Lead ban announcement for live quarry shooting

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I imagine Eley will transition to steel as will other manufacturers and the temporary blip in sales can and will be accommodated. 
 

I’ve read arguments about there being no scientific proof that lead causes death. First, death isn’t the issues. Brain and stem cell development is. Secondly, if the scientific papers you read are about the merits of reading Enid Blighton novels, then I’m quite sure there is within those pages no scientific proof. That however does not mean such proof doesn’t exist. It very much does exist. I’ve read argument about lead not being soluble. Particulate can be carried in suspension in water and also dust cause by abrasion as lead travels at 1400fps from the muzzles of our guns can be breathed in. 
 

So further arguments to uphold lead. “Steel doesn’t have the same weight as lead” not true. It in fact doesn’t have the same density as lead. Which is heavier, 28g of lead or 28g of feathers or 28g of steel?

Steel doesn’t have the same pellet mass as lead. See above. A No:6 steel shot is pretty much the same pellet mass as No: 7.5 Lead. 

Steel doesn’t have the same pellet count as lead. Not true. I can count  390 Everton mints just as easily as I can count lead or steel shot. It’s the volume that changes. 
 

Hardness is a key attribute of Competition lead. Steel is harder than lead. 
 

Steel doesn’t pattern as well as lead. True... but only to a point. 
Steel being harder in theory should pattern better, but due to a phenomenon called “choke bounce” steel patterns less well at increasing choke constrictions than lead due to its very hardness. Lead suffers this also but to a much lesser degree. 
To meet this problem with a solution, first of all a cup type wad would be very preferable. Secondly, chokes Will need to be manufactured in 0.002” increments to a maximum of 0.020” (preferably 0.016”).

Bismuth is much more expensive than lead or steel so (for some) the cost issue is something of a red herring. 
 

Steel is coming. Be that now by choice or later by enforcement. 
 

You can choose now, or defer where your choice may be limited to steel, bismuth or taking up another pastime. 
 

I’ve made my choice and from April I’ll be shooting Eley VIP Steel EcoWad and I’m happy with the small additional charge as I anticipate the price will remain static as rising costs of labour, materials and overhead are met with lowering costs of production due to larger production runs. 
 

“A house divided cannot stand”
“A house divided cannot stand” so pack it in about steel and keep shooting lead then!

 
Lloyd ,

 You are obviously a well read individual  !

Could you please supply links to the damage that Lead is doing , could you please supply evidence of the higher mortality rate in Lead mining communities , could you please supply details of where you will be shooting Game in April or what clayshooting grounds will welcome you with your steel (soft iron ) cartridges please .Could you please explain the difference in shooting a relatively few cartridges over a large expanse of land as in Game shooting  (subject now to being phased out or banned ) and the difference in shooting high volumes of Lead shot and plastic wadded cartridges in the confined area of a clay ground which is not subject (at the moment ) to being curtailed?

Gentlemen , make no mistake they are trying to end shooting by fair means or foul .When an organisation we join to represent us and maintain our sport rolls over without consulting its membership , it really is time to consider your options and where your money will be best used . 

Incidentally all this talk of not renewing your membership to BASC or others is not going to effect them very much , BASC boasts 150,000 plus members , I would be surprised if 30,000 of them are shooters ? 

 
@Salopian That’s a lot of questions and searching for white papers/links, but yes, I can and I will. Please allow me some time to do this. There is a LOT of evidence, some recent and some going back decades, even centuries.

FYI, I do not consider myself well read, but I work with people who are and they lead their prospective fields in physics and biology (MSc/PhD/Professor and worlds leading universities). It is from them I learn. My own education is an engineering degree that I scraped through in my thirties and a fair amount of blue collar hands on experience before that. I’m able to understand basic concepts but the finer details are beyond my intimate knowledge.

 
@schmokinn  with respect, I tend to disagree. 

The Shooting house is a minority group. Within that group are a minority of steel protagonists who’s house aligns with the majority of people who are in the house of ‘do not  shoot at all’.

My belief is that the majority will and have in many other areas, find success with their arguments based on scientific evidence, spurious or otherwise, it matters not.

