Although lead ammunition prohibitions are being kept at bay federally, states like Maryland are perennially debating bills to phase these items out.
This past legislative session, several bills were heard and ultimately defeated last month in Annapolis, Maryland. Namely, a sin tax and lead phaseout by 2029, respectively.
Anti-gun lawmakers introduced the deceptively-named Comprehensive Community Safety Funding Act (House Bill 19 and Senate Bill 118) to institute an additional “11% excise tax on firearms dealers for the sale of firearms, accessories, and ammunition” under the guise of funding gun violence prevention and intervention programs. But as observed in other states that adopt these measures, they don’t help victims of actual crimes. Instead, they price law-abiding gun owners out of shooting sports activities altogether, act as de facto slush funds for gun control interests, and discriminate against the lawful exercise of our Second Amendment rights.
“They pick those numbers very, very purposefully because they mirror the numbers that manufacturers already pay for the Pittman Robertson excise tax, which supports all your wildlife conservation in America,” Mark Oliva, managing director of public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), told Townhall.
Relatedly, the lead ammunition phaseout bills (House Bill 1067 and Senate Bill 181) nearly passed both chambers of Maryland’s General Assembly. The bills would have mandated a lead-ammunition phaseout by 2029 that applies to hunting for all Maryland game species. It came dangerously close to becoming law this year, but ultimately failed – for now.
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“There’s no sound science to show that this [lead prohibition] is harmful to wildlife populations,” added Oliva. “We manage wildlife at the population level. So they always point to a sick eagle…Eagles in the United States are off the endangered species list. They're off the threatened species list. They're flourishing across the country, from coast to coast, from north to south. Eagles are doing very, very well.”
Bee Frederick, senior state and local liaison at Safari Club International (SCI), added that lead use prohibitions “are unnecessary and burdensome” proposals that will have negative downstream effects on hunter participation and conservation efforts writ large.
“If folks do quit hunting, that's going to have a negative impact on hunter participation. That's going to have a negative impact on DNR funding,” Frederick continued. “These blanket bans don't work at all. They're not necessary. They're burdensome, and they're going to have real-life consequences on hunter participation and conservation funding and wildlife management.”
His organization argues that blanket lead prohibitions will lead to diminished hunter participation, loss of access, difficulty recruiting, and other myriad problems.
The science on lead bans is, at best, questionable.
Prohibitionists deliberately conflate lead fragments in traditional ammunition with pure lead compounds. Omitted from their arguments is discussion of blood lead levels (PbB) in lead fragments to determine harm. The most available information from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends adults maintain “a PbB under 10 micrograms per deciliter (µg/dl).”
As I noted at RealClearPolicy in 2022: “A 2008 study jointly released by the North Dakota Health Department and CDC assessed blood lead levels of participants who consumed and didn’t consume game meat. When accounting for variables, it found the control group participants who ate wild game “had 0.30 µg/dl higher PbB in comparison with those who did not consume wild game.” That’s statistically insignificant. Moreover, a similar Health and Human Services (HHS) study from Wisconsin found lead poisoning doesn’t result “from ingestion of lead bullet fragments in large game animals.”
As I frequently report here at Townhall, Pittman-Robertson funds from excise taxes collected on firearms and ammunition, paid by manufacturers, fund the bulk of conservation funding in the U.S. There is an 11 percent excise tax on ammunition that is “paid by manufacturers, producers, and importers.” Under the Wildlife Restoration Trust Fund, these monies are apportioned to all 50 U.S. states based on total land area and number of licensed hunters.
Vox, a progressive news outlet, even admitted that the future of conservation is dependent on continued firearms and ammunition sales.
“At a time when environmentalism is evermore polarized and left-coded, Pittman-Robertson helps continually reinject pro-conservation rhetoric into a right-leaning political sphere, via its links to hunting and guns,” Brown University sociologist Christopher Rea told the outlet.
In 2025, nearly $1.3 billion was distributed to all 50 U.S. states and territories through the Wildlife and Sportfish Restoration Program under the Pittman-Robertson Act. Of this amount, $804,790,385 of the nearly $1.3 billion – or 62 percent – is funded by firearm and ammunition excise taxes paid by manufacturers. Since 1937, over $31 billion has been raised to support habitat restoration, wildlife conservation, hunter education courses, and public target shooting ranges, for instance. In 2025, Maryland received nearly $8 million in P-R funds.
There is a strong correlation between lead prohibitions and a decrease in hunter participation numbers.
In July 2019, California adopted a lead ammunition and tackle ban largely aimed at protecting the imperiled California condor. Thirty-six percent of licensed California hunters said they would “stop hunting or reduce their participation” following the ban. Last year, there was a limited supply of non-lead ammunition available in the Golden State – making it impossible to comply with the 2019 law. Unsurprisingly, the condor’s status hasn’t improved even with the ban in place.
Across the pond, lead tackle bans are advancing in the European Union (EU). As of this writing, lead shot is expected to be banned in the United Kingdom by April 2029. At least 25 percent of European hunters would quit the sport altogether if wide-sweeping prohibitions were adopted.
Lead bans are cost-prohibitive, nonsensical, and a solution in search of a problem. America – and Maryland – should tread very carefully here.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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