The sheer tonnage, actually. Too much of anything, even of something relatively inert, can’t be good.
There’s just something so … human inherent in considering the toxicity of bullets. I get the distinction between target and waste product, but it’s bizarre nonetheless.
By game miniatures, do you mean those small D&D figurines? I have a slew of them from the 80s–should I be keeping them away from the Dudeling? A link or whatnot is fine, I don’t want to derail the thread. A man could get shot for something like that.
Yes, those. The lead ban didn’t come into effect until the 90s, I believe, so most if not all figurines from the 80s are going to be lead. I would keep them away from kids younger than about six or seven, or at least old enough to understand not to put them in their mouths.
Wow, thanks. I’m glad I didn’t eat too many of them as a kid (pointy bits didn’t go down well)!
Somewhat rarer, but not ridiculously so, and it already has a number of industrial uses:
Metallic bismuth is in the vicinity of 10-20 times the cost of lead, which does make bismuth shot more expensive. I would guess that an increased demand for making shot could be absorbed. How many gallons of pink bismuth (eg, Pepto-Bismol)are manufactured every year? Offhand, I don’t know how bismuth subsalicylate is manufactured, but that’s a LOT of that particular bismuth compound.
There have been studies questioning the supposed low toxicity of bismuth, too. It’s a lot less toxic than lead, though.
I think it was Chris Rock who had a bit about gun control not being effective about controlling inner-city violence … but if you made bullets $1,000 each, people would think twice about drive-bys and spraying ammo every which way. I had no idea the man was an environmentalist, too! 
Yeah, I inherited an otherwise very fine shotgun with a barrel that’s been deformed by use of steel shot. Or so the gunsmith tells me.
Copper has been mentioned, but then largely dropped, in this conversation.
Solid copper projectiles are reasonably available, effective, and inexpensive. I’ve seen them for everything from air rifles to heavy smooth-bores. Not so cheap as lead, but then you don’t need to pay so much for cleanup, and can use them on an indoor range without expensive environmental controls. They don’t expand so easily as jacketed lead, but there are ways around that.
Doesn’t pewter contain arsenic? Or is that a myth I absorbed from people complaining about the change to pewter figurines?
You may be confusing antimony. Various alloys have been called “pewter”. They are mostly tin, with varying amounts of copper, antimony, bismuth and lead. Lead is no longer generally used in modern pewter alloys, and certainly not “food grade” pewter, but was used historically.
I think they should require silver bullets with explosive, garlic juice tips. You would be ready for werewolves, vampires and even zombies. No more fumbling around trying to figure out which is the correct round for any given situation.
And witches. I was surprised to learn that silver bullets were originally the prescription against witches, long before they were applied to werewolves.I don’t know why ordinary bullets weren’t considered good enough for witches.
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[li]The Lone Ranger used silver bullets too.[/li][li]Didn’t know there were that many witches and werewolves in the old west.[/li][li]<— Get it? Bullets. No groans only encourages me[/li][/ul]
Forrey Ackerman used this in a one-page story in his old Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine back in the 1960s.
If you really wanted this to work, you should’ve gone into the HTML codes and changed the bullet’s color code to slate gray, or something to approximate silver. Or used #C0C0C0.
Excellent advice. I’m not that visually oriented. Noticed some artifacts in the results. Will try to incorporate more color in other bad puns.
The problem is density: lead is just denser than most other materials, and the alloys/elements that are denser are usually rather expensive. No idea on how other countries handle the issue, but in the U.S., alternate materials for shot or bullets range from merely expensive (Barnes all-copper TSX bullet ~2x a comparable lead bullet) to hideous. When I last looked at prices for Heavi-shot (a bismuth heavy allow, IIRC) and tungsten matrix shot, they were roughly 15-25 times as expensive as lead. Steel is about the same price as lead, but is much less desirable ballistically. I won’t even get into the increase in cost the proposed ban will mean for handgun bullets, where many shooters cast their own lead bullets vs now being forced to buy pre-made bullets.
With copper, sure the Barnes bullets (solid copper, for the most part; all are lead free) are supposed to expand wonderfully and retain weight; the problem is copper’s lack of density. With lighter density, you need a longer bullet to get to a given bullet weight. Eventually, the bullets get too long to fit within the maximum cartridge overall length. Barnes gets around this by making their version of a Nosler Partition, the MRX. Its aft core is made of Silvex, which is a tungsten-heavy alloy. Playing around at Cabela’s website, they charge the same price for 20 Barnes MRX bullets as for 50 Nosler Partitions or 100 Sierra boattails. 2.5-5 times as expensive, ouch.
For shot, true, you can jump up three or so shot sizes to get the “same” downrange KE, (e.g. 2 or 3 lead shot to BBB steel shot for geese), but now you have larger holes in your pattern. I understand the metallurgy of modern shotgun barrels, coupled with better shotshell wad designs, have largely eliminated the problem of scoring/galling the inside of barrels. I’m still not using them in my granddad’s vintage side-by-side.
IMHO, the lead issue for all ammunition is a backdoor way to institute gun control and/or ban/heavily restrict the shooting sports. I’ve no idea what effect it’ll have on my air rifles, all of which shoot lead pellets. Time to see if RWS makes a lead-free wadcutter… I’m not even sure whether the lead shot ban has had the desired effects on waterfowl populations, beyond a “we feel good about it” effect.
You just made me scratch my head for a minute… and then laugh my ass off. Better than shooting my ass of with lead, I suppose.
The melting point of silver is 1763°F so Tonto never cast those in the camp fire.
Lead is also very soft so that it wears very little on the barrel.
Gee, I wonder where that lead came from originally?