The Environmental Protection Agency's recent rejection of a petition from the Center for Biological Diversity to ban lead bullets as an environmental hazard won't the be last time the issue challenges the 2nd Amendment, according to civil rights activists.
The recent petition would have banned lead from all bullets, shotgun pellets and fishing weights.
While the EPA responded negatively to the plan, it isn't going away, gun rights activists say.
Gun Owners of America Communications Director Erich Pratt called the move "a back-door gun ban attempt."
"This is not the first time this line of thinking has been used, and we're not surprised that an administration that has been frustrated by the Congress is now trying to take gun control in its own hands and trying to do something administratively," he said.
Sportsman's activist and 2nd Amendment analyst David Codrea explained it's good that the EPA turned down the petition, because the agency was getting involved in an area over which they have no jurisdiction.
"The Center for Biological Diversity has put forth this petition to the EPA and the EPA put the petition out for public comment. Yet, EPA in and by itself is pretty much prohibited by existing law from even involving itself in the ammunition debate," Codrea explained.
Listen to an interview with Codrea: |
"What they're going on is the Toxic Substance Control Act, which was passed in 1976, but this act specifically prohibits the EPA from regulating ammunition as a toxic substance. The rationale the federal government used was to exempt any substance from the EPA control that the Internal Revenue Code imposed a tax on because it was related to firearms and ammunition," Codrea added.
"The NRA-ILA Director Chris Cox wrote an excellent letter to EPA Director Lisa Jackson and he said, 'Put another way, if Congress exempts a cow from regulation, one could hardly argue that it nevertheless would allow for regulation of the hide attached to the cow's body,'" Codrea stated.
"That's true. If you can't regulate ammunition, now all of a sudden you can't separate and distinguish parts by saying, 'We're going to regulate the bullet part of the ammunition or the primer or the casing part of the ammunition.' They are prohibited from doing it and from even weighing in on it," Codrea further explained.
"But that doesn't stop them. We're talking about an agency that a while back declared carbon dioxide is a danger to human health. But a major part of our atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide. I'm exhaling carbon dioxide as a talk to you. Plants need it to live, so it's ridiculous," Codrea continued.
Codrea said the Center for Biological Diversity didn't propose the regulations out of concern for wildlife.
"Their reputation is basically one of quashing business and quashing prosperity and suing individuals and private landowners and government in order to impose their will," Codrea asserted.
"This was simply another attack on the people and right to keep and bear arms. If you can't do that by regulating and banning guns, you're going to go about it another way. A great way to do it if you can is to make it complicated and problematic to get ammunition. That's what they're going for," Codrea said.
"They're anti-hunting and they were using this as an excuse to continue with it is they're trying to do," Codrea stated.
In a statement to the press, the Center for Biological Diversity spokesman Jeff Miller said the reason for filing the petition should have been self-explanatory.
"It's long past time do something about this deadly – and preventable – epidemic of lead poisoning in the wild. Over the past several decades we've wisely taken steps to get lead out of our gasoline, paint, water pipes and other sources that are dangerous to people. Now it's time to get the lead out of hunting and fishing sports to save wildlife from needless poisoning," Miller said.
American Bird Conservancy President George Fenwick said in the same press release that the petition was based on sound science.
"The science on this issue is massive in breadth and unimpeachable in its integrity. Hundreds of peer-reviewed studies show continued lead poisoning of large numbers of birds and other animals, and this petition is a prudent step to safeguard wildlife and reduce unacceptable human health risks," Fenwick said.
But Codrea said the petition's claims were on shaky ground. He cites two studies that show lead has no adverse affect on wildlife.
"There are two studies done at Virginia Tech that showed very little lead damage to the environment. This was from bullets left on battlefields or in shotgun ranges and rifle ranges. There was a professor by the name of Donald Ribstead from the Department of Geo-Sciences at Virginia Tech who basically reported that lead metal is unstable when it's in contact with the air and water when it corrodes," Codrea explained.
"When it corrodes, it's absorbed by the top two inches of soil and it doesn't migrate," Codrea further explained.
"Then there was another fisheries and wildlife professor, Pat Scanalon, who before his death reported that he found no evidence that birds were eating shot," Codrea added.
However, Pratt explains that the changeover, and other efforts to regulate ammunition would have only hurt consumers.
Listen to an interview with Pratt: |
"There are alternatives to lead, but the other alternatives aren't as good, which is why lead ammunition is so popular," Pratt said.
"Other metals are either going to be more expensive or they're not going to be as good. In some cases, the change will turn the ammunition into armor-piercing ammunition, which of course is banned. So that wouldn't work either," Pratt explained.
Pratt believes the proposed regulations would have had two possible affects.
"Really, at best, this was a gun ban. At worst, it's a huge tax because it will force manufacturers to go to metals that are more expensive and that will raise the cost of the ammunition," Pratt explained.
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