Maryland’s already inconvenienced gun owners now have to contend with Senate Bill 634 (SB 634)—a push to ditch lead ammo.
This bill is telling the Department of Natural Resources to phase out lead for hunting, one species at a time, until it’s totally gone by July 1, 2029. It hit the Senate Education, Energy & Environment Committee on March 4 and was immediately met with backlash – specifically from the dedicated crowd of hunters in the state.
Lead ammo’s the king of cheap and efficient—no other material produces projectiles that work this well for the price. It’s been dropping game and filling freezers since the invention of the first smooth bore hand cannnons, but now they’re supposed to swap it for pricey copper or all-steel projectiles that not only introduce their own set of problems on the shooting side but are also often way more expensive to produce and buy.
Maryland’s hunting scene hauls in $328 million and keeps 4,100 people working, says the National Shooting Sports Foundation, so this could hit hard. And it’s not just hunters—range shooters, competitors, and self-defense folks live on lead too; it’s the backbone of damn near every trigger pull.
Hunters these days, including myself, actually like non-lead ammo ‘cause it cuts down lead exposure—less dust and fumes when you’re out there gathering food to feed your family or just sending rounds down range for training.
Copper flies fast and hits hard, making clean kills, and steel is almost just as good, ideally leaving no toxic lead scraps for critters to choke on. The environmental impact when added back into the environment is not good – Everybody gets that. But let’s be real—lead’s the champ because it’s dirt cheap and gets the job done, especially for the tons of rounds that aren’t even sent into the environment but either the animal itself or a backstop of some sort.
The NRA-ILA and Sportsmen’s Alliance are still calling BS on the ban. They say the “lead kills eagles” thing is hyped—hunters bury gut piles, and waterfowl’s been lead-free since ’91. Eating game? The CDC doesn’t have any definitive proof of a problem, especially next to sucking in city smog. As someone who has lived near Baltimore for several years, I can tell you that lead might be the worst of their worries for their waterways.
The slow species-by-species rollout? Just a warm-up for the full ban in 2029. Pro-gun crowd’s spooked it’s a trial balloon—start with hunters, then screw over range rats and reloaders. “They’re sneaking up on all of us,” said NRA-ILA’s Maryland guy, John Ross.
“Lead today, what’s tomorrow? The Bill is still sitting in committee, and Maryland’s 200,000 hunters—plus every other gun owner in the state—are getting rowdy. If this lead ammunition ban passes, where does it go next, and what impact does it have, if any on the wildlife and environment of Maryland?
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