It’s the weekend of the Game Fair, so spare a thought for all those people walking around in tweed in this hot weather – although you’d, maybe, think they had more sense.
There will be a lot of talk about lead ammunition – it’s a big thing this Game Fair. The shooting organisations are belatedly getting their act together and asking their members to stick to the law. I always think it’s better when people with lethal weapons stick to the law.
Here’s an extract from a recent article in the Sporting Gun by BASC’s Jeffrey Olstead:
‘And let’s face it: we won’t get much public support for lead shot, however loudly we protest against new laws. Lead has gone from petrol, pipes and paint and is widely recognised as a toxic heavy metal, and the simple-minded or uninformed will ask why should shooters have a dispensation to dump it on the countryside?’
Well, call me simple-minded but that’s right. Or scatter it through our food at levels higher than would be allowed in other meats, the simple-minded might add.
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Mark, The extract from the Sporting Gun BASC article is not showing up on my mobile. The empty box rather lessens the impact of RU cartoon & your piece, although I definitely get where you are coming from!
@_Polinard – thank you for telling me, I hope it is OK now?
I can’t remember if you found this at the time Mark
http://inhabitat.com/did-removing-lead-from-gasoline-cause-violent-crime-to-plummet/
Can you think of any subsections of our society with violent tendencies and low IQs, that may have had a greater exposure to lead than normal ?
What a splendid rhetorical device! I feel so simple minded and stupid I am almost persuaded that lead-shot must be OK!
Gosh, I do hope that the clever people in the shooting organisations don’t start telling me I’m intellectually subnormal if I believe poisoning eagles or shooting hen harriers are wrong or I simply won’t know what to think.
The level of multi-organisation commitment to the lead-shot campaign is impressive but leads me to two thoughts. First, I can’t help thinking that given their dominant position in the lead-shot working group and therefore privileged access to the as yet unpublished findings they know something we don’t (yet).
Secondly it clearly demonstrates that if 45% of shooters (BASC survey) are openly ignoring the laws on lead-shot what does this imply about the likely compliance with other laws protecting wildlife.
I like the weasel words “widely recognised as a toxic heavy metal”, where the simple-minded might say “is a toxic heavy metal”.
Hugh – true! But I thought that even that was progress!
I will ‘lead’ my weight to this discussion. At the RSPB reserve of Kinnordy an eel netter was given permission to use his nets to see if any eels were present. He did not catch 1 eel but several pike and perch and 1 drake mallard at 6 feet down! When the duck was opened up 9 lead shots were found in the gizzard. This must mean that a dabbling duck was trying to be a diving duck using lead weights to dive down to find a new sauce of food!!
Lets stop and think for a moment about that lead and crime connection – which none of the vested interests, like the criminology profession seem to be disputing. We appear to have been poisoning the whole human population (1st world at least) on a scale which, were we lab rats, probably would have led to measureable changes in behaviour. Its actually worse than anything that happened (not what might have happened, of course) with DDT – and it leaves me wondering what others are out there, and also even more suspicious when terribly clever people from the establishment pat me on the head and say ‘trust me, of course fracking, GM, new nuclear (add your own ideas !) will be OK.
As for shooting, there is only one possible answer if the sector is to have a future: it must take the initiative to voluntarily replace all lead shot as quickly as possible. It then might gain some moral high ground and a serious audience for the positive things it undoubtedly delivers. I fear it won’t happen: This is a sector great at talking to itself, and as a result shutting out the views of the largely indifferent but overwhelming majority of our largely urban population which will in the end finish it off.