No more lead???

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bikerbill

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A friend sent me something he got online ... seems (according to the item) the EPA is shutting down the last lead smelter in the country. That, according to the item, is part of the administration's war on guns. The theory, says the author, is that without lead, ammo supplies will dry up even more than they already have, leaving us with a collection of nice paperweights. Has anybody else seen this? I'm perfectly willing to believe anything about our current leaders; should I be buying or selling this and does anybody know if the smelter closure is real?
 
It is real, sort of. The last primary lead smelter (produces lead from ore) in the USA was shut down, but it produced very little of our lead supply. Most lead is just recycled over and over, and the rest is imported.

What might be interesting someday (in a bad way) is lead is a strategic metal, and now we are at the mercy of other countries to supply it, even if we have the ore (which we do, USA has about the 3rd or 4th largest lead reserves in the world)

Expect this to affect car battery prices more than it does the bullet supply.
 
This was discussed a bit here:

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=535414

The short version is that it isn't as clean cut as a plant that had been meeting regulations getting shut down to put the squeeze on the bullet supply. The simple fact is that Doe Run smelter had been a pox on the area for years and won't be missed. It was a constant presence on STL area news for health issues and lead contamination in the vicinity.

There may be strategic reasons why we may want a domestic lead smelter, but this particular plant in that particular location is not going to be mourned.
 
There's no more R12 "Freon" either.....but we haven't lost our ability to cool our vehicles. Remember, this was a big scare about 20 years ago - "the new stuff will never work as good as the R12; you better just get used to sweating in your car....."

Even if lead were completely banned, I am confident that someone would develop an alloy that would be nearly as soft as lead with good expansion capabilities. What you loose in weight can be made up in slightly more power.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not for banning lead; but I'm not about to go stockpile a bunch of it either.
 
Just because there getting rid of US lead smelting operations doesn't mean lead is going away. The same thing had been happening to chrome. The chemicals involved in the chroming process are making it difficult to keep us shops open. You can still get stuff chromed, it's just usually sent to Mexico.
 
Don't get me wrong - I'm not for banning lead; but I'm not about to go stockpile a bunch of it either.
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised how little space it takes up. A 5 gallon bucket full of stacked lead ingots is about 400 pounds, maybe 450.
 
I read a version of the story also. I think the author might have been spinning it a bit too much. The author seemed to be trying to make the primary designation equate to the only major lead producer in the country. Primary just meant they smelted from raw ore to finished product. Also tying it to the current administration is a stretch because the process to shut them down started under the old administration. If an agenda argument is to be made it would be better to point it at just the EPA, past and present.
 
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