Interior Secretary Zinke Day One: Repeals Obama-Era Lead Ammunition Ban

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed a Secretarial Order on Thursday repealing the lead ammunition ban issued the day before Barack Obama left office.

It is interesting to note that Thursday was Zinke’s first day as Interior Secretary and repealing the onerous ban one of his first actions.

On January 19, the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s Lawrence Keane described the lead ammunition ban as the Obama administration’s “parting shot” against the hunting community. The ban was contained in Director’s Order 219–from National Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe–and it required regional directors to work with state-level agencies to begin phasing out the use of lead ammunition on Federal land. This included banning lead ammunition in “National Parks, tribal lands and national wildlife refuges in order to mirror policies in states where traditional ammunition is already restricted.”

D.O. 219 also stipulated that the “Assistant Director, Migratory Birds, in consultation with National Flyway Councils and individual states, …establish a process to phase in a requirement for the use of nontoxic ammunition for recreational hunting of mourning doves and other upland game birds.” This indicated a staggered implementation where the use of traditional ammunition for dove and upland bird hunting would be heavily restricted and eventually eliminated altogether.

But Zinke overturned this ban with Secretarial Order 3346.

S.O. 3346 “revokes Director’s Order 219.” Moreover, S.O. 3346 is effective immediately.

This is the second Obama-era gun control to be repealed within a week. On February 28 President Trump signed the repeal of Obama’s Social Security gun ban. The White House explained that the Social Security gun ban was repealed on grounds that it “would prevent some Americans with disabilities from purchasing or possessing firearms” and “could endanger the Second Amendment rights of law abiding citizens.”

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.