All this is based on flawed research data, that Glen Sanderson produced when he was working on his PhD at the Univ. of Illinois. Someone got ahold of his preliminary data, and went to Congress, who immediatesly banned the use of lead shot for Migratory Waterfowl.
Lead appears in many areas of the country naturally. Its in the soil and water. Because its a heavy metal, it usually passes through your stomach and out the kidneys at your large intestine, with other metals, and poses no harm to adults. There are huge lead deposits along the Mississippi river, at Galena, in NW Illinois, and at St. Louis, and below St.Louis, Mo. If lead in the water was a real problem, everyone living downstream of these two sites would be suffering from lead based illnesses. It precipitates out quickly, and combines with the abundant calcium and iron also found in the water.
However, in new born infants, who are just forming their brains and growing everything else, Lead has been found in their brains, in the fatty tissues, and is believed to be the source of some retardation. That is why Lead based paint was outlawed in the early 1960s.
Instead of imposing sanctions on errant parents, or providing poor families with training to be parents, and how to supervise their new-borns, and how to get rid of loose paint as a house hold cleaning chore, we had to ban lead based paints.
Nannygate was born!
There is some suggestion, dubious because of the sources, that lead also affect women more than men. Again, that fatty tissue difference. What actual harm, if any is done to women who ingest lead, and how much lead, must they ingest, and its source, before they suffer any ill effects is what is in dispute.
As to the birds, and game, lead oxidizes quickly, and combines with calcium, and with iron, easily in soils, and in the water. The oxides cover the lead inside and prevent the lead from being transferred to the blood stream when actually ingested by birds, while the pellet passes through the alimentary canal.
Glen said the problem they had was that they took blood tests from dead birds without plucking the feathers( can you imagine how hard it would be to find college students to pluck feathers from decaying corpses, much less look for old wounds in such bodies??) to look for old wounds.
When that was pointed out to them, they changed the test procedures to make sure they were not blaming INGESTED shot pellets for lead poisoning found in the blood streams and organs that actually came from wounds. There is a long established percentage of mortality ascribed to all hunting activity included wounded birds that die later.
With that new testing procedure, Ingested lead became a non-factor.
Glen's adjusted data found NO extra mortality ascribed to lead ingestion, from eating lead pellets by waterfowl, over the normal mortality figures from all other causes. This, after he compared mortality figures for birds found in areas where no hunting was allowed( game preserves) compared to those found in areas where hunting is allowed.
I heard this from Glen himself, and how he tried to get the Federal Government to listen to his final results, but it was too late. He spoke about his frustration, at a service club meeting, his shame and embarrassment that his data was used to restrict water fowl hunting, and the fact he could not get anyone in Congress to listen and repeal the law. The forces behind the law didn't give a damn about the ducks: they were after our guns.
The bit of lead that may be found in the meat of deer and other game shot with lead bullets or balls is easily cut away along with the blood shot meat around the primary wound channel, during butchering. Only those operations that throw the entire deer into a grinder to make " burgers" risk putting lead particles into meat that the public will eat. The idiots they hire to bone out the meat are not trained to cut away the bloodshot meet, as it " takes too much time".
Again, for adults, even this lead poses no health risk. I have bitten down on many bird pellets( shot) in birds I have killed over the years, when eating pheasants, or other game birds. As much as I try to find all the shot, sometimes a piece gets in there, and is not found until we are eating the cooked meat. So what! The pellet is put on the side of the plate, with the bones, if any, and thrown out with the garbage.
The politics of this is a clever use of the " Bambi" syndrome fostered by Disney, and used by PITA to try to ban hunting, mixed with the anti-gunners( same folks for the most part) who want to ban all guns. If they can ban hunting, or make it so inconvenient or expensive to hunt and to practice marksmanship skills, no one will be buying guns, the gun companies will go out of business, and they will win the gun debate by default.
The Brady Group has been caught publishing its long term goals, and short term plans to distort, lie, confuse, and wear down the Pro-Second Amendment "enemy" and mostly the non-shooting public, so that interest in shooting and hunting slowly drops down to the point where Pro-gun advocates can no longer persuade a majority of voters to protect the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
The battle against Lead bullets, is just one more part of the fight. They have taken the fight to Europe, because there are so few hunters, and shooters there, much less democracy, NO BILL of RIGHTS in their constitution recognizing or protecting any right to self defense, or to possess firearms, so there are much stricter regulations of guns and the public expects and accepts them. Then, when they win In Europe, they will try to force the USA to comply through UN resolutions.
The Clintons had this plan all greased up and ready to go in 2000, when Al Gore did not win the Presidency, and UN Ambassador Burton went to the UN and delivered a clear speech saying that the US would never support any UN resolution that would interfere with rights protected by our Constitution. The Brady group, and the Clintonistas- Ms. Bloodworth from Arkansas-- who ran the Million Moms crusade out of the West Wing of the White house, at our expense-- was furious, but decided to bide their time.
That time begins on Jan. 20, 2009.