Perception is more powerful than fact.

”facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true” - Homer J Simpson.

I digress 

By 2024, we will be a quarter of the way through the 21st century.

With trips to hospitals for cancer treatments on the one hand and on the other offering up other harmful activities/substances that scientists or even some mate down the pub say are more harmful than lead in an attempt to obfuscate those things we claim scientists are about lead and there’s no proof, we appear awfully choosy about what science we say we believe and trust.

 I’m quite sure the last groups didn’t fail to come up with good enough reasons as lead has increasingly been banned in many walks of life. Those successful bans on lead in paint, solder, petrol etc etc etc, empirically demonstrate their effectiveness of that “proof”

Proof as it is, or is not is darn near irrelevant. What counts is the legislature that is inevitably coming in one guise or another. 

Cartridge manufacturers know this. BASC appears to know this. I’m confident in my beliefs also.

Maybe those who have suggested the agenda is to have shooting banned altogether are right in there assessment. Well, be that case, then shooting will get banned and I’ll take up crochet or knitting or something. 
 

Sure, I could protest. Maybe I would, but I doubt I and the minority of shooters In the house will sway the majority of the house of non shooters.

The majority house does tend to win their way eventually.

so with a claimed lack of proof that lead is an issue, I have yet to hear or read any arguments that are founded on reason, logic or science to say that lead is NOT harmful.

im happy to hear it. But” airplanes are worse” or “ do you drive a car mate?”  is a weak argument to maintain something else also harmful.

“knives and cars are more dangerous “ I hear. Well, first, the evidence please. Put some numbers to that. Secondly, then ban ALSO the knifes and cars. That done, ban the guns too. Because if we are to say banning something more dangerous than lead is the way to go, then guns are demonstrably more dangerous than just the lead on its own. Such arguments actually undermine shooting, are not advocating for maintaining lead at all. Seriously, please don’t pee in my pocket and tell me it’s raining!
 

ive been asked directly for the evidence I have eluded too and I have pledged to go find it and link to it.

for those that wish to maintain lead offers no issue, I throw down my own gauntlet and ask for evidence of equal stature, which has undergone peer review by individuals qualified in the subject matter to ‘prove’  those claims.

i will however, not await and hold my breath

 
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@schmokinn  with respect, I tend to disagree. 

The Shooting house is a minority group. Within that group are a minority of steel protagonists who’s house aligns with the majority of people who are in the house of ‘do not  shoot at all’.

My belief is that the majority will and have in many other areas, find success with their arguments based on scientific evidence, spurious or otherwise, it matters not.

Perception is more powerful than fact.

”facts are meaningless. You can use facts to prove anything that’s even remotely true” - Homer J Simpson.

I digress 

By 2024, we will be a quarter of the way through the 21st century.

With trips to hospitals for cancer treatments on the one hand and on the other offering up other harmful activities/substances that scientists or even some mate down the pub say are more harmful than lead in an attempt to obfuscate those things we claim scientists are about lead and there’s no proof, we appear awfully choosy about what science we say we believe and trust.

 I’m quite sure the last groups didn’t fail to come up with good enough reasons as lead has increasingly been banned in many walks of life. Those successful bans on lead in paint, solder, petrol etc etc etc, empirically demonstrate their effectiveness of that “proof”

Proof as it is, or is not is darn near irrelevant. What counts is the legislature that is inevitably coming in one guise or another. 

Cartridge manufacturers know this. BASC appears to know this. I’m confident in my beliefs also.

Maybe those who have suggested the agenda is to have shooting banned altogether are right in there assessment. Well, be that case, then shooting will get banned and I’ll take up crochet or knitting or something. 
 

Sure, I could protest. Maybe I would, but I doubt I and the minority of shooters In the house will sway the majority of the house of non shooters.

The majority house does tend to win their way eventually.

so with a claimed lack of proof that lead is an issue, I have yet to hear or read any arguments that are founded on reason, logic or science to say that lead is NOT harmful.

im happy to hear it. But” airplanes are worse” or “ do you drive a car mate?”  is a weak argument to maintain something else also harmful.

