NRA Launches Pro-Lead Website 780
ideonexus writes "The National Rifle Association has launched a website defending the use of lead ammunition against scientists and environmental organizations who argue that lead bullets are poisoning the environment and tainting game meat with a known neurotoxin. The rise and fall of lead levels from gasoline and lead-based paint are strongly correlated to the rise and fall of crime rates in communities around the world."
The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Informative)
The Romans found out about lead and its toxic effects. There's no point in using it where it isn't necessary.
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Funny)
what have the Romans ever done for us?
Died off so that we could take their place, while keeping important tourist attractions such as the Colosseum intact to make money for us?
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, and you don'e want to eat it, or breath it in.
But, that does not mean that there is anything necessarily wrong with a large piece of meat coming in contact with lead for a short while.
Hell, the medical community puts mercury into injections, and expect you to inject it directly into your blood steam.
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell, the medical community puts mercury into injections, and expect you to inject it directly into your blood steam.
There's no solid evidence of health risks from thiomersal. The ethylmercury it breaks down into is as different from methylmercury in its effects on the body as ethyl alcohol is from methyl alcohol. It doesn't bioaccumulate, leaving the body in about 14-18 days.
But, that does not mean that there is anything necessarily wrong with a large piece of meat coming in contact with lead for a short while.
Lead, on the other hand, bioaccumlates quite well. You don't want to eat much in the way of small game shot with lead. There is no safe level of lead exposure and most of it will get sacked away in your bones to be slowly released over years. (Children and pregnant women get much higher doses in the soft tissues due to the way their bones undergo remodeling.)
Small game animals killed with shot tend to have many small fragments of lead in their tissues. [plosone.org] The UK's Food Standards Agency advises against eating meat killed with lead shot [food.gov.uk]. Eating less than half a pound of small game would increase your lead exposure by eightfold above average, and about half a pound of deer shot with led would double it. We're talking a teensy 8 oz steak here.
With the introduction of softer, heavier alloys for non-toxic shot, there is no legitimate reason to be using lead shot other than bull-headed stubbornness or an utter disregard for anything other than your own pleasure. It's you and your family that you're poisoning after all.
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Insightful)
and about half a pound of deer shot with led would double it. We're talking a teensy 8 oz steak here.
Ok, deer are normally killed with a *bullet* - not shot. A single projectile passing into the vitals. At least half the time the bullet passes through the other side. When it doesn't the bullet is either lodged under the skin or is in the chest cavity. The meat in the general area is often discarded anyways due to ballistic shock (ie, it turns to a bloody mush).
Bottom line, contact between the deer and the bullet is brief (often fractions of a second) and localized.
Then try this paper out. (Score:5, Informative)
Lead fragments found in randomly sampled packages of venison donated to food banks. [biologicaldiversity.org]
Turns out that slugs leave metal fragments too.
game animal bullets must expand (Score:5, Informative)
In most states, game animals must be shot with an expanding bullet. Either soft point or hollow point. This is intended to increase the size of the wound channel and likelihood that the shot will be rapidly fatal.
In war, these bullets are banned by the Geneva convention. Wounds are hoped to be survivable by humans and the bullets are intended to poke a hole in enemy bodies that removes them from battle.
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There's no solid evidence of health risks from thiomersal.
Not in the manner in which you were speaking perhaps. However, I am highly allergic to thiomersal. I first ran into this nasty stuff when it was used as a preservative in contact lens solutions in the early 1980s. I still have one pupil that is slightly more dilated than the other as a result of a relatively brief exposure 30 years ago - a few stubborn days figuring that my new contacts would just take getting used to even while my eyes continued to swell, burn, and turn red as a beet.
This stuff is still
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And you eat chlorine every time you eat table salt. The mercury in thimerosol (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thimerosol [wikipedia.org]) is not the same as pure liquid mercury.
The Romans found out about lead ACETATE. (Score:3)
What the Romans found out about was lead acetate.
They discovered that lining their wine storage containers made bad or old wine turn sweet, rather than sour. This is because the acetic acid of the vinegar reacted with the metallic lead of the lining, becoming and extremely sweet - and extremely soluble, bioavailable, and toxic - compound (nicknamed "sugar of lead"). This, far more than the metallic lead in the pipes, is currently believed to be the main source of lead-related poisoning in the Romans (espe
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Funny)
Gold of course.
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I was thinking depleted uranium. Everything they said about lead can be said about DU, except that DU has better ballistics and density.
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The larger the half life, the less harmful it is.
If you had a kilo of a element that had a half life of 10 seconds that is when you start shitting yourself, not a little bit of uranium.
