Back Door Ammo Ban

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Subject: Back Door Ammo Ban
buzzard 8/26/2010 11:23:06 AM

h--p://www.ammoland.com/2010/08/25/epa-considering-ban-on-traditional-ammunition/ Ok, so a ban is a bit of an overstatement, however removing lead as an ammo component will drastically increase the price of ammunition. If you think ammo prices have been steep lately, you ain't seen nothing yet. I can still remember when the BATF declared all steel core ammo to be AP (which was utter nonsense). That jacked up prices on military surplus rifle ammo by factor of three. If lead is banned, and steel obviously isn't an option, we're left with copper. Copper right now costs almost triple what lead does. If you place a huge amount of extra demand on the supply (you know, like by requiring it in bullets), the price will skyrocket. So at the very least, this is heads up to stock up on ammo.

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YelliChink 8/26/2010 3:06:54 PM

Lisa P Jackson is a disaster. She doesn't just want to ban ammo. She also wants to ban coal mining in the US, and she must have some input to Obama admin on ceasing oil drilling operations in the Mexico Gulf.

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tigertony 8/26/2010 4:06:06 PM

Remember when they banned booze?

Do you really wanna shoot bathtub gin?

Now will it be better for anyone if my gun blows up at the range and kills 2 fellow shooters?

tigertony

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Aussiegunneragain 8/26/2010 5:22:48 PM

I've just had a flick around the web and there are a few studies suggesting that predatory birds have sufferred lead poisoning from ingesting bullet fragments from carcasses. In some cases like the California Condor it is limiting attempts to reintroduce the species into the wild. I don't agree with a blanket ban though.

A better approach would be for the shooting organisations to undertake to the EPA that they will take the initiative to educate hunters to make the effort to remove the carcasses of any game that they shoot and dispose of them properly (burning?). Are there any measures you can take to ensure that you don't ingest the lead from an animial you have shot?

If that doesn't adequately address the concern a blanket ban on lead ammo may not be necessary. Surely shooters should still be allowed to use it on the range to practice, while using some other round for hunting? Would I be correct in saying that most shooters would use the bulk of their ammo on the range anyway? Perhaps they could only ban lead from being used on wildlife? Though does lead ammo have sufficiently different ballistic properties to the other options, that would prevent from being useful as a practice round?

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earlm 8/26/2010 5:59:43 PM

Your post above ventures into the arena of using a triple digit IQ to analyze an issue and suggest policy to make things better. This no longer occurs in the US and no politician will ever advocate your well thought out position.

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smitty237 Yeah, but..... 8/27/2010 1:30:00 AM

Some ranges, particularly police ranges, have banned lead ammo. The Kansas City, MO Police Department built a new academy facility and an indoor range a few years ago, but they are unable to sell the property where the old, outdoor range was located because of lead contamination. As a result they are stuck about an acre or so of land they can do nothing with. As a further result they have banned lead ammo from their new range to comply with EPA regulations. The new ammo required for their ranges is much more expensive, but.........tough luck. The same could go for private ranges as well, who have to comply with EPA and OSHA guidelines regarding lead contamination. For indoor ranges this means all kinds of ventilation, and for outdoor ranges it could mean that using lead ammo could result at best in them being unable to sell the property in the future, and at worst facing the prospect of the EPA condemning it and/or requiring expensive clean up. For shooters that use lead ammo on private property there is the concern that they may not be able to sell their property or will it to their heirs, because some EPA agent hostile to gun ownership could declare the land contaminated. A clever, albiet Machievellian, move on the part of anti-gunners.

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Aussiegunneragain 8/27/2010 4:06:58 AM

Surely the land could be decontaminated by digging up the mounds and half a foot or so of soil?

Anyway, another thing I've been thinking is that if they are going to ban lead, doesn't that have implications for humane hunting? My understanding is that FMJ rounds have been banned for game use in some places, because they hold together in the animal and don't get a kill.

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Aussiegunneragain 8/27/2010 4:07:56 AM

It's worth a shot though, if you don't ask you don't get.

