Enviros Sue EPA Over Lead

No lead is a no brainer

Two problems with banning lead in ammo, both centering around a substitute metal: "softness" and price. Lead is a soft, cheap metal. Being soft allows it to expand when it strikes, creating a wound cavity. Better expansion means a bigger cavity, allowing the target to bleed out quicker and suffer less. Copper is twice as hard as lead, tungsten about 5x as hard. If you replace lead with a harder metal, as some have proposed, then it will cause the bullet to expand less (or not at all) and over-penetrate. All bullets have some level of penetration. If a bullet has a high velocity, for example, it naturally has a higher ability to pierce any object. The end result of having a harder metal would be a bullet that punches straight through a target, possibly hitting something behind it, and not creating an effective wound cavity. This would mean that your target would not go down, would suffer longer, and you would have to shoot it several more times to create a similar result as one lead bullet. This would be terrible for hunting, and even worse for self defense, police, or military usage. And, again, the cost. Bullets would cost substantially more, and you'd have to use more of them. Right now, lead costs about $1 per pound, copper is about $4 per pound, and tungsten is $16 per pound (London Metal Exchange prices as of 2 Dec). What happens when you replace an object that is made primarily of cheap material with material that costs 4 to 16 times as much?

Another thing that people don't consider: armor piercing ammunition is illegal to civilians. All that the label "armor piercing" means is that it's designed to penetrate body armor, which, you guess it, is done by adding more "harder" metal to the composition of the bullet, such as tungsten, copper, or steel, to enhance the penetration effect. Standard full-metal jacket ammunition (a lead core surrounded by a copper "jacket"), even though it's not "armor piercing" by label, will still penetrate many types of body armor (depending on the caliber and the distance it is being shot at from), as well as buildings, cars, animals, and people. Replace the lead with solid copper or tungsten and I guarantee it will pierce even military-grade body armor (although it won't create a very large cavity, like I mentioned earlier). This, would be illegal to own. If we ban lead ammo, without having a PROPER substitute, then I'm sorry but it amounts to gun control in disguise, and the people will be denied their ability to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights. That would not withstand a court challenge, and all of this effort would have been nothing more than a waste of taxpayer money. If we could find a suitable substitute that cost about the same, then this would be a no-brainer, but so far no one has put one forth. And if there were one, then ammunition makers would probably already know about it.

So basically, it went like this:

Silly Hippies: "EPA, you need to ban lead now, never mind we have no real scientific data."

EPA: "Even if we wanted to, we are prohibited from law to do so."

Silly Hippies: "We're going to sue you now so a court can tell us that our suit has no standing because you are prohibited by law from complying with our silly demands."

Yup, typical liberal nonsense.

Mr Zell !!!!

Your explanation rocked, may I use it? even if it is wasted on people who are not arguing on logic or reason, compassion is only applied to fellow lemmings.

Ammunition is exempt from regulation by the EPA-the last enviro-whacko's who tried this BS were told the same thing-why do the enviro's now expect a different result?
The definintion of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result-it is applicable here.

"Project Gutpile" consists of 1 guy,and a blog with 85 comments(that was as of 8-27-10,when the EPA denied the last attempt to ban ammo.) Mr. Prieto seems to think that he has followers/members for this group-which,by the way,has ZERO credible data linking exposure to lead to animal deaths,other than possibly studies the CBD used in the first attempt to ban ammo that date from the 70's and concern lead shot,and waterfowl. (lead shot is already banned for waterfowl hunting.)
The following is an excerpt from an article written by david E. Petzal-rifles column write for Field&Stream magazine,since I was a kid(I'm now 51)...
"I’ve hunted big game and eaten it for forty-odd years, and according to a petition filed with the Environmental Protection Agency by the Center for Biological Diversity I should no longer be breathing air and writing blog posts because of all the lead I’ve ingested."
I agree100% with that statement-
Myself and my family,including cousins,uncles,grandparents,parents, and children have all eaten wild game harvested with lead ammo,some of us for more than 50 years,and NOT ONE has any effects of lead poisoning.
There is ZERO credible evidence that suggests that lead hunting ammo causes deaths in wild animals,(other than the ones being shot at),just do a little research on the subject,and use data from this century,not some studies from the 60's and 70's like the last people used. If lead ammo is killing off Bald Eagles-then why has the populatuion increased over 700% in recent years?
Again-this is an absurd attempt by enviro groups to ban ammo-they are hoping to use it as a way to enact more gun control-and to stop hunting.
The economic damage that would come from a lead ammo ban would be widespread-and catastrophic.
"The catastrophic drop in ammunition sales which is sure to follow a lead ban will eliminate much of the current funding for wildlife preservation, and the resulting economic dislocation will cost far more jobs than anyone in the EPA can imagine. Let the EPA know about this. The people to e-mail are Owens.steve@epa.gov and Jackson.lisa@epa.gov. Also, write your Congressman, and let them know how you feel about further job losses."
http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/h...
The CBD is the Center for Biologic Diversity-a group with far more attorneys on staff than biologists-and the same people who brought you the water bans due to the Delta smelt,and the Santa Ana sucker,the same people who put pictures of endangered species on condoms-are these the actions of normal,sane people?