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Informative)
That's a pretty long half-life, to the point where only half the original ore decayed in the entire history of our planet, not much is likely to decay while I'm holding it. With half-lives is that longer is safer, eventually getting to the point like carbon-12 and oxygen and such which are stable (infinite half-life)
Not that I'm arguing for it, but the toxicity is likely a much bigger issue than the radiation. Give me the choice between carrying a chunk of uranium and a chunk of it's fission byproducts like caesium-137 with a half life of only 30 years and you'd better believe I'll take the uranium, and I'd just as soon you stay on the other side of that nice thick lead wall with that caesium please. Even enriched uranium isn't terribly dangerous in small quantities, it's only as it starts approaching critical mass that it starts becoming dangerous. Think of the Los Alamos criticality accident - a bunch of nuclear physists all very aware of the risks involved happily playing in a room with two chunks of enriched uranium each a bit over half the critical mass, and when they were accidentally brought into full contact and went critical for a moment the man with his hand on the screwdriver only sentenced himself to death.
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Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Funny)
Gold of course.
Expecting a cyberman invasion?
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Funny)
I've tried hunting with plasma rifles, but the deer end up being just piles of faintly glowing ash, and you can't feed that to the kids.
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Funny)
Have you ever made an alloy of bullshit, steel, and bismuth? The bullshit adds too much carbon, making it brittle. It's completely unsuitable for bullets.
Semicolons; use them.
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Thanks, Schoolhouse Rock! :-) Actually, I intentionally used the semicolon when a colon or dash would have been more appropriate, but I was trying to play on the original post.
The original "Bullshit, steel and bismuth work fine." could have been written as "Bullshit; steel and bismuth work fine."; "Bullshit! Steel and bismuth work fine."; or even "Bullshit -- steel and bismuth work fine." A comma simply isn't strong enough to separate the interjection when it precedes a list.
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Informative)
Steel is banned at many ranges because it can be more damaging to metallic target stands and steel targets.
Simple solution: continue to use lead. The bill the NRA is protesting against (AB711) only bans lead ammo for hunting. If the bill passes, you can still use lead ammo for other uses (target shooting, home defense, insurrections, etc).
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Informative)
Well, considering the ATF - in its infinite malice - has banned solid copper and brass hunting projectiles as "armor piercing" even though they work EXTREMELY well as hunting bullets
Except they didn't do that. They banned brass pistol ammo, which is very rarely used in hunting.
The attack on lead ammo is about gun control, not lead abatement. Period.
Except the bill in question (AB711) places no restrictions on the sale, use or possession of lead ammo, as long as you don't hunt with it.
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Informative)
Encapsulates the NRA spirit perfectly. The attitude on display is that the government is the enemy and not matter what law they pass with regards to guns the intent is predetermined to be evil gun control.
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The intent is gun control. Raising the price of guns and ammo has been on the wish list of anti-gun people for years. High taxation has always been the usual tool, but they can't get it passed. But if under the guise of environmentalism they can raise the price of ammo so that few can afford it, that will work too.
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And you sound like a cross between Yoda and a Google translation.
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Well, considering the ATF - in its infinite malice - has banned solid copper and brass hunting projectiles as "armor piercing" even though they work EXTREMELY well as hunting bullets
Except they didn't do that. They banned brass pistol ammo, which is very rarely used in hunting.
The attack on lead ammo is about gun control, not lead abatement. Period.
Except the bill in question (AB711) places no restrictions on the sale, use or possession of lead ammo, as long as you don't hunt with it.
Given the history of such proponents and of such laws there is exactly zero reason to believe that if this law isn't fought and defeated that these same people won't be back next year wanting to ban lead, also known as 'affordable', ammo entirely.
The history of gun control is one of dishonesty, misdirection and incrementalism. It is also unlikely, though possible, that this is really about serious concerns about the relatively tiny amounts of lead and more likely just a way to try and ban ammo in a politica
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Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Informative)
I can't seem to find any useful population-level surveys of lead exposure in the classical world; but Vitruvius does mention the health effects seen in in lead-workers:
"10. Clay pipes for conducting water have the following advantages. In the first place, in construction:—if anything happens to them, anybody can repair the damage. Secondly, water from clay pipes is much more wholesome than that which is conducted through lead pipes, because lead is found to be harmful for the reason that white lead is derived from it, and this is said to be hurtful to the human system. Hence, if what is produced from it is harmful, no doubt the thing itself is not wholesome.
