FACT – TRADITIONAL LEAD AMMO IS SAFE
By Jim Foster
Once again those in favor of shutting down hunting forever have taken up the “lead is killing us” banner. Now, they are after rifle ammunition because, they say, there is enough lead in wild game meat killed with lead bullets to harm us.
The truth is this is just not true. Of course the leaders embracing the ban the bullet quest are the California losers who will ban anything if it gets on the ballot and a governor who is several sandwiches short of a picnic.
Recently attempts have been made to scare people into thinking lead ammunition poses a danger to individuals who eat wild game that was killed using traditional ammunition. They say, the California condor has consumed lethal lead amounts feeding on of gut piles.
Fact - There is no evidence or science to support either fear. These are the same people who try to convince you there is such a thing as Global Warming.
According to Center for Disease Control (CDC) study showed the average lead level of hunters tested was lower than that of the average American. In other words, if you were to randomly pick someone on the street, chances are they would have a higher blood lead level than the hunters in this study who eat wild game on a regular basis.
As it is with the global warming myth – some states, scared of their own shadows and filled with the anti-hunting faction, are entering an area they no nothing about and have studied less. North Dakota is one example. Minnesota is another state that believes the sky is falling.
The North Dakota Department of Health is still recommending children under 6 and pregnant women not eat any wild game. Children's lead levels in the study had a mean of 0.649 – less than half the national average. North Dakota food banks are still refusing to accept venison taken with traditional ammunition, unless they are whole cuts. Because of this stupidity people go hungry.
So what about the California condor?
California, anti-hunting groups and radical environmentalists launched a lobbying campaign to ban lead ammunition, using the lie that lead is poisoning the California condor. It’s just not happening!
Some condors have shown elevated levels of lead; a naturally occurring element found in batteries, light bulbs, paint chips and many other items found in condor nests. This fact is very important information considering these lead-based items have never been tested as a possible source of elevated lead levels in condors. Go figure!
The Executive Committee of the Condor Recovery Team has joined with the NSSF and numerous conservation and sportsmen's groups to support the adoption of science-based voluntary, non-ban measures -- measures that would have served to interrupt the potential pathways for the ingestion of lead bullet fragments by condors -- Governor Schwarzenegger chose to disregard science and the opinions of experts by signing into law legislation banning lead ammunition for hunting. What did I say about this mental midget?
The Iowa Department of Public Health (IDPH) – a state agency that has conducted an extensive panel of blood-lead testing for more than fifteen years, maintains that if lead in venison were a serious health risk, it would likely have surfaced within extensive blood lead testing since 1992 with 500,000 youth under 6 and 25,000 adults having been screened. It has not.
Despite there being no scientific evidence to support the hypothesis that lead ammunition is endangering the health of individuals or the California Condor, anti-hunting interest groups are continuing to press state legislatures around the country to support a ban on traditional ammunition.
Let’s face facts, the anti-hunters found club to undo hunting with the ban of lead shot for waterfowl - now they are going after lead ammunition for big game hunters. It’s time to STOP the lead farce anti-hunters.
Let’s hope we have all learned enough to fight this lead farce into oblivion. While we are at it, let’s let Al Gore know what a boob he really is by stopping the global warming rumor – another farce with good PR. “Bad” lead ammunition and global warming – the bi-product of grass and water after being processed through a male bovine.
If you have comments or news for Jim Foster please e-mail him at: jim@jimfosteroutdoors.com
(Many thanks to the National Shooting Sports Foundation for their solid information and their work to protect our hunting rights. For more info on the lead situation go to: www.nssf.org.)
