Posted on 10/27/2013 9:12:13 AM PDT by Nachum
In December, the final primary lead smelter in the United States will close. The lead smelter, located in Herculaneum, Missouri, and owned and operated by the Doe Run Company, has existed in the same location since 1892.
The Herculaneum smelter is currently the only smelter in the United States which can produce lead bullion from raw lead ore that is mined nearby in Missouri's extensive lead deposits, giving the smelter its "primary" designation. The lead bullion produced in Herculaneum is then sold to lead product producers, including ammunition manufactures for use in conventional ammunition components such as projectiles, projectile cores, and primers. Several "secondary" smelters, where lead is recycled from products such as lead acid batteries or spent ammunition components, still operate in the United States.
Doe Run made significant efforts to reduce lead emissions from the smelter, but in 2008 the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued new National Ambient Air Quality Standards for lead that were 10 times tighter than the previous standard. Given the new lead air quality standard, Doe Run made the decision to close the Herculaneum smelter.
Whatever the EPA's motivation when creating the new lead air quality standard, increasingly restrictive regulation of lead is likely to affect the production and cost of traditional ammunition. Just this month, California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will ban lead ammunition for all hunting in California. The Center for Biological Diversity has tried multiple times to get similar regulations at the federal level by trying, and repeatedly failing, to get the EPA to regulate conventional ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act.
(Excerpt) Read more at nraila.org ...
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Too hard to ban lead in bullets and shot pellets, so regulate the only lead smelter out of business.
The EPA needs to go away. It is anti-American.
just a question....
has anyone come up with a comparable composite that can take leads place in ammo?
Another production industry destroyed thanks to the EPA.
Can’t have them recycling that nasty lead now can we?
It’s better to export those jobs to China.
“has anyone come up with a comparable composite that can take lead’s place in ammo?”
Yes. But not in density.
Search Barnes.
“So if somebody wants to build a lead smelter, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that pollution that’s being emitted,”
Nah, the lead products will be imported from China.
Who in their right mind would build anything that is subject to the whims of the psychopath in the White House.
If an enemy nation took over this country they wouldn’t do anything thing different that what Uncle Scam has been doing the past twenty years.
This is where another commie lib fiasco is going to blow up in their faces. They’ll pass amnesty and the illegal aliens “citizens” will go from stealing copper to stealing lead to earn beer money. Liberal progs are morons.
No need to worry, all of that lead ore is probably on a ship to china right now for processing, and will be sold back to us at a discount (not).
In the mean time, old car batteries are going to be your only source of easily obtainable lead for the near future, that is, until the EPA/k-street/china lobby figures out how to ban them.
The EPA is incompatible with modern life.
Solid copper bullets work well for hunting, but obviously going to be more expensive. Tungsten and bismuth are used as substitutes for lead in fishing weighs.
Depleted uranium...
Hmmmm a tungsten core with a tungsten-bismuth sheath would be a penetrator. Add some magnesium to the core . . .
> has anyone come up with a comparable composite that can take leads place in ammo?
Short answer... NO!
Steel wears the rifling too fast.
Copper is fine for shooting, but is much more poisonous than lead. (A wounded animal can live for years with a piece of lead, but the same size piece of copper will form copper salts and poison them to an agonizing death.) In the 1700s and 1800s copper musket balls were labeled as poisonous by International Law. I don’t know if it’s still true; we have better battlefield surgery now and the copper would be removed by a surgeon before it got to the poison stage.
And batteries.
A lot of people are correct to assume the government doesn’t want us to have guns. Where they are mistaken is in how the government will do it.
There will not be police or military personnel going door to door searching your home. They will do it through the courts and bureaucracy by attacking the suppliers and manufacturers of guns and ammunition. They will bankrupt and destroy as many as they can, unless they toe the line and only sell to the government.
As for the ones already in possession by the people, I imagine they will be taxed and registered, with harsh penalties for those who fail to do so. The taxes will increase to a point where only the wealthy will have them. The average person will have to decide whether to give their guns up, or hide them and face prison time and fines if they get caught with them, or have to use them in self-defense.
That’s where we are headed. They won’t do something as bold as confiscate the guns head on in the open.
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