The closure does NOT appear to be a big deal, from an ammo perspective…
The Sierra Bullet Company said recently that it’s not worried about the Doe Run closure.
“Sierra uses no primary lead at all and never has, so we use nothing directly from this facility,” the company said in a statement on its website. “[W]e do not see any reason for alarm. We expect our supply to continue and keep feeding our production lines which are still running 24 hours per day to return our inventory levels to where they should be.”
“No impact upon any cast bullet manufacturing operation whatever. We do not use virgin lead, which is what Doe Run provided,” Brad Alpert, operations manager for the Missouri Bullet Company, told TheBlaze in an email. “We use foundry alloy from major foundries derived from scrap sources, purified and cleaned to purity.”
“The jacketed bullets companies (Winchester, Remington, Federal, et al.) use the same sources that we do,” Alpert wrote.
Steve Weliver of Cape Fear Arsenal added in an email to TheBlaze: “We have not begun production at rates that this will impact.”
“At this time we do not anticipate any additional strain on our ability to obtain lead,” Tim Brandt of ATK, the parent company of Federal Premium, CCI, and Speer ammunition, said in reference to the Herculaneum closure in a company FAQ.
Roughly 80 percent of “lead used in the United States secondary market (which is what most ammunition manufacturers use) comes from recycled batteries and another 7 percent to 9 percent of lead on the market comes from other scrap sources,” Owens reported, citing Daniel Hill, Operations Manager at Mayco Industries. “Only 10 percent of the lead in the U.S. comes from mining.”
Simply put, the shuttering of the Herculaneum facility could have an impact as far as demand for primary lead is concerned — but it’s questionable whether that will affect the ammunition market. The lead used in ammunition will still be available and it would seem like a stretch to say that the EPA forcing a Missouri plant to shut down is a “back door” ploy to enact stricter gun control.
Bottom Line
President Obama had little, if anything, to do with the longstanding battle between the EPA and the Doe Run Company. Further, if one is to take ammunition manufactures at their word, it does not appear that the Herculaneum closure will have any affect on the availability of ammunition in the United States.
Now it could be that the Obama administration is cheering the closure of the facility and the possible message it sends. But that’s a maybe. And since many are saying it won’t affect the gun industry, it’s hard to know what message that would be. In short, there is too much that we don’t know.
“Could the lack of primary lead create a little more demand for recycled lead? Sure, but how much is unknown,” the Sierra Bullet Company said on its website. “Could this increase in demand also create an increase in price? Sure, but again, by how much is unknown at this time.”
So where did West get his information? The post that appears on West’s site is based almost entirely on an article from a site called noisyroom.net. The West post originally appeared without attribution to noisyroom.net.
West’s staff later updated his site to include citation to the original blog, telling TheBlaze in an email that the “omission of attribution” was an editorial mistake.
TheBlaze contacted the author of the original article, Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, and she confirmed that portions of her article were used without her knowledge. However, she said in an email that West’s staff apologized to her for the oversight, adding that the apology was “sufficient and gracious.”
As for where Monroe-Hamilton got her information, she clarified “the piece was more my opinion than anything else.”
