NRA Launches Pro-Lead Website

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."

Comments

The Romans found out about lead

[riverat1]

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

[ShanghaiBill]

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

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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 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.

Re:The Romans found out about lead

[ShanghaiBill]

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:Decontamination

[MBGMorden]

Actually many range mine the lead out of their backstops for resale back to either home bullet casters or commercial casting outfits.

Re:Decontamination

[DCFusor]

I own a small range, and that's precisely what we do - we gather the shot bullets and remelt them for casting (helps if you designed the backstops to make that easier). Saves a ton of money. Ditto, we collect all the brass from dumb shooters who leave it there - even more savings. The green aspect rides along for free - we just want our expensive metals back, it's like a super high grade mine with a heck of a lot less mess made to the envirornment in the process - at very low cost to us. I see a comment about Barnes below - no, we get them too. They float on the melt (along with the cupro-nickel normal jackets), and we sell the copper back to the refiners.

Re:non sequitur

[the gnat]

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, but so has gun ownership.

Re:WTF NRA?

[MBGMorden]

$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.

Higher per capita gun ownership? Where?

[Bruce66423]

In the US maybe, but in the UK and Western Europe gun ownership hasn't shifted and crime has fallen just as much. As a matter of record, the world is NOT the USA, despite the impression that some Americans seem to have (as I found when spending some otherwise very happy times with you....)

Not on purpose, but yes you do.

[Valdrax]

Irony: An idiot calling others idiots. You realize we don't eat our ammo?

Actually, you do. You really, really do.

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...

[Valdrax]

Slashdot ate the best link. Try this one instead. Good pictures of fragments in the meat.

Then try this paper out.

[Valdrax]

Lead fragments found in randomly sampled packages of venison donated to food banks.

Turns out that slugs leave metal fragments too.

game animal bullets must expand

[SethJohnson]

Not an expert on this but are not the bullets used for this sort of thing jacketed anyway?

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.

Re:2,000 g != 2mg

[plover]

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.