11. This we can exemplify from plumbers, since in them the natural colour of the body is replaced by a deep pallor. For when lead is smelted in casting, the fumes from it settle upon their members, and day after day burn out and take away all the virtues of the blood from their limbs. Hence, water ought by no means to be conducted in lead pipes, if we want to have it wholesome. That the taste is better when it comes from clay pipes may be proved by everyday life, for though our tables are loaded with silver vessels, yet everybody uses earthenware for the sake of purity of taste."
(Pages 246-47 [gutenberg.org] of the Project Gutenberg edition.)
The degree to which the recognized the toxic effects doesn't seem to have stopped them from using lead pipes or lead acetate; but it was apparently recognized as an occupational hazard.
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Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Insightful)
O RLY?
http://www.vpc.org/press/1104blood.htm [vpc.org]
Funny how they protect the gun manufacturers from gun owners:
http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/nraindus.htm [vpc.org]
It's the biggest gun manufacturers' industry group because it uses unwitting gun owners as puppets to do all the work.
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Um..in exactly what way are they doing that? Gun owners presumably...want guns to stay legal. Gun manufacturers also...want guns to stay legal.
I really don't see a conflict of interest here.
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:4, Insightful)
That shield law protected manufacturers from being sued when their weapons were used in a crime. That seems quite reasonable to me, guns are doing exactly what guns are supposed to do.
If I were to hit someone over the head with my Swingline stapler would Swingline be considered at fault?
Also... Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler...
The NRA is people like me with free minds (Score:3)
You ought to look up NRA finances sometime and educate yourself. The NRA gets its funds from members. Is that the best you can do -- stomp your feet and call 5 million of us sock puppets? Compare that to MAIG, Bloomberg's own sock puppet astroturf group of mayors, quite a few of whom have quit because they were enrolled without their knowledge or lied to as to its goals. There are also more MAIG mayors convicted of felonies than gun owners.
They didn't protect manufacturers from owners (Score:4, Informative)
The purpose of this effort was to protect the industry against nuisance suits where a gun killed someone when it was fired by a criminal and functioned perfectly. In the end, this resulted in a ban on nuisance suits by the likes of the VPC that are designed to bankrupt companies for producing legal products that function exactly as advertised.
Suits against gun companies over harm due to actual product defect are exceedingly rare, if not non-existent.
The VPC lies. Always.
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It was a gun owners advocacy group.
It's not anymore. http://www.businessinsider.com/gun-industry-funds-nra-2013-1 [businessinsider.com]
The NRA does what it can to keep interest up in its members. I'm sure it does what it can to increase gun ownership to pick up new members. It also, very much, wants to make sure that more guns are sold. My basis for these last few statements are the change of heart they had regarding background checks, their reactions to shootings that make national news, and the people I know who belong to
Re:The Romans found out about lead (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, lead is quite easily ingested from those sources. Handle a few old tire weights or fishing sinkers that are tarnished, especially if they've been kept in a container where they can rub against each other, and notice how your hands quickly turn gray from the dust. If you then handle a cigarette without washing up, it's all going straight into your bloodstream. If you handle food, some of the lead will be excreted, but about a third will remain in your body.
While no level of exposure to lead is "safe", NIOSH has a limit of 10 g/dL for regular people, 5 g/dL for children, and 30 g/dL for workers occupationally exposed to lead. In adults, symptoms of blood poisoning become evident at 40 g/dL.
40 g/dL is not a lot. The average adult has 50 dL of blood, meaning 2,000 g (two milligrams) is all it takes to reach the limit. According to wolfram alpha, that amount is the size of about three grains of sand.
According to Wikipedia, blood poisoning has been measured at levels of "109–139 g/dL in indoor shooting range instructors". I find it a bit ironic that the NRA doesn't even mention lead poisoning their own membership. Or maybe that explains a lot about the NRA.
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Indoor shooting range instructors are not automatically NRA members. In fact lots of gun enthusiasts are not NRA members. It's absurd for you to draw any connections or conclusions based on common interests.
Regardless, most municipalities require exhaust ventilation in shooting ranges near the firing line to reduce exposure.
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I find it a bit ironic that the NRA doesn't even mention lead poisoning their own membership. Or maybe that explains a lot about the NRA.
Actually, the NRA Range Source Book does mention it extensively in connection with ranges, both in connection with toxicity to personnel and environmental (e.g. backstop construction for outdoor ranges). This is a manual of design best practices for safe construction and operation of a shooting range.
For example:
Indoor ranges require an internal atmosphere adequate to protect the health of workers as elevated blood lead levels are a potential threat to those who work in indoor ranges. Those who design and construct them must understand the cause of lead poisoning, the symptoms, the consequences of over-exposure and how to prevent it. It is equally important that they understand how to design ventilation systems for a particular shooting activity (see Section III, Chapter 2). You are strongly advised to engage the services of environmental engineers, architects, etc., to advise you.
