The side effects of such widespread gun usage in the US are a bummer, but at least that proliferation of guns protected your country from being overrun by a tyrannical facist government.
It’s amazing how well their gun culture stopped the tyrannical dictatorship from taking over!!!
The gun culture is the fascists. So yeah it was a success.
Step one was convincing these paranoid morns that the “real fascists” were people asking other politely to stop using slurs.
Best they could do for 4 years after an armed, violent attempted coup… was nothing.
Hard to believe nothing didn’t work. Back to the drawing board, maybe we can try caving to the demands of the rich and connected, the middle of the road voters surely want to get screwed without consent by the rich, but with gay marriage and more concern expressed about people getting hurt. Where is liz cheney, we can use her as the running mate, this is going to work great.
I think many people forget that these deluded middle of the road hogs think that they are just one lucky break or miracle away from being the rich and connected themselves. This is why they insatiably lick their spittle. Prosperity gospel tells them so.
Are the armed protestors opposing ICE occupation fascists as well? If you ask me, that’s exactly why we have the second amendment. Don’t hand gun ownership to the far right, you’re playing into their hand.
Good point, thank god, wait a minute…
Now, does this affect how many freedom eagles equal a pound, or whatever it is they use in the metric system?
This is not exclusively an American problem. Eagles in the Italian alps are dying mostly of lead poisoning, too.
Gonna guess it’s due to left over fragments from WW1?
No, it’s due to these birds eating other human-hunted animals, either alive or their abandoned interiora.
Are folks killing animals and not eating them or butchering them for their materials? That’s fucken horrid if so.
My guess is that migratory waterfowl eat lead shot when ‘grazing’ the bottom of wetlands. This bio-concentrates the lead in eagles when they prey on ducks and such.
@vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works Probably that too, but the major cause is that hunters eviscerate the prey on the spot, so that the meat will last longer and retain a better taste.
Despite not being a biologist, it is a topic I deeply care about. I have held a few presentations too, for friends and university colleagues.edit: It may be relevant to share that lead bullets in wetlands are banned EU-wide (where I am based) since 2023, because of the very issue with waterfowl you mentioned.
Lead shot for waterfowl hunting has been banned in the US for a few decades. It’s still used for upland bird hunting. I think it’s still frequently used illegally for waterfowl.
Not an expert, but have a decent layman’s understanding. Could totally be wrong about the next part:
It’s my understanding that lead contamination of wild animals through hunting primarily occurs due to various sizes of bird shot. The greater surface area allows a much higher level of contamination. It also forms lead dust in the shell from friction and when fired. It’s also easier for animals to eat it. Rifle rounds and slugs are fairly inert as the larger size prevents most consumption and less absorption when it is consumed.
The greater surface area allows a much higher level of contamination
Bird hunting is typically done with carttridges filled with tens or hundreds of pellets, to maximise the surface of the shot and enhance chances to actually hit the prey.
Most of the pellets in this cloud do not hit anything, hence they just directly fall in the water/ground.
Aight I see how that’d happen. Forgot about the reservoir effect.
In the US it’s from lead bullets, they scavenge a lot so they eat it from shot animals.
It’s the leading cause of death for many birds of prey in Europe too. Partly because hunters leave killed animals or their guts lying around, where the birds find them. It’s not just vultures who eat already dead prey, many species do if it’s available, like eagles. But even birds who only eat freshly killed prey (like falcons) are dying at alarming rates. Why? Because their prey often has lead embedded in their bodies. It’s not just that they eat lead because they mistake the pellets for food. One in three living ducks and geese in Europe has been shot before and has lead permanently embedded inside their body. Hunters will shoot at a swarm, kill one animal and hurt many more.
“Hunters”; that use a literal scattergun to murder animals because they lack the skill to succeed with anything less should be shamed as the pathetic little cowards they are.
If the hunting isn’t about the murder, prove it, and use a more discriminating weapon to do the job and only harm what you intend to kill and eat.
That’s what confused me too, if you use lead ammunition, how are you going to eat what you kill? I live in an area where trapping is more common so forgive the inquiry, the use of lead bullets has always confused me.
It’s eaten anyway. I’ve watched people spit the shot into an ashtray and carry on eating the rabbit pie. It was a while ago, when I was a wee bairn, but I know full well there are those in my hometown that still do this.
Not enough to account for the sheer, balls-out stupidity of voting to quit the EU when your specific area receives a notable amount (one of the highest in the EU, no less) of funding from said organisation to help regenerate the area.
Intelligence isn’t highly rated in these areas, so it’s hard to tell cause from effect here.
Wow. That seems dangerous…
Kill hunters
You can use steel shot
The US banned lead birdshot in 1991. Are they eating squirrels?
Eagles will eat just about anything they physically can so probably lots of squirrels, rabbits, smaller possums and raccoons but also eagles will sometimes eat carrion so I could certainly imagine they sometimes get this off something like a deer carcass.
I was trying to think of what is getting shot with lead but still getting away. I just spent however long reading about wound rates for deer. Which is low, but yeah. One thing I wonder is if it has anything to do with the amount of fish they would be eating. No other north American raptor eats fish like bald eagles do that I can think of.
It’s lead shot California condors went extinct in the wild because of lead poisoning from birdshot but they bred some in captivity and reintroduced them.
I thought that was due to johnny cash
I mentioned above that varmints are often shot with lead bullets and left in the field, however fishermen use lead sinkers that fish and ducks ingest then eagles eat them. Eagles are extremely sensitive to lead poisoning and other poisons like DDT. There is a push to change that with alternative less toxic materials.
IIRC, some bald eagles were found with neurological issues caused by nicotine from cigarette butts too.
