IS THE COPPER BULLET DEBATE FINALLY SETTLED?

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Is the Copper Bullet Debate Finally Settled?

We’ve all heard about a “raging debate” over copper bullets and whether they belong in America’s big game hunting scene. But credible criticisms of copper bullets disappeared in recent decades as design and technology kept improving these deadly, hard-hitting slugs. Copper wasn’t the first metal...

www.themeateater.com

 

[357 Terms]

I've always been impressed with the expansion of my straight wall pistol cartridges with Barnes XPB.
357, 44mag pictured.
I keep them for my SD loads.
I have found jacketed bullets more accurate at longer range. YMMV
My hunting loads are still heavy for caliber JHP.

 

[teddy12b]

The old style barnes bullets with the moly coating never impressed me with accuracy. The triple shocks will shoot great and the tipped triple shocks would be my bullet of choice for anything larger/meaner than a whitetail.

There's a good chance I'll be on a moose hunt and elk hunt in the next couple years and I'm planning on using tipped triple shock bullets.

 

[Leadeye]

The long and short of this debate is the same as lead wheel weights, it's anti hunting/guns and it misses the target completely. All of the yellow paint on highways is loaded with lead chromate and that's mandated by the DOT. When it leaches out from contact with tire abrasion and the elements it enters the food chain. Lead in some ionic form gets into the animals or people much faster than anything in metallic form. Lead carbonate, or white lead, was the big part of the kids eating paint chips issues many years a go and caused it to be replaced with titanium oxide. It wasn't kids eating fishing sinkers or wheel weights, and let's not forget that tetra ethyl lead was in gasoline for a very long time.

 

[Leadeye]

I see so much of this stuff these days. When I entered the workforce the "safe" limits on most chemicals were at 50 PPM which is really low, but there was a reason. That level was at the limit you could reliably find back in the 70s with the equipment available. Today the detection levels are orders of magnitude smaller, to the point where it's hard to believe anybody, except a law firm or news media, could find them significant. Someday in the future I suspect they will be counting individual atoms.

 

[Leo]

I've always been impressed with the expansion of my straight wall pistol cartridges with Barnes XPB.
357, 44mag pictured.
I keep them for my SD loads.
I have found jacketed bullets more accurate at longer range. YMMV
My hunting loads are still heavy for caliber JHP.

View attachment 166401

I have some big bore rifle bullets like that from the Barnes Bullet booth at the Dallas Safari show. Pretty impressive. They were shot into ballistic gel. I'll bet they are not so pretty after hitting bone. On the other side, pretty is not everything. I made a bad shot on a deer with a Remngton Copper solid slug, and a couple of the open petals broke away and spiraled into the heart and still dropped him pretty fast.

 

[shibumiseeker]

The long and short of this debate is the same as lead wheel weights, it's anti hunting/guns and it misses the target completely. All of the yellow paint on highways is loaded with lead chromate and that's mandated by the DOT. When it leaches out from contact with tire abrasion and the elements it enters the food chain. Lead in some ionic form gets into the animals or people much faster than anything in metallic form. Lead carbonate, or white lead, was the big part of the kids eating paint chips issues many years a go and caused it to be replaced with titanium oxide. It wasn't kids eating fishing sinkers or wheel weights, and let's not forget that tetra ethyl lead was in gasoline for a very long time.

To be fair, there was a pretty measurable change in intelligence in mentation that corresponds with lead paint and TEL being removed from gasoline. Ionic lead is very easy to get from lead salts, and breathing it in is a much more efficient way of entering the body. Correlation is not automatically causation, but it also does not preclude it.

I agree that the legislation banning lead ammunition is primarily anti hunting/guns and the effects on wildlife were just the excuse, but readily bioavailable (shot and bullets are not) lead in the environment is still not a great idea when there are alternatives. While I too remember buying TEL to add to gasoline for some of my older vehicles, I also remember back when engines usually only lasted a hundred thousand miles and vehicle emissions even in properly tuned engines were so obnoxious that sitting in traffic was nauseating.

