On lead bullets, judges rule against environmentalists

[benEzra]

37. Hunting accounts for a very, very small percentage of rounds fired annually.

Target shooters account for the overwhelming majority of the 14-20 billion rounds of ammunition sold annually, and most of that is recycled. Only about 1 in 5 gun owners is a hunter, and many/most hunters also own nonhunting guns. Also, by its nature, target shooting consumes a lot more ammunition than hunting does.

The big problem is that there are no substitutes for lead in handgun and small/intermediate-caliber rifle ammunition that aren't either banned by Federal law (copper, tungsten, steel, bronze, etc. are considered armor piercing, as are most potential lead substitutes), impractical (bismuth, aluminum, gold, silver), or toxic. Back in the 1980s, a lot of recreational target ammunition used a mild steel core, but gun control activists got that banned in 1989 and 1994, as I recall. There is also no good substitute for lead styphnate based primers (the percussion cap that initiates ignition; alternatives so far are unreliable). So a ban on lead ammunition would be a ban on most ammunition, and a functional ban on most guns.

If you want to reduce the use of lead-core ammunition in target shooting, repeal the law against "armor-piercing" non-lead ammunition, and come up with an inexpensive and abundant alloy that approximates the softness, density, and ductility of lead for those uses that require it.