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The next assault on the legal use and ownership of firearms has begun in
earnest, only the battlefield and tactics will change. The charge will be
led by a coalition made up of the environmentalist and the gun grabbers. The environmentalist have been leading the charge against the armed services for years, particularly the Army and its many firing ranges. These ranges encompass all training weapons that use lead based ammunition from the big guns of artillery and tanks to the service rifles and pistols of the ground troops. There have been many recent articles written on the Environmental Working Group and its demands that the Army begin to change over to "politically correct" Green ammunition.

Now the EWG and VPC have joined forces to attack the private sectors
ownership of firearms in the same way. It will focus on outdoors rifle and
pistol ranges and "lead contamination" of these areas and its impact on
groundwater, children, and the overall environment. This trend will continue
and it could be the most successful operation to date by the gun grabbers.
All one has to do to see the success of this strategy is look to the
waterfowl hunting in the US in the last ten years and compare the cost of
lead based shot shells ten years ago to the new steel and bismuth shot
shells of today. I could think of no other way to describe it other than
"Sticker Shock."

Recently in Kentucky, Representative Robert Damron led the political fight
to guarantee the continued existence of existing firearm ranges by
introducing and guiding the "Firearms Range Protection Act" through the 1998 Kentucky General Assembly. That act alone stymied the legal and media assault on many Kentucky ranges, but this new maneuver will be introduced at the federal level and will surely be embraced and championed by the Environmental Protection Agency. Changes in current environmental law that proscribe the use of lead based ammunition on outdoor small arms firing ranges and mandate the use of only environmentally "green" ammunition for these ranges could accomplish what VPC, HCI, MMM and other similar groups have not been able to accomplish through legislation, the destruction of the "intent" of the Second Amendment through purely economic means. Make the cost of ammunition so high that very few can afford it.

Of course, the banning of lead based ammunition wouldn't just be restricted
to firing ranges. Oh no, it would be banned entirely. There would be none
available for reloading, hunting, or use on just indoor ranges. There
wouldn't be any lead available period! The new ammunition would be tungsten, bismuth or some other exotic material that would be expensive, hard to come by and not readily available in great amounts. Oh, and by the way, the military would have first dibs on whatever was available immediately. You have to remember that the Army alone fires over two million rounds a year just in small arms ammunition training and we haven't considered the numbers on Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard training. Then you have to figure in the ammunition expended in training for the service academies, college ROTC, FBI, CIA, BATF, and other governmental agencies, ad infinitum, that are legislatively granted firearms carrying rights, such as the U.S. Post Office and Park Service.

But enough of my tirade on the subject, just click on the URL hotlink at the
bottom of this message and read the article for yourself. It says it much
better than I could and fill in the blanks with your own scenario. If you
can, print out the PDF file version on the site and pass it on to a friend.
Make sure you bookmark the EWG website. I'm sure that we'll be hearing from them in the future on this subject.

Rick Simms - Director
Kentucky Firearms Foundation Inc.
www.kyfirearms.org
Your Official Kentucky Contact Organization for the
2001 Gun Rights Policy Conference.


http://www.ewg.org/pub/home/repor

ts/poisonouspastime/