People still use lead target shells all the time
Ungulates and rodents, mostly.
Birdshot is only banned for migratory bird hunting. Many landowners shoot woodchucks with rifles because they dig holes that livestock step in and break their legs, also the holes cause problems with equipment - they most often use lead bullets and leave the carcasses for the wildlife to dispose of. Some have switched to green ammunition but few have. We need to raise awareness for the need to switch to non-toxic ammunition. Maybe a bill that subsidies green ammunition with a small tax on lead ammunition could help.
Unfortunately, the most American thing this girl had ever heard of is also strongly affecting white-tailed sea eagles and other raptors in Germany and neighboring countries. Choose lead free ammo, folks. https://www.bund.net/themen/naturschutz/jagd/bleimunition/
Why is lead used at all? Why not steel?
Lead is denser, it weighs more per volume, so it travels farther and faster when propelled by an explosion. Uranium works even better, which is why they use depleted uranium in some military applications, as it’s more dense than lead, quite a bit better. Gold or platinum would work better too as they are heavier.
Fun fact, in a half billion years or so, the element of uranium decays into lead.
While that’s a factor, it’s a very minor one - soft metals (lead and copper) are used as projectiles primarily because the bullet itself deforms to engage with the rifling when fired (softer materials also present far less wear on the rifling as a result - this is why shotguns, which are smoothbore and thus far less delicate, often use steel projectiles). For rifles, the weight of the projectile is very secondary to the mechanical properties of the material while it’s being fired, and in fact there are many brands of ammunition available that use steel cores jacketed with a softer metal (though almost entirely for their penetrating ability - the deformation of a solid round you get with softer materials is actually far more desirable when hunting since you’re less likely to go through the animal you’ve shot.)
This is partly why I haven’t got into air rifles, I have wanted to for a long time, but there is no good place to shoot it nearby.
Some may say that I should just go out in the woods and shoot there, but I don’t want to spread lead in nature.
I know there are lead free pellets, but I have heard mixed opinions about them.
Why an air rifle specifically?
Because I can get a low power one (10J muzzle energy) without a license, and I can’t be arsed to get a license for a proper firearm as it requires a fair commitment here.
If you just want to plink in your backyard then just get a BB gun that shoots steel BBs. And only use iron sights which will teach you instinctive aiming. I’d say that’s actually way more fun than a scoped air rifle. If you’re not going to be head shorting squirrels then you don’t really need the accuracy of a dialed in air rifle. Looking in a scope at a piece of paper and shooting the same hole looses its appeal pretty quickly.
For Air rifles you can have a bullet catcher that is basically a funny shaped tin can you put your paper target in front of. It will collect the lead if you hit the target.
Yeah, I just know I am bound to miss and don’t want to contaminate anything.
You can get pellets and ball ammo in other materials. Might have to special order them, not sure how available they are over there, but they do make them. I have steel ammo for my air pistol, it’s my back yard pleasure shooting gun, so lead isn’t acceptable to me.
I live in an apartment, so I need to find a good place to shoot before I get a rifle, I’ll also checkout what other kinds of pellets I can get.
I can’t be asked to get a license for a proper firearm
My god, what tyranny you live under, please tell me what authoritarian country you live in so uncle sam can come free you after we’re finished with Iran.
Hehe, I’d be happy to tell you my general understanding of the laws, I am not a gun nut, and there are probably a few details I get wrong.
Anyway.
In Sweden you can only get a gun for two reasons, hunting or competition, getting a gun for self defense is illegal.
To get a gun for either reason, you need to pass tests and for competition licenses, display an active need for the gun in competitions.
Wikipedia has a better summary of the laws on this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation#Sweden
Ban lead bullets then. Allows people to keep hunting while preventing more pollution in the wild.
Plenty of time after that to ban other things.
We did that in California. It worked.
That’s a very un-American solution. I think it would be much better to sell fire arms to eagles so they become aware of the problem and they can effectively hunt fresh prey and thereby circumvent the entire issue.
They’ve been trying. I occasionally glance through the nra’s magazine because a family member is lust-addicted to the stories of people shooting others to defend themselves, and there have been little articles in their ‘defending gun rights’ section about lead bullet bans for at least a decade now. The nra and other gun lobbies have a lot of money to throw at the issue, and have actually overturned some of the bans, I believe.
Ban lead bullets then
Are you insane? These brave Eagles are dying to protect our freedom
People have tried to ban it. But it’s an ever so slight inconvenience for hunters to switch to other ammunition.
I read this twice. I’m trying to comprehend. The problem, I think I comprehend absolutely perfectly but my soul doesn’t want to. Am this close to screaming until hoarse and sweaty. Am at work so will see if I need to do this in the parking lot.
I dream sometimes of all the regressives in the world getting into a rocket ship and blasting off for some fantasy Planet B, leaving the progressives behind to clean up the mess.
And we do, and it’s terrible, but slowly the world heals.
Then the regressives realize that Planet B is too far away, and that Earth is actually faring pretty well now, and they try to come back.
When we don’t let them set foot on Earth, they promise to nuke us from space, and then there’s this standoff with them in orbit pointing a weapon at the only place that can support their progeny.
Pretty sure eagles are in the out group, so they deserve to die. /s
Maybe if Dear Orange Leader tells them to give a shit about eagles, they might…
Ehh…rarher choose no bullets at all? 🙄
This is the same reason why the California condor nearly went extinct. Afaik the education campaign worked and hunters generally made the swap to steel jacket (I assume) bullets
Yes, sure, it was “let’s talk about how to optymize our 'mmunition” kind of meme.
And brain damage.
