Gun owners in New York appear to be in for some of the same types of crap that California gun owners recently got stuck with.  The lead ammo issue is one the anti-gun people, with the exception of the VPC, have been reluctant to go after for some time. It’s hard to argue that you support people owning firearms for hunting and “sporting purposes” when you’re simultaneously calling for a ban on lead ammunition.
The culture in California and a few other states have gotten to the point where a confluence of anti-gun, anti-hunting, and environmentalist concerns have merged to make pursuing the lead issue politically feasible. Of little concern to most of these groups is the fact that the shooting community has been aware of the lead issue for years, and have been actively taking steps to deal with the problem. It was the shooting community that worked with the EPA very closely on a paper regarding best practices for managing lead at shooting ranges.
This should be a major wakeup call to hunters. Unlike sport shooters, who use ranges where lead management practices can be put into place, hunters are easily painted as environmental menaces, who are poisoning fragile ecosystems by their wanton discharging of highly toxic lead into the environment. The lead ammunition hunters use was an easy target when California Condors started showing up with lead poisoning.
We have to keep on top of the lead issue, because it’s very difficult to make high performance ammunition out of other metals, and federal law on armor piercing ammunition actually interferes with that in many cases.
Also, recall back when Taurus started making copper ammo. They had to jump through an inordinate amount of hoops with ATF regarding whether the ammo was AP or some such. Alternatives will be pricey, hard to get approved, and may be illegal if ATF arbitrarily changes its mind.
Would a soft steel handgun bullet be able to penetrate kevlar? Unless it’s moving very fast, I don’t think it should…
“it’s very difficult to make high performance ammunition out of other metals, and federal law on armor piercing ammunition actually interferes with that in many cases.”
That’s what I’ve tried to explain, but a lot of people do not get it.
They allready managed to pass a ban on lead shotgun ammunition in Norway a few years back. The idea originated in Sweden, but they abandoned it after more extensive research showed it to be a minimal problem, along with the fact that a decent alternative was not available.
Here in Norway it was to late by then, it was allready on the books, and to remove or change a law after it is passed is damn near impossible in Norway. it is also a nice way for the climate hysterics to say they’ve lowered the lead we let out annually by so and so much(even if it is a naturally occuring element of the periodic table being returned to nature).
Fight it, the price of shotgun ammo alone is horrible as it is now, and the idea of what would happen to rifle and pistol ammunition does not bear contemplation. You might as well sell your guns for scrap metal if such a law that covers all ammunition is passed, because the cost of even a single range visit would be horrible.