Agree Hop but it was my allocation of lead I was offering.
Oh!
At one time, perhaps 1968 or 1969, shortly after I had purchased my pistol, I had a co-worker who also happened to own a 1911-pattern pistol (a Taurus, made in Brazil IIRC). He liked to shoot a lot, so he saved his brass from the shooting range and reloaded it at home. IIRC, he also melted lead alloys, mostly wheel weights but sometimes Linotype lead, and cast his own bullets. This inspired me to obtain a reloading outfit, but I don't think I ever reloaded and fired any rounds of ammunition. I did purchase a box of .45 caliber semi-wad cutter cast lead bullets with lubricant in the "gas rings" that is still stashed away in one of my tool boxes, awaiting loading into spent brass cartridge cases. I have a bunch of them stashed away too, awaiting cleaning by tumbling in walnut shells.
After discovering that bite-wing dental x-rays contain a small, thin, sheet of pure lead I asked my dentist to save the discarded bite-wing pouches after the x-ray film was removed and developed. He did this for awhile, but then one day asked me why I wanted the lead inside the pouches. I should have made up some BS story about how I needed it for my electronics bench soldering pot, but instead I truthfully told him it was for making reloading bullets for my pistol. I got no more lead from the dentist after that, although a few years later he did give me a joy ride in the co-pilot seat of his 4-seat private airplane.
My take-away from that joy ride was runways look awfully small from the air until you are right on top of them. If I ever decide to get a private pilot license, I will for sure practice a lot of touch-and-go landings with my instructor before I solo. That was only my second flight in a small private airplane. The first was a short hop to Put-In-Bay airfield on South Bass Island, off the coast of Ohio near Cedar Point, and back again the same day. That's when I first noticed how small the runway looks from the air until the airplane is practically on top of it. I cannot imagine what the pilot of jumbo jet sees, although their runways are somewhat longer and perhaps a little wider...
I eventually also purchased a set of sizing dies for the 7mm Remington Magnum cartridge used in my bolt-action hunting rifle, bought for a hunting trip to the western side of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. I never reloaded and shot any of those either, and only made the one trip out west with a co-worker. He was a California native, retired Air Force colonel. He and a bunch of his buddies rented a six-man cabin every year to "party hunt" mule deer, elk, and moose... a highly illegal activity in Colorado, but apparently common enough on the sparsely populated western slopes.
They would each purchase out-of-state hunting licenses and deer permits, but only purchase one elk and one moose permit. In party hunting, the hunters were split up into two teams: one team would drive animals toward the other (shooting) team. Didn't make any difference who shot what. The deer tags were divvied up among all the deer taken, so everyone "got their deer" whether they actually shot it or not. Same-o, same-o with the elk and moose permits. Whoever wanted the animal paid for the permit and took it home. That year there were no elk or moose taken, so the permits were a waste of money. The California folks didn't seem to mind, and I sure as hell didn't know what I would do with an elk or a moose if one were offered to me.
I did get to take a deer home with me, but not the one I shot at (twice) and missed from about two hundred yards away while sitting in a field, freezing my butt off in the snow. That was the last time I ever shot that rifle. A few years later I was unemployed and had to pawn it pay my utility bill. I never did retrieve it from the pawn shop. At that time, rifles were not allowed for hunting in Ohio, so I really had no need to own one. It was fun to shoot, though I had trouble with the right-handed bolt action, me being left-handed. That particular rifle was made in a left-handed version but it had to be special ordered and there was not enough time to do that and still make the trip out west for the Colorado hunting season. To this day I still do not have a hunting rifle, something no West Virginia native should ever have to admit.
...the Royal Enfield 303 which you are possibly familiar with. ...
I had to look that one up as I am not really a "gun nut" who is familiar with weapons. Seems to be a fine rifle, very reliable, easy to cycle the bolt for fast action reloads, the British manufactured millions of them, but it is not overly accurate. Good enough for war, but not accurate enough for any really serious shooting without some fine tuning.
There is an American rifle equivalent from WWII, but I cannot remember what it is... Springfield armory maybe. Shooters would sometimes purchase them as surplus military rifles and then replace the barrel and re-bed the barrel in a new stock. Then, depending on how the cartridge is loaded, a steady-rest accuracy of less than one minute of arc (MOA) is possible for five-round groups. That's about a one inch diameter at a hundred yards. My 7mm Remington Magnum cartridge was capable of this accuracy, but sadly I wasn't. IIRC, my best effort was to place a five-shot group inside of a six-inch circle at one hundred yards. That and "buck fever" is probably why I missed my deer. I don't think I am much of a hunter, or even much of a marksman with a 'scoped high-power rifle.
...if someone had been armed when the Port Arthur drongo was on the loose...
I Googled a description of this horrible event. The first round of shootings took less than a minute and many of the victims either thought it was firecrackers going off or part of an historical reenactment event. This was a tourist vacation spot, and even here in America we normally do not go armed to such places with our children. But if anyone on the premises DID happen to possess a gun, it is doubtful they would have had enough time to use it effectively before becoming targets themselves. The only person mentioned to have a gun was a gas station attendant, who had an unloaded rifle. The "bad guy" was long gone by the time the attendant located his ammunition and loaded his rifle.
Just having a gun is no guarantee you know how to use it effectively in a situation like that. Training and frequent practice in realistic scenarios is necessary. Some soldiers and law enforcement officers may initially receive such training, but it must be practiced long and often before it becomes effective in a situation like Port Arthur. Only a very few civilians will have the incentive to seek out and participate in such training. I think Australia did the "right thing" in basically banning all private possession of firearms, and I think the massacre at Port Arthur was a major factor in getting that done.
It wouldn't work here in the USA though. We Americans seem to have become numbed in our response to such violence, it occurs so often. A shooter goes into a gay bar here in Florida and kills a bunch of people. There is a flurry of interest for a few days then attentions turn to something else. Our mass media have a motto: "If it bleeds, it leads." And the gun culture is deeply rooted in our society. Maybe if a gang equipped with semi-automatic weapons invaded a sports stadium or shopping mall (prior to the COVID19 lock-down) and began killing everyone in sight, some traction to ban personal ownership of weapons would occur. But I doubt it. Such an event would just increase gun sales and lead to more people obtaining concealed carry weapons (CCW) permits. We have our Second Amendment Rights, don't ya know?
If you wanna shoot lead, use a solder gun and load it with eutectic rosin core alloy. I saw one
advertised online that held a spool of solder and when you squeezed the trigger it fed the solder to the tip of the soldering iron. Easy peasy, just a gentle squeezy, and you are on your way to perfect solder joints.