Finally, our friend Jim Matthews of the Outdoor News Service reports that the lead ammo ban is costing the California Department of Fish and Game significant amounts in lost fees. Matthew’s reports that nearly five percent fewer deer hunters and fifteen percent fewer wild hog hunters took to the field in deer zones and pig hunting regions where hunters were mandated to use non-lead ammunition. The lost tag fees cost the Department of Fish and Game more than $200,000 in revenues.
Every frustration convinces a few more hunters to hang it up, which is exactly the intention. A five and fifteen percent drop isn’t insignificant, especially for cash strapped California. And what will suffer in the end? Wildlife conservation efforts.
The lead issue is way overblown. I spend a lot of time on poorly ventilated indoor ranges probably being exposed to heroic doses of lead, and the lead hasn’t done anything to hurt me. Right?
I always said that CA will pass so many egregious anti-gun laws that eventually everyone who has anything to do with making small arms or their accessories would simply elect NOT to sell in CA to avoid all the liabilities and law suits. The CA government will be forced to open a state armory in order to manufacture guns according to their absurd codes and regulations just to equip their law enforcement agencies. This is probably true of ammunition as well. Just imagine, state manufactured, lead-free, micro-stamped, non-expanding, underpowered, unreliable, ammunition as MANDATORY for law enforcement agencies in CA. Talk about cops being out gunned by criminals! Especially if they are issued poorly built, obsolete, unreliable designs that are built by the state armory and designed by bureaucrats.
These idiots don’t realize that all you have to do if you’re exposed to lead is to take in a glass or two of orange juice or a couple of Vitamin C tablets. The Vitamin C will bind to the lead particles and help flush it out of your system.
I have friends who work in lead refineries and are perfectly fine.
Of course, the bureacracy is not shrinking to meet the shrinking demand. When the bureacrats are affected by their own decisions, then we will see some sanity from government.
This lead issue is so bogus. As an environmental engineer, I want to run into the regulatory agency and bust some heads. Someone seems to have forgotten that lead occurs in the environment …… like in silver deposits, like those in Silver City CA for example.
Maybe one day it will give you super powers! Like the ability to resist radiation or something.
I think someone should get his lead levels checked…
The war on Lead is based on one thing and one thing only, and that’s politics. “Guns are bad, and guns use Lead, therefore, lead is bad.”
You don’t see this kind of insane regulatory paranoia for any other heavy metal. Not Arsenic, not Mercury, not Copper, not Zinc, not anything. All of these things occur in nature, being elements, but you don’t see any concern about anything but Lead, even though long exposures to just about anything will eventually result in illness that may someday kill you. The modern fear and paranoia about Lead is based only on ignorance and bias.