Interior Secretary Reverses Obama’s Lead Ammo Ban

Why would you voluntarily use a less effective round when hunting?

600 years of using lead bullets, with zero demonstrable environmental impact - why ban lead bullets?

 

There is little evidence, that other than waterfowl (who swallow lead pellets in to their gizzard, and keep them in their body) that there is any real environmental danger to lead ammunition. IN the case of the shot used on waterfowl, they've used steel shot for years (which has probably resulted in more animal suffering than the lead, due to the higher incidence of wounding with steel shot due to it's lower effectiveness). That said, you can feel free to use whatever ammo you want to use, just don't try to force us to use less effective/more expensive ammo.

 

Yeah - because you can commit suicide with it, if you so choose. It's their life.

Correlation is not causation. The U.S. has the most guns - it does not have the most gun violence. The homicide rate in the U.S. is 3.9/100k. Well, Switzerland has the 3rd most privately owned guns (by rate) in the world - and a homicide rate of 0.5. The correlation you're looking for does not exist.

I can deny that - because that's just pure baloney.
1. We don't have an "insane" amount of gun violence. People claim high levels of gun violence by making statistical tricks - including suicides, which are the vast majority of "gun violence". That's just crap. Suicide by hanging is the most common method of suicide in the world, and the 2nd in the U.S. (behind firearm suicide, because that's so much easier). Are you going to start lecturing us about the prevalence "rope violence"? Because, if you include suicide, "rope violence" is more common in the U.S. than gun homicide.
2. The gun violence that we have isn't due to how many guns we have - its due largely to gang violence, which most western industrialized countries don't have (it's a lot easier to crack down on gangs when you don't have a strong Bill of Rights, like we have in the U.S.).
3. American citizens who posses concealed carry permits are LESS likely to commit gun homicide (against another) then citizens w/o a concealed carry permit.

Has anyone suggested that carrying a firearm at all times should be mandatory for all citizens?



Also, in reference to your earlier comment about the Wild West, gun control laws were much stricter in the "Wild West", just fyi.

 

If you're on your own land, do as you please. Hunt with those kids bow and arrow sets, with the suction tips, I don't care. But when you're hunting on someone else's land, you follow their rules. These federal lands in question are reserved to preserve wildlife - lead can cause issues. Lead fragments can easily be picked up by scavengers and harm them.

For my own use, again, I use lead for practice. Lead is cheap. I use +P for self defense (never needed to "use", fortunately) - and quite frankly haven't been hunting in a long time, but I wouldn't use either for hunting.

 

Unless you are specifically buying lead-free bullets, you are using lead bullets. Most Full metal jacket bullets still have lead inside. Jacketed hollowpoint bullets have lead inside.

 

Who is forcing you to hunt on National Wildlife Refuge lands?

 

Well, to amend what I earlier said, I don't think coated lead bullets should be banned. FMJ is a different story - I didn't read closely on this rule, but if they required entirely lead-free bullets, that's a bit onerous.

The issues of lead bullets can still be a problem with bullets that are merely coated - but the issues with lead bullets to begin with are fairly minor, and using coated bullets fixes so much of the problem that it seems political to require "lead-free" bullets. That's just too onerous.

 

ah - for clarity, I wasn't referring to any bullets with any lead, I was referring to actual lead bullets - like these:



I know, the jokes about lc are coming - but these are for my pistol, and that's really just for fun.

 

Again: 600 years of using lead bullets, with zero demonstrable environmental impact.
You argue with concerns for which there is no actual example.

 

Well, regardless, the person ultimately in charge of NWR land decided to end the lead bullet ban that was put into place on the last day of the Obama Administration. Seems to me if it was that important, it would have been put into place years ago.

 

More proof that the left seeks only to make it as hard as possible for the law abiding to buy, own and use firearms.

 

Coated lead (well, jacketed) bullets were part of the Obama admin ban--any lead containing bullets/fishing weights were banned. http://www.theoutdoorwire.com/features/231429

 

I don't understand the big deal about lead bullets. It's not like hunters are going out and dropping deer on full auto.

If lead was so toxic, the sights of our battles during the civil war would be barren.

 

You're going to need to provide data showing how much of a problem this is.

 

I think you should be able to access this doc. See table 3 on pg 700, if you don't want to read the whole thing.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/wildsocibull2011.38.4.697.pdf


If you're trying to find out precisely how common lead poisoning is in wildlife, then you're demanding a proof that can't reasonably be given. It's wildlife.

 

$42 download.

That being the case, there's no way to support an argument for the necessity of said ban.

 

Damn, it's behind a pay wall. I don't know why academics make it so hard to get such information.

I'll post the key facts w/o a screenshot in a bit - pretty sure that'd be legally hairy.

 

The main data points is that they've found poisoning in wildlife, and the majority of poisoned bald and golden eagles (62.7% between the two) had lead poisoning, and ammunition was the primary source of said lead poisoning.

Again, we're talking about wildlife refuges on federal land. You don't have a right to hunt on someone else's land - I don't need to prove hard and fast how damaging a certain practice is to prohibit it on my land.

 

How many lead-poisoned eagles did they find?
Lead from birdshot or rifle/handgun bullets?

Federal land is public land, not the same as -your- land. False comparison.

 

Do you believe steel, copper, and other metals are not toxic, or do not pose other risks to scavengers that may ingest them? Do you belief that a properly expanded, all-copper projectile, will not cause internal bleeding upon ingestion, since it is harder than lead?

 

One has to wonder if the anti-lead crowd has considered the added suffering by animals not cleanly killed with lead-substitute ammunition, when they might have been killed cleanly with standard ammo.

 

Of course they have. It's a good reason to ban hunting.

 

You did a post on this just as I was composing mine. I have hunted extensively, helped me get through college. My Da instilled in me an ethic to never take a shot I didn't absolutely believe in my heart would result in as near an instant kill as possible; I have passed on more shots that I have taken because I wasn't going to leave the results to chance and wound an animal. One of my pet peeves is encountering animals that have been wounded and left crippled. Not putting down game with a rapid, clean kill can also put a hunter and others at risk, particularly with dangerous game...but, is that considered?

I used to build and hunt with black powder rifles. I can't imagine a substitute for lead that would be effective..... maybe depleted uranium.

 

I've had good luck with Barnes copper, but others haven't.

 

Barnes was ok for me with varmits, but I haven't used it with deer or anything larger.