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buzzard 8/27/2010 8:46:11 AM

Yes, by far the most ammo is used for target practice. Hunting ammo is always appreciably more expensive being designed for expansion and accuracy (cheaper usually just for the former, more expensive, for both. ) Even if you pick hunters vs. target shooters, they will use more ammo at the practice range than on the hunt simply sighting in their rifles (pistols etc.). I should mention that a serious hunter who actually tries to do risky shots will practice a fair amount with their expensive hunting ammo since there will always be variance in ballistic performance between bullet types. A lot of hunting rounds now are made of pure copper (for the sake of performance, not green concerns).

As it stands lead is banned from shotgun shells for use in hunting. The hunters use steel, bismuth, or steel/tungsten alloy shot. Steel is the cheap option, while the latter two get you closer to lead in density and thus ballistic performance.

As for practice vs. real and lead vs. other stuff, like for the shotgun shells you need to play games with alloys and metals to get the same density as lead. For ammo used as sparsely as hunting ammo this is doable (well for big game at least, varmint hunting could get extremely expensive if you banned lead. ) Of course steel, as I mentioned is alreay off the table which cuts you options down a good deal for finding an economical replacement.

Though I would probably want someone to ascertain the credibility of the claims about the evil effects of lead in the first place. After we got burned to the tune of millions of malaria deaths owing to Silent Spring, these people's claims ought to be taken with some damned huge grains of salt.

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buzzard 8/27/2010 8:58:44 AM

Surely the land could be decontaminated by digging up the mounds and half a foot or so of soil?

You are assuming environmental regulations in the U.S. rational. I can assure you, they are not.

For example, back when I worked at Sandia National Laboratories, there was a project where the goal was to figure out how to decontaminate stainless steel pipes from decommissioned nuclear plants (in particular those that made plutonium for bombs, the work was with Russia). Most of the radioactive waste from a decommissioned plant, by mass, is the piping from the cooling system. You end up with tons of stainless steel pipe which is hot. However the radioactivity is only due to salts which have been rendered radioactive and trapped in micro cracks in the pipes. The steel itself is not actually radioactive. Thus if you find a processing method which will strip out those salts and leave the stainless steel you will have both eliminated a bunch of nuclear waste and recovered a bunch of nice useful stainless steel. We used a process called Electro Slag Remelting to do this. I won't go into the details of the process, but it effectively concentrated the radioactive portion of the waste into the slag pile when the process was done, and the quantity of waste was lowered drastically (can't recall the exact figure, but upwards of 90%). It also left the stainless steel decontaminated to the extent that its emissions were lower than background radiation.

We even set up a pilot program over in Russia to try this out at one of their 'Nuclear Cities'. This was a formerly closed city which had done nuclear weapons fabrication.

Now you might ask why did all this work end up happening in Russia rather than here? Doesn't the U.S. have nuclear waste of this sort which could use the process and free up useful material while cutting waste quantity? Yes, yes we do, but regulations in the U.S. stipulate that once a material is radioactive, it is always radioactive. So even if the stainless gets processed to a state where it is completely safe, it must still be sequestered in a nuclear waste dump according to regulations.

I could see the EPA be equally stupid about lead and it would be completely par for the course.

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doggtag 8/27/2010 10:17:15 AM

h--p://www.ammoland.com/2010/08/25/epa-considering-ban-on-traditional-ammunition/

Ok, so a ban is a bit of an overstatement, however removing lead as an ammo component will drastically increase the price of ammunition. If you think ammo prices have been steep lately, you ain't seen nothing yet.

I can still remember when the BATF declared all steel core ammo to be AP (which was utter nonsense). That jacked up prices on military surplus rifle ammo by factor of three. If lead is banned, and steel obviously isn't an option, we're left with copper. Copper right now costs almost triple what lead does. If you place a huge amount of extra demand on the supply (you know, like by requiring it in bullets), the price will skyrocket.

So at the very least, this is heads up to stock up on ammo.

It's been a long time since I've bought shotgun ammo or fishing sinkers (weights),
but I remember (early 90's?) there was bismuth shot (sinkers, pellets, etc) available on the market as a sub for lead.

Can't recall if there were serious price differences or not, though.

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