“knives and cars are more dangerous “ I hear. Well, first, the evidence please. Put some numbers to that. Secondly, then ban ALSO the knifes and cars. That done, ban the guns too. Because if we are to say banning something more dangerous than lead is the way to go, then guns are demonstrably more dangerous than just the lead on its own. Such arguments actually undermine shooting, are not advocating for maintaining lead at all. Seriously, please don’t pee in my pocket and tell me it’s raining!
 

ive been asked directly for the evidence I have eluded too and I have pledged to go find it and link to it.

for those that wish to maintain lead offers no issue, I throw down my own gauntlet and ask for evidence of equal stature, which has undergone peer review by individuals qualified in the subject matter to ‘prove’  those claims.

i will however, not await and hold my breath
Very obviously a full on snowflake post,lead in petrol banned 30 years ago and rightly so because it was a problem.Now if i remember correctly we were burning that and people were ingesting the fumes to get poisoned.

We shoot lead in a controlled environment,away from us at great speed i have no fear from the fumes that may be emitted if there is any lead content at all.

The chances of somebody getting poisened by lead shot in the ground is so minimal as to be infintely small and the likely hood if ingested as a whole will pass thrpugh unfettered and transfer if any an infinitely small amount to tiny to measure.

From Defra..."drinking water standard of 10 µg/l" so in the unlikely chance of some lead on a shooting ground being eroded and disolved and even less some on a game shoot the odds of it breaking this standard would again be infinitely huge.

Natural levels of lead in the ground 50-400PPM so unlikely we would be adding to that in any significant way.

So risk?...what risk?

This battle will be lost by sabotage from the inside.

The main problem we have is snowflake shooters without any backbone or will to fight for there sport spouting unproven bollox about it,apparently you just think we should rollover and accept defeat an attitude that really deserves pity.

Honestly as you suggested i think knitting is really the sport for you,need to be careful because there is much better odds of dying from being killed by a knitting needle than there is from lead shot buried in the ground.

 
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@schmokinn 

Thanks for your character analysis. Your qualifications for this displayed for us to see would be most welcome.

On the other hand, I would tender that I have sufficient “backbone” or other anatomical parts to stand my ground and debate without need to resort to churlishness.

Such churlishness isn’t going to present the shooting minority to the the non-shooting minority in a good light don’t you think?

Getting a licence is difficult enough, to public display an Acerbic attitude to those who share in the pastime, for some “snowflakes” might exclaim “take away their guns! They’re aggressive and that’s scary”

So... the house division might happen. And I’m confident there will be many who would be comfortable placing the blame at the feet of others and taking no responsibility for their own actions. C’est la vie

Your suggestion I should indeed take up knitting was frankly quite predictable.

So, to the actual point  with so much scoffing about science being wrong, there is great irony that scientifically obtained metrics are used to uphold a “keep the lead” argument.

of course I will not and probably cannot dispute that evidence. However, by way of a reminder, I have stated here and elsewhere, some pivotal issues  

Perception. Few people of the non scientific public will care much about such evidence to keep lead for a minority of people if they are presented with even just a smidgen of evidence that suggests they or their children could be even remotely at risk  as I said  facts are meaningless... to the masses. 

  Furthermore, I would NOT take my own children to a shooting grounds. Why? Well, because airborne lead dust created by abrasion as lead shot exist barrels could be breathed in. I have no wish for my children to be put at such POTENTIAL risk. 
 