The article does make a great point I've said all along: some people are so reactionary that if Al Gore had said that we needed to burn all of the coal and oil to save the planet then everyone on the right would be driving solar powered electric cars while the lefties would be rolling coal in their jacked up trucks. If Trump had said that getting vaccinated was your patriotic duty then the right would be lining up with their sleeves rolled up and the left would be walking around without masks coughing on everyone they could.

I like copper bullets for some missions. I like tungsten-steel cored ammunition for others... I like the fact that I can cast my own lead. Probably going to start getting tooled up to cast and swage copper. I like to think for myself, rather than just doing what the talking heads tell me to think.

 

[Bugzilla]

Good read. They did forget to mention that the copper bullet is completely useless if you come across a vampire!

 

[shibumiseeker]

I see so much of this stuff these days. When I entered the workforce the "safe" limits on most chemicals were at 50 PPM which is really low, but there was a reason. That level was at the limit you could reliably find back in the 70s with the equipment available. Today the detection levels are orders of magnitude smaller, to the point where it's hard to believe anybody, except a law firm or news media, could find them significant. Someday in the future I suspect they will be counting individual atoms.

Every atom is sacred!

Of course, there was a time when the workers painting radium on clock dials were licking the brush tips to make them pointed enough to make the fine lines :-)

There has to be a balance, and sadly our current work environment has far more to do with fear of liability and lawsuits than true risk. Much of the workplace safety regulation we have was not driven by the politicians, but by the insurance industry, which IMO is a much bigger evil in this country.

 

[natdscott]

I see so much of this stuff these days. When I entered the workforce the "safe" limits on most chemicals were at 50 PPM which is really low, but there was a reason. That level was at the limit you could reliably find back in the 70s with the equipment available. Today the detection levels are orders of magnitude smaller, to the point where it's hard to believe anybody, except a law firm or news media, could find them significant. Someday in the future I suspect they will be counting individual atoms.

That’s kinda the nature of scientific and technological process, sir.

We learn more, and our opinions change.

Sorta a decent idea to pivot when you find out something that might kill you, or make your kids need sippy cups as adults.

 

[shibumiseeker]

Good read. They did forget to mention that the copper bullet is completely useless if you come across a vampire!

Not true!

Copper alloys really well with silver. I wonder how much percentage silver we would need? 1%? 10? Of course, lead fits this category as well.

 

[two70]

The article seems to conflate two different debates, neither of which should really be a debate. Copper projectiles, when designed correctly, perform as good as lead based bullets in most cases and better than lead in many cases. That said, banning lead projectiles due to environmental concerns is utter nonsense. It started with junk science designed to produce a desired result in order to justify a ban on lead shot for waterfowl and now has spread to attempts to ban lead ammo in other hunting venues. Sometimes I wonder how many ducks and geese have been wounded and lost due to the use of steel shot in the name of saving geese and ducks. I'm pretty sure those that push that agenda, both then and now, never spare an actual thought for the animals they pretend to care about.

 

[Leadeye]

What's missing in media tox claims is the test data. Bring a duck up to 10PPB of lead and compare it to a duck at 0 even if it's possible to find such a thing. At today's media/law firm levels I could probably find gold in your back yard. Doesn't mean you will get rich.

 

[russc2542]

I see so much of this stuff these days. When I entered the workforce the "safe" limits on most chemicals were at 50 PPM which is really low, but there was a reason. That level was at the limit you could reliably find back in the 70s with the equipment available. Today the detection levels are orders of magnitude smaller, to the point where it's hard to believe anybody, except a law firm or news media, could find them significant. Someday in the future I suspect they will be counting individual atoms.

Much the same with vehicle emissions laws. The current crop of gas detectors (and I'm talking the lab-grade stuff used to develop engines) is at it's minimum detection limit with what's in development now (2024 standards). we're developing emissions measurement equipment alongside the engines. That's how they'll kill the internal combustion engine, just make it so it's cost prohibitive to make an engine that meets the standards. That and "oops you released 3 NOx molecules instead of 2 so now you have to recall the entire line"


Lead's one of those things that's used so widely because it works so well in so many applications.