Inhalation (breathing) and ingestion (swallowing) of airborne particulate lead is also a health issue to be aware of when on a shooting range. Protecting yourself through common sense and good personal hygiene is your responsibility. You owe it to yourself and to your family to take care of your health. After working or shooting on a shooting range, ALWAYS wash your hands, arms, and face before smoking or eating. If you fail to do this, you will be putting lead dust directly into your mouth.
And so forth.
Re:2,000 g != 2mg (Score:5, Informative)
Crap. I had been copying and pasting the mu symbol for micrograms in all of those figures, but they all got stripped and I missed it in preview. Slashcode is removing the HTML mu tag, too. Here's the corrected version with "u" in place of the mu symbol:
While no level of exposure to lead is "safe", NIOSH has a limit of 10 ug/dL for regular people, 5 ug/dL for children, and 30 ug/dL for workers occupationally exposed to lead. In adults, symptoms of blood poisoning become evident at 40 ug/dL.
40 ug/dL is not a lot. The average adult has 50 dL of blood, meaning 2,000 ug (two milligrams) is all it takes to reach the limit. According to wolfram alpha, that amount is the size of about three grains of sand.
Barnes bullets must love this (Score:3)
Barnes Bullets surely is not going to be helping the NRA on this one.
I shoot those in all my rifles. They are really great and apparently I am being eco friendly.
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So my muzzleloader is now armor piercing?
I wonder if the thumbhole stock makes it an assault muzzleloader as well. It is ported too!
I suspect since it is not painted black, I am ok.
Re:Barnes bullets must love this (Score:4, Insightful)
*Winner of the "funniest concept of the day" award.
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There's this [dailyuncon...tional.com], which shows us musket-as-original-assault-rifle in a historical context, and this [glockforum.net], which shows us a musket with a black nylon stock and all sorts of scary attachments. I totally have to agree with the "bet your ass George Washington would have owned one" sentim
non sequitur (Score:4, Interesting)
The rise and fall of lead levels from gasoline and lead-based paint are strongly correlated to the rise and fall of crime rates in communities around the world.
Yes, and??
Gasoline is something you are inhaling some fumes from, and around pretty often.
Lead on bullets, much less so - most people would at most go shooting one day a week, many much less often than that. And the bullets fired are fired into a range, so contamination is very limited compared to widespread use of gas and spillage at every station.
The amusing thing is that the increase of bullets (i.e. people owning guns) has also contributed to drops in crime rates...
Re:non sequitur (Score:5, Informative)
The amusing thing is that the increase of bullets (i.e. people owning guns) has also contributed to drops in crime rates...
Actually, violent crime in the United States has dropped significantly since the 1980s and early 1990s [wikipedia.org], but so has gun ownership [nytimes.com].
Re:non sequitur (Score:4, Informative)
but so has gun ownership [nytimes.com].
Has it? As a percentage of households, yes. However, you need to account for population growth over the same time period. If you do you'll see the number (not percentage) of households with firearms has stayed fairly steady over the decades.
Re:non sequitur (Score:4, Insightful)
but so has gun ownership [nytimes.com].
Has it? As a percentage of households, yes. However, you need to account for population growth over the same time period. If you do you'll see the number (not percentage) of households with firearms has stayed fairly steady over the decades.
Without taking a position on the issue of guns vs. crime itself, comparing rates is exactly what should be done statistically.
i.e. the "rate" (fraction) of gun ownership (number of guns per household) should be compared with the crime rate (e.g. murders per 10,000 people per year.)
However, it may be debatable whether the appropriate number for guns is guns/household or percentage of people who own guns.
(The mean and median number of people per household is probably changing.)
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Have you ever seen them just dissolve in water?
Of course not. It'd take a heck of a long time. How many lead statues have dissolved in the rain?
For a major leaching from them you need something else in it, like an acid, or the water to be hot and in contact for a long time. In some cases it can be a problem. When you have large amounts perhaps like in a landfill (where you can get localized heating from decay) full of old circuit boards, you might have a problem. Might.
But if lead had just dissolved like yo
Re:non sequitur (Score:4, Funny)
Bullets but not wheel weights?: (Score:5, Insightful)
Lead when finely divided or in a form easily absorbed (like paint chips that get eaten) or in a place that can get heavily leached is a real problem.
Blocks of lead, like the wheel weights used to balance car tires aren't a big problem.
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Except that the NRA isn't defending the lead wheel weights, and they're already outlawed in CA.
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Re:Bullets but not wheel weights?: (Score:4, Interesting)
Reminds me of the asinine scare about asbestos insulation, where the form (airborn fibers vs. solid bound masses) and exposure times (years) were completely ignored.