10 parts per million today, 20 ppm tomorrow. 30ppm the next day. Lead as with other metaloids... and especially heavy metals such as cadmium (banned) arsenic (restricted) lead (restricted) tungsten (known health risks) and I imagine further down the line Bismuth could be added to the list... these metals do not “pass through” such as you claim. They can in FACT remain in the body long after we are dead and buried. Thus they do not deplete over time such as tar on the lungs from smoking does and full health restored over a period of time. Lead in the body does not depleted. Therefore the levels found in bone, blood, mucus membrane will remain there and inch with increased exposure.

this was confirmed to me by microbiologist Dr Feuerborn just last night. I shall also be further investigating this with Professor Cook of Oxford university and hopefully conducting an experiment to see for myself under the microscope how lead breaks down the cell membrane and if possible run DNA sequencing experiment to see how lead changes DNA. 
 

so, do enjoy yourself when out shooting next and breathe in the cool “fresh air” some 30” or so from you nostrils. You can add to the lead that is probably already within you bones and you can ask your doctor to show you next time you have an X-Ray.

just one last thing.  Many people feel snowflakes are beautiful, so thank you for the compliment, but I’m heterosexual.

And a wee warning.... be careful around some invertebrates. Many are deadly.
 

 
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  Furthermore, I would NOT take my own children to a shooting grounds. Why? Well, because airborne lead dust created by abrasion as lead shot exist barrels could be breathed in. I have no wish for my children to be put at such POTENTIAL risk. 
 
Not wishing to argue over what I have absolutely no facts to quote.

Really?

I've been shooting since I was around 8 years old.  Spent near on 30 years as a front line soldier and shoot on average twice a week still. I have in my service been a skill at arms instructor and spent many range hours plus active service. I also had my own 30m indoor range by the side of my office and married quarters towards the end of my service. This was cleaned of lead by an industrial cleaning company using vacuum cleaners. They did wear respirators.

My children I taught to shoot and now I'm teaching my grandkids. 

If I honestly thought there was any probability of anything untoward happening I would wrap them in cotton wool, bubble wrap and a breathing machine over the top of a respirator. 

I can only quote from my experience and that of others I know personally. Other than hearing problems we have no other side effects from shooting. 

 
"the likely hood if ingested as a whole will pass through unfettered and transfer if any an infinitely small amount to tiny to measure." was referring to lead shot which it has been doing for hundreds seemingly without issue.

LAG pertained wholly to shooting and found NO evidence to ban lead shot after years of trying!

Knitting suggested by you and a good example of the difference between perceived and real dangers.

"10 parts per million today, 20 ppm tomorrow. 30ppm the next day." as far as i can find hasn't been rising measurably and from the data easily available seems to be dropping.

"Furthermore, I would NOT take my own children to a shooting grounds. Why? Well, because airborne lead dust created by abrasion as lead shot exist barrels could be breathed in. I have no wish for my children to be put at such POTENTIAL risk. "  there is a special word for what you speak...BOLLOX

"this was confirmed to me by microbiologist Dr Feuerborn just last night. I shall also be further investigating this with Professor Cook of Oxford university and hopefully conducting an experiment to see for myself under the microscope how lead breaks down the cell membrane and if possible run DNA sequencing experiment to see how lead changes DNA. " yes good luck with that pretty sure they would have more important things to do at this time than helping you try to prove on a shooting forum you are right and amazingly you arranged that during the night? A direct line Eh? Let us know when you publish the paper.

"backbone" A metaphor as in the strength to fight injustice,you are wanting to misinterpret deliberately at any point to try to obfuscate.

"just one last thing.  Many people feel snowflakes are beautiful, so thank you for the compliment, but I’m heterosexual." sounds like you have been eating lead for breakfast lunch and tea.

Again people like you are sabotaging shooting from the inside with your agenda and will be the death of shooting full stop as once the ball is started rolling it will not stop.

WE should be fighting to retain the status quo,if we give an inch a mile will be taken make no mistake about that.

It may be David and Goliath but remember who won that one!

 
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@Centrepin Yes really. By way of an analogy, the great comedian George Burns smoked daily many unfiltered cigars well into his 90’s 

My father smoked 80-100 a day for 30+ years and gave up one evening 20 years ago and never went back.

My mother smoked about 10 a day for About 15 years and gave up about 40 years ago. She died of lung cancer attributed to smoking five years ago. I wouldn’t advise my children to smoke, irrespective of my mother, father or George Burns, but rather because of advice from Health professionals. 
That is my stance but I pass no judgment on those who choose differently. We all make our own choices unless legally bound otherwise and even then we can chose to break the law.

