doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com NRA needs to get involved in the lead ban issue

It all leads to the same place... the courts. The courts in this country have never been far sighted when it comes to protecting or expanding our freedoms and there we don't have a snowballs chance in hell of getting our message across. Most shotgunners could care less, with pumps and autos they shoot steel and they probably never heard of other non-toxic shot and probably couldn't tell the difference, except for price, between TM, Hevi-shot and steel. With bismuth going belly up we just have to pay up until someone else steps up and starts producing it but the days of cheap ammo even if bismuth returns are pretty much over and done with.

Cheap ammo doesn't enter the mind of a chap who shoots a 20K+ vintage gun.
He wants suitable, altho' expensive ammo...and still there's nothing on the shelves.
Wait til you upland smallbore guys tottle-up to your fav nation forest and see it's a "lead free zone" next year!
Better be a keen shot at 5.00-7.00(or more) dollars a nontox pop - if you can get it and getting it, is the problem.

It is heartening to see that most of us see the lead bans for what they are. It is disheartening to see a few who fall for the crap and/or have a defeatist attitude. They probably also still beleive in global warming after a year where it snowed in Baghdad and San Diego, Arctic sea ice ice 22" thicker than normal, Antarctic sea ice is thicker than anytime in 5 decades, and Australia is having a record cold summer. I'm sure they are resigned to paying for carbon tax credits and higher fuel taxes while Al Gore jets around the world burning more fuel in a day than the rest of us use in a year. Me, I'll keep fighting till they drop the lid on me. I'm wondering if anyone is making shot out of depleted uranium, and after this Western Pennsylvania winter, I'd like to find a low pressure powder that emits greenhouse gasses.

Salopian, Lowell, Keith: I think we disagree only on what "they" should be doing---the NRA, gunners goosing our organizations, bringing in young blood etc. If the NRA---one of the most influential lobbies in the US--- is not leading the charge, Why? My guess is that its considers the ban a lost cause. Has any one asked; does any one know why, if that's the situation?

And, of course, you're ALL NRA members, right?

I am

Me Too!

It doesn't hit home until you drive out to your local gun club and see a chain across it with a sign, closed by the Sheriffs Department due to lead contamination, it doesn't hit home until you walk out of the woods and see the land owner standing there with a state cop asking you if you saw these 'NO Trespassing' signs, it doesn't hit home well you get the idea. And fight this until the end and exactly where are you going to fight this until the very end??? Where, on this Board, down at the local bar, at home in your living room, grumbling underneath your breath about our new and improved 'Nanny' state, that will do a lot of good.
It won't hit home until you see the inside of a courtroom, and in there you'll or anyone of us will be like what Clay Allison said before they hung him, "I see a whole lot of enemies and powerfully few friends"

Or, if you're a Canadian, you work quietly to provide support to a minority conservative federal government on its pledge to get rid of the gun registry, in a country where the majority wants to get rid of all guns. What you don't do is get in that public's face. I know Canadians who meet regularly with their MPs, including cabinet ministers---members of this board, of all political convictions---to counsel and advise on the big ownership issues. Fighting lead now is being as useful as mowing your lawn while your roof is on fire.

Lead sinkers under ½ ounce are banned in New York State now. More states are considering it. I agree that the lead issue is a backdoor way to gun control, I agree that there is no real science behind it, (By the way, the way I read the California lead ban, lead shotgun pellets are banned in the condor areas.) It is coming and we may or may not be able to stop it.

These issues are a symptom, not the disease. The problem is that we are losing rod and gun outdoorsmen every year and not recruiting. You can’t blame the NRA unless you are in the NRA and trying to influence its direction. Anyone who thinks we would be better off if there had never been an NRA is an idiot who knows nothing about the history of gun control legislation as far as I’m concerned. (Remember registering for shotgun shells?)

The problem is that most of us would rather sit at our computers and rag each other trying to sound like experts, when we could be taking the neighbor kid fishing, shooting, or hunting. As you read this many of you are coming up with excuses about why that’s not possible.

I’m writing about this stuff all the time now and I go on the boards to find out what’s going on. Everyone gripes, but most of us won’t even email a letter. When I was volunteer field staff for NRA it was the same thing except there is some effort in writing a snail mail letter. To email a congressman is no harder than posting on this board, how many of you have emailed your congressman, or the NRA to express your opinions lately?

Yes, we probably will lose lead shot and bullets to junk environmentalism, but the real reason will not be that the fringe environmentalists beat us, it will be because we were too lazy to mentor young people in our passions and because we sat on our butts and whined to each other while it happened instead of getting involved in the organizations that were formed to give us a voice.

Sorry if I’ve hurt your feelings, but I’ve been writing on a closure of a fishing area (Hatteras NC, Piping Plover, 4 plover chicks shutting down the economies of 7 small towns) and the fishermen are wringing their hands and sniping at each other instead of getting involved in a real way, too.
There, I still like all of you, but I got it off my chest.