The scare was invalid, but the concern is valid. It, originally, wasn't about merely having asbestos sitting inertly in your walls, but about acts that would unwittingly disturb asbestos, leading to it being airborne as actual harmful particles. If you do work on, or demolish older structures, than asbestos can actually be a risk. I have a giant hunk of rock asbestos sitting on a shelf, and the odds of it ever harming anyone is pretty slim (unless I throw it at you, or such), but if I ground up a couple tons of it and exposed it to you over some time, it wouldn't be optimal. Same with lead paint, it isn't much of a risk, until it ages or until someone does work on a structure containing it.
The mercury scare still pisses me off. As a kid I loved it, I had some old mercury switches that mesmerized me, and occasionally I'd play with free mercury (I didn't swallow it, or rub it one me). My parents played with it constantly. But now its worse than ebola. In high school someone spilled a couple of grams of mercury, and it shut down half the school for a day... because mercury is scary.
Someone really needs to stand up to the power of heavy metal. Ahem...
That said, why does anyone actually care about the NRA anymore? They are about as valid as AARP, nothing more than a self-interested lobby group that really doesn't care about their members being using them to fun what their masters want to force on everyone. That isn't a screed against gun ownership, or owners, my feelings toward the NRA is irrelevant towards my stance on guns. The NRA should die, and be replaced with a better group that actually represents their members, and minimizes their actual bigger impact to only things that protect their members rights.
If the NRA was a person (Score:3)
it would be considered a sociopath.
NRA = Nutjobs Riling Americans (Score:5, Interesting)
I can remember a time, back in the late 70s, when the NRA took out full-page ads in Field & Stream and Outdoor Life. I don't remember the exact wording, but they seemed like a reasonable organization and advocate for responsible gun ownership. These days, it seems like the NRA is just a mouthpiece for off-kilter political wack-jobs. I can scarcely glass over any of their "publications" without hearing Ted Nugent reading it in my mind.
First slashdotted site I've seen in some time (Score:3)
(yes, I know I'll be down-modded for this. let me have it)
Re:First slashdotted site I've seen in some time (Score:5, Funny)
It appears we took down the NRA site that his summary linked to. Apparently the slashdot conservatives wanted to get the talking points from it before the slashdot liberal pointed out that lead is bad?
(yes, I know I'll be down-modded for this. let me have it)
But lead is bad. Surely even a slashdot conservative can recognize that.
Except that (to a slashdot conservative) guns are good, and anything that goes against guns in any way, shape, or form must be discredited. If Microsoft announced tomorrow that Windows 8 came with a free AR16 and a box of ammo there would be a front page story touting how undeniably stable, awesome, secure, awesome, and better-than-everything-else-ever it is. Hell all congress and hollywood had to do to make SOPA popular here was include guns in it - if there had been a measure written in to the bill that made every empty video rental store into a Sunday gun show it would have been the most popular bill ever.
Sentence parsing fails (Score:3)
"The National Rifle Association has launched a website defending the use of lead ammunition against scientists and environmental organizations..."
Okay then, at least they didn't defend the use of water boarding on scientists. Oh wait, I totally parsed that wrong due to my inherent bias against anything coming from the NRA. So, I checked the link and saw that it goes to a site "huntfortruth.org" (so you can kill it). Dang! There goes that inbuilt sarcasm again.
Here's a report, republished from Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners Journal, Volume 31 Number 4, Fall 1999 written with assistance from a researcher a the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that details what a "green" bullet is: http://www.firearmsid.com/Feature%20Articles/GreenBullets/GreenBullets.htm [firearmsid.com]
Re:Decontamination (Score:5, Informative)
Actually many range mine the lead out of their backstops for resale back to either home bullet casters or commercial casting outfits.
Re:Decontamination (Score:5, Informative)
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Ya the county range I shoot at his little buckets at each station for brass. If you don't reload (I don't, since I don't shoot enough to wish to spend the time on it) you scoop your casings in there before you leave. They then sell it and use the money to help pay for the range. There are trash cans too for trash, but no brass in the trash. It is valuable, either take it or put it in the buckets.
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So you are saying that recycling batteries have the same environmental impact as molding metal?
Re:Decontamination (Score:5, Interesting)
And while I understand not all pro-gun people are rabid GOP deniers of [insert topic they don't like], it's a pretty good correlation.
No, it's really not a good correlation. There are a lot of very vocal anti-gubmint gun owners, who make the rest of them look kind of loony. The vast majority of gun owners I know are somewhat left of center. NPR listening, democrat voting, pro-choice, not interested in NASCAR or truck pulls, do not believe Obama has a Kenyan birth certificate, are not members of the Klan, have mufflers on their motorcycles...