@schmokinn 

yes, I have a direct line. I work directly opposite dr fuerborn and spoke with him last evening approximately 18:30 before I left the office. He’s sat opposite me now. Professor Cook is a founder along with Dr Feuerborn of the company I work for. 
 

In life most David’s falter. A bit like dropping out of collage and becoming a billionaire isn’t a marker of certain success for everyone. Most dropouts amount to very little by that metric.

You May well be right about shooting being banned all together. Speaking for myself, life will go on just as happily for me. I enjoy shooting, but I would not be destitute or depressed without it. I can and do other things. 
 

one advantage of shooting being banned is that individuals who exhibit aggression towards others won’t be allowed guns and I think we will all feel just that smidgen safer for that

 
Lloyd , 

 I am very sorry to have to read your so called 'scientific ' rhetoric !

You ask for me to supply numbers for knife a vehicular mortality versus shotgun /shooting mortality . Obviously you are biasing your figures by possibly including the use of guns in war and terrorism.

Because I think you will find it extremely hard to find deaths associated with the intake of Lead into the human body compared with deaths from cars and knife crime to favour your concerns over lead ingestion.

So without further ado I will close my participation in a debate that will have no winners . 

 
"one advantage of shooting being banned is that individuals who exhibit aggression towards others won’t be allowed guns and I think we will all feel just that smidgen safer for that" total bollocks again legally held guns are very rarely used agressively.Then again illegal guns are used agressively all the time and will still be available and the numbers will increase should shooting be banned.

There are far more illegal guns in circulation now due to the governmants knee jerk reaction to a couple of isolated incidents that were the fault of there own officers.

You should get out more, interact then you may have more of an understanding of the real world.

My belief that you as a snowflake and a secret gun anti grows the more rubbish you post,you are attempting to sabotage our sport from the inside with your lack of understanding and willingness to rollover and comply

 
Lloyd, I respect your opinions of course, but I do find this a strange place for you to debate this in this manner. Feels a bit like you’ve joined a a wine club to hand out AA leaflets. 
I’m not offering wine Will. I’m suggesting that wine is met with disapproval by the many with some evidence to support their disapproval and offer instead water to quench our thirst. Keep on drinking

 
one advantage of shooting being banned is that individuals who exhibit aggression towards others won’t be allowed guns and I think we will all feel just that smidgen safer for that
Oh dear, for that one statement you have for me lost all credibility. 

I can't believe as an educated man having also served in the military you honestly believe that. 

Does banning shooting really prevent gun crime? Has banning of hand guns (of which I was also against) stopped anything in the way of criminals using them.

Criminals and terrorists will always find a way to use illegal weapons of any description. This you must know. Knives, handguns, shotguns, baseball bats or even a sharp stick!

Banning shooting would never, ever prevent that.

I ask that you review the statement I quoted and think seriously about it, I would also suggest retracting it once you have reflected on it.

I never resort to personal insults as I think that's below us all. That statement however shows a lack of understanding on your part and is verging on a childish reply.

 
I’m not offering wine Will. I’m suggesting that wine is met with disapproval by the many with some evidence to support their disapproval and offer instead water to quench our thirst. Keep on drinking
That’s my point. Every wine drinker knows it’s nice, but naughty. They don’t need somebody to join their club then point that out to them. Opinions are always OK, but don’t expect the evangelical approach to be welcomed in a place for enthusiasts. 

 
You might be surprised to find I agree with your point of view regarding illegal and legal possession of guns/firearms and “knee jerk reaction”

I get out quite often thank you for your concern

your opinion, as vociferous as it appears is just as valid as my own and I have no issue wit you personally, so I respectfully ask that we try to keep to the agenda and leave inflammatory and personal remarks and at least on that basis present shooting fraternity as a moderate and reasonable group 

@Centrepinno I don’t actually believe that. It is said to illustrate a point 

@Will Hewland I don’t expect it to be received with a welcome and to that QED. 
however, unless I’m specifically asked by those with appropriate authority, I do reserve my right to express my points of view in a forum designed for just that purpose 

 
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