855A1 is a Green Bullet, meaning it contains no lead, being a copper jacketed bullet with a steel tip on a copper core. It was the brain child of the Clinton administration who thought all that lead the military was throwing around just wouldn’t do. It is NOT an Anti-Personal Soft-Target round, it is a designated Armor Penetrating round. In other words it is a hole puncher. It is designed to NOT liberate energy on soft targets. We have gone from arming our troops with the most devastating rifle round ever designed to arming them with weapons designed to not kill the enemy, but rather to ensure that our troops will be emasculated to the point that they will not be able to defend themselves, much less take the fight to the enemy.

Like the stoppage of production for the premier air superiority fighter, the F22, and the pouring of billions up billions of dollars into a designed second rate air craft, the F35, the campaign to disarm and emasculate the United States military is nearing its goal. And it is being done right in front of our faces with our tax dollars.


49 posted on 03/17/2012 12:23:55 AM PDT by bacsi
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To: Bushbacker1
Didn’t they ban lead in shotgun shells a number of years ago?

No. Only the use of lead for hunting waterfowl. And that 3,000 pound figure is laughable. Works out to 48,000 one ounce loads. 3,000 tons, maybe. And places where waterfowl have tradionally been hunted are lousy with lead already.

50 posted on 03/18/2012 10:00:06 AM PDT by gundog (Help us, Nairobi-Wan Kenobi...you're our only hope.)
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