Most gun owners don't get into the public debate. For one, the anti-gun folks use lots of emotion and almost no logic to make their point, and there's not much reason to engage them. Secondly, the vocal part of the pro-gun folks use lots of emotion and almost no logic to make their point, and there's not much reason to engage them.
Re:Decontamination (Score:5, Funny)
It really only takes a few very loud idiots to create a stereotype.
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The vast majority of gun owners I know are somewhat left of center.
(emphasis added)
I suggest you might have a bit of sample bias? Gallup polls show that Republicans are far more likely to own guns than Democrats. [gallup.com] Now, not all Republicans are of the fire-breathing, cloud of denial variety, and half of all gun owners are Democrats or self-declared Independents, but I think your experience is potentially biased by where you live.
(And not to match anecdote to anecdote, but I live in the South, where the stereotype above is very true. YMMV.)
Re:Decontamination (Score:5, Insightful)
Gun ownership isn't as much as a Right vs Left thing, but more towards where people live. Urban vs Rural. Also Urban vs Rural is tied to the Right vs Left thing.
Democrats in more Rural areas tend to have High NRA ratings, Republicans form Urban areas tend to have lower ones.
However most Republicans come from Rural Areas and Democrats come from Urban areas.
If you live in an Urban Area, You need and see government assistance every day. Sewer/Water, Garbage Pickup, Police/Fire that less then a few minutes away... You really don't need a Gun if you live in Urban area, it really would just get you into more trouble then it will help you, if you are in danger you call the police and they can get there fast enough to help.
If you live in an Rural Area. Most of the government assistance goes to farmers, but You need to have your own wells, you need to buy from a private garbage company or drop your stuff off at the dump, Volunteer Fire, that could add 30 minutes to respond. Police that is disperse and could take a while to respond too. Having a gun, is more of a useful tool, and chances are you are not getting into trouble with it.
I live in a Rural Area and I do not own a gun. However many of my neighbors do, and it really doesn't bother me, I am fully comfortable going up to them with a riffle in their hands and talking to them.
Police response (Score:3)
You think the police respond quickly if you live in a bad neighborhood? They'll show up an hour after you get shot and fill out some paperwork and then leave.
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Jacketed Ammunition only nominally holds a round together. Particularly if you are talking about a higher velocity rifle round, those can often squirt a jet of lead out of the casing during ballistic deceleration.
Re:Decontamination (Score:4, Informative)
A large part of the ammunition fired at ranges is low velocity lead. Prevents lots of barrel wear. Also less painful. Shoot 100 rounds of jacketed .357 magnum and your hand/wrist is hurting. Shoot 100 rounds of lead .38 special and your good to shoot another 100. You'll also save a few bucks in the process.
It's still a non-issue environmentally.
Re:Decontamination (Score:5, Interesting)
After having been to some rifle ranges, one question that never seems to be answered is: after several decades of hard shooting, who gets the unenviable (and expensive!) job of decontaminating what is essentially a toxic waste dump?
NRA doing what right-wingers do best? -- liability-dumping and socializing losses?
There's some controversy about that at a popular San Francisco shooting range:
http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/05/24/sf-faces-10-million-toxic-waste-problem-at-lake-merced-gun-club/ [cbslocal.com]
The city is trying to shut down the gun club (which would leave the city on the hook for the cleanup). The gun club (which has already switched away from lead shot) wants to stay around and pay for the cleanup themselves, though maybe not on the terms the city wants.
Other lakes in SF that did not have shooting ranges are also contaminated with lead [sfgate.com] (mainly from street runoff when lead gas was legal), so it's not clear how much contamination at the gun club's lake is due to the gun club itself and how much from other sources, but the city is apparently blaming the gun club for all of the contamination in their lake.
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I am somewhat surprised that the city is not blaming the gun range for the lead contamination in every body of water in the city.
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Do you realize how much shooting and lack of cleaning it would take to reach that point?
Animal crap has a much bigger impact to our water supplies than this.
lead plumbing. (Score:4, Informative)
I've seen stuff that says that lead contamination from piping is a lot less than people think. Especially if it's 'just' the solder. Actually, the older the piping, the better, since lead, like copper, oxidizes into a hard coating, unlike iron with relatively flaky rust. Add things like calcium deposits on top, and the contamination goes down.
It's my understanding that there are still lead service lines around. Thing is, unlike household water pipes:
1. They're pretty much always cold (less uptake if cold).
2. Water generally doesn't sit in them (less uptake due to less contact with lead)
3. Larger diameter pipes (less surface area of lead per volume of water)
4. Generally older than heck (lots and lots of buildup keeping elemental lead out of contact).
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Out of copper or brass. You can either cast or turn them.
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If they ban cryptography will you just comply? Spineless pussy!
The law is an ass, ignore it.
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No, if the government passes unjust laws, you break the law. It's called civil disobedience and it's often quite effective.
Re:Heavy metal poisening is no joke. Fuck the NRA. (Score:4, Insightful)
I did just that a few years back. I would get nothing but letters spouting FUD about X,Y,Z. They would then of course ask for a donation to stop whatever big scary fear they just imagined.
Some gems:
1) Obama not trying to pass laws to take away our guns in his first term is PROOF he wants to take away our guns. So don't vote for Obama.
2) Obama is working with the UN to take away our guns all over the world.
I was willing to give them my money when I thought they were trying to encourage training, education, and firearm ownership. I also liked that they would be a voice in the process of government for the rights of gun owners. But they have moved beyond that and I can't say their goals align with my own goals. I just want to own my guns, shoot at ranges, and see the encouragement of proper education. I guess that's too much to ask.
Re:WTF NRA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cost. Generally if you remove lead from bullets you see a price increase of nearly an order of magnitude. If you completely remove lead from ammo then you essentially drive the cost of target shooting up to a point where it can only be afforded by the rich.
Hunting wouldn't be much effected - neither would crime, as neither needs a significant volume of ammo, but target shooting would be a thing of the past. Passing laws with such consequences shouldn't be done just because it "might maybe sorta possibly help something somewhere". It needs to have very specific reasons based on scientific study. Not just of the "lead is bad, mmmkay" variety, but actually showing that the lead usage specifically in ammunition is reason for concern. So far, the data just doesn't show any major problem there.
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I don't think you know what an order of magnitude means. I am not paying $10 a shot for my Barnes bullets.
Target shooting will go on fine, it will just cost a very little bit more.
Re:WTF NRA? (Score:5, Informative)
$10 per shot? No, but for all my target shooting I shoot handloads. My .30-30 plinking loads I shoot with Missouri Bullet Company 165gr lead slugs. They run about $30 for 250. Thats 12 cents per bullet. Barnes bullets tend to run about $30 per 50 - about 60 cents per bullet. Not quite an order magnitude, but its still 5 times the cost.
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I don't rely on them, I have shot other ammo. I just prefer that stuff.
I was more taking a jab at shooting a 30-30 for fun.
Irresistible urge to rip on something someone else said?
looks at own previous comment
Yea, I get that.
Re:The local range paid expenses with salaged lead (Score:5, Insightful)
As a god damn liberal, I say STFU. I am more worried about your stupidity leading most Americans being ok with banning guns than anything politicians can manage.
The suggestion to shoot people like you just did is what endangers our right to own firearms. Not my support of civil rights or food for the hungry.
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Higher per capita gun ownership? Where? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yes, and? (Score:4, Insightful)
Read the research. Lead usage in gasoline is correlated, with a scary amount of accuracy, to crime rates. There's a drop off in crime at a specific point about 20 years after the removal of lead from gasoline, the timing of which is consistently that same 20 years no matter when an area stopped using leaded gasoline. So it's not a strawman argument to say that lead poisoning leads to high crime rates -- it's peer reviewed science.
If you want an actual argument for lead in the form of bullets, then you should be talking about how the research is discussing what is essentially an aerosolized form of lead, rather than a chunk of metal. That's where there's room for debate with regards to bullets -- not in trying to vaguely disprove research you obviously didn't even read.
Re:Yes, and? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually there is a demonstrated probable causal path: exposure to lead if the first 5 years of human brain development (and particularly in the first 2 years) is likely to cause faulty development of parts of the forebrain that control emotional outbursts. But hey, you keep on cleaning your gun on the kitchen table and bottle feeding your newborn after firing some bullets at the range. I'm sure you're right and there won't be any repercussions.
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1) There is no metal suitable for bullets other than lead - unless we want to shoot some other heavy metal. Pick.
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it [barnesbullets.com]
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Did you actually even try the search you suggested? Other than a link to the Skeptic blog discussing Mother Jones' story on Rick Nevin's paper (and finding it highly plausible if overstated), there's his paper itself, two Mother Jones articles on it and a host of "me too" repeating of what Mother Jones said including The Guardian and Forbes, and a couple of links from others who consider it plausible but far from proven.
Not one single link on the first page of the search you selected outright denies the co
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Thousands of scientists: "Wildlife is dying due to poisoning from lead ammunition being accidentally ingested. Here is the evidence."
Yea, so, I checked out the links in TFS, and no where did I find any actual evidence that so much as indicated an environmental or health issue; heck, according to one of them: [ny.gov]
To date, there are no reported human illnesses related to the consumption of wild game shot with lead ammunition.
So where is this evidence you claim they have, but didn't bother linking to?
I don't even see why this is something worth fighting for. I guess non-lead ammunition costs a bit more? Come on, suck it up guys.
Yea, sure, why not? Next, they'll tell us that our old mechanical guns are dangerous and mandate that all future guns have to have one of those stupid bio-locks. But it only costs a little more, so suck it up.
Next year, they'll find some other reason to modif
Not on purpose, but yes you do. (Score:5, Informative)
Irony: An idiot calling others idiots. You realize we don't eat our ammo?
Actually, you do. [slashdot.org] You really, [plosone.org] really do [sciencedirect.com].
Now do you see why the NRA is attacking scientists? The facts just don't align with their policy goals, and if you can't get the facts on your side, you attack the people stating them. Same strategy for tobacco companies. Same for major carbon emitters. Etc.
Linking fail... (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot ate the best link. Try this one [biologicaldiversity.org] instead. Good pictures of fragments in the meat.
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We have some grade A paranoia going on here:
All one needs to say is "NRA" and it is immediately assumed that they are on the wrong side of the argument,
okey dokey.
"Against scientists and environmental organizations" as if they were one and the same!
No, hence the use of "and" in that sentance.
But let's remember, all good people think the same, and all good people agree that science always backs up environmentalism. To think otherwise is crimethink.
Way more paranoia. If scientists in field X make a claim and
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All one needs to say is "NRA" and it is immediately assumed that they are on the wrong side of the argument, whatever it might be this time. "Against scientists and environmental organizations" as if they were one and the same!
But they are on the wrong side of the argument, and the scientists here are wildlife biologists upon whose work the environmental groups are relying. Is it really at all controversial that lead is bad for you and for wildlife? Does an argument in the opposite direction even pass the sniff test? Are people that ignorant of the basics of ballistic forensics as to think no lead gets in their food when they shoot animals with it?
I think what perhaps is more scary is the fact that the NRA has come out with su
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I'm pretty sure that if a bullet is interacting with your brain, long term development is going to be low on the list of things you have to worry about.
Re:Rational thought (Score:4, Informative)
From your post, it sounds like there is already an alternative "green" ammunition because the military is using it and that it is recognized that lead can be a problem because of the regulations surrounding shooting ranges.
Pure lead does not dissolve in water, you are correct. However, in the presence of water, lead will readily form other compounds such as lead acetate or lead sulfate or lead phosphate. While those and most lead compounds do not dissolve in pure water (pH 7.0), lead compounds will readily dissolve and leach if the water is even a bit acidic. Since most rain and soil is acidic, pure lead bullets will readily convert to a lead compound which will readily dissolve and leach into the soil and the water table. Now the rate of dissolve may not be great, but over time, those lead bullets, will leach more and more lead into the environment. Maybe not in your lifetime, but in somebody's. There is a reason we don't use lead pipes any more and we don't drink wine (an acidic drink) out of lead tankards.
So, while this may be a push by anti-gun advocates, that does not change the chemistry involved with lead nor the biological impact. We've know about the dangers of lead for a very long time. It's been banned from water fowl hunting for decades because of its propensity to contaminate the water, fish and birds, along with anything that might consume them. If there are viable alternatives, then what difference does it make what one uses for a bullet? A 150 grain bullet of a particular shape is going to have the same flight characteristics whether it is made from lead or not. Steel shot is just as effective at killing waterfowl as lead shot, so it stands to reason that it would be just as effective as lead shot for other uses, too.
The ship builders said the scientists were wrong about asbestos. History shows that the scientists were correct. The tobacco industry said the scientists were wrong about smoking. History shows that the scientists were correct. The auto industry said the scientists were wrong about lead based fuels. History shows that the scientists were correct. History shows that the detergent companies said the scientists were wrong about phosphates and the environment. History shows that the scientists were correct. The tourist industry said the scientists were wrong about sun exposure. History shows that the scientists were correct.
Who knows, though, the scientists can't always be right, can they? Maybe the NRA has found the one thing the scientists are lying about. But then there is that darn chemistry stuff. You can't just get around it. Maybe the NRA is right and the scientists are lying, but then there would have to be an awfully big conspiracy, centuries in the planning to fake the results we know about the chemistry of lead compounds.
So, even if this is politically motivated, it doesn't change the science and until somebody can refute the science, it's a safer bet to bet on the scientists than the NRA.