Do Not Take a Knife to a Gun Fight

Rest assured that there are people who hate firearms, hate meat-eaters and hate people who shoot birds and game.

Their numbers may not be large, but they are highly motivated, well financed and politically astute. They are also, in many cases, totally illogical and unphased by either science or common sense. Some of them are truly deranged, and they will unscrupulously use any means fair or foul to achieve their end goals of ending shooting, confiscating your firearms and even trying to outlaw the raising of livestock.

Do not deceive yourselves, you cannot reach an accommodation with these people.

They have managed to convince major grocery chains in the UK that anyone who ingests a lead pellet will die an inevitable and agonizing death. The grocery chains capitulated and stopped buying game birds shot with lead shot.

Where are the peer-reviewed medical studies to support their claims?

If lead shot is so fatally toxic to humans, why aren’t country people who have been eating game birds shot with lead pellets for generations dropping dead by the thousands?

The US Dept. of Fish and Wildlife (FWS) and the California Dept. Fish and Game (DFG) conducted a joint study of lead poisoning (plumbism) in wild ducks. It was the largest study ever conducted.

More than 12,000 wild pintail ducks were captured. 6,000 of them had funnels put down their necks and 2 US number 5 shot (UK # 4) were put into them. The other 6,000 ducks (the control group) had the funnels put down their throats so that they would be equally traumatized.

The two groups were banded and released back into the wild to do what ducks do in the real world.

The recovered bands revealed that there was no difference in the mortality rate between the two groups.

Bottom line, when ducks ingest lead pellets, in the overwhelming number of instances, the pellets simply pass through the bird without doing any harm.

The actual mortality rate on the birds dosed with the lead pellets was less than 1.5% of the mortality estimates that had been used by the Dept. of the Interior to outlaw the use of lead pellets.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service lacked the courage to use the science of the finest study ever done to refute the mistaken estimates of an inferior study. They let the lead shot ban go into effect – and they also let unknown numbers of ducks be wounded and lost to the vastly inferior killing power of steel shot.

Has anyone in the UK done a study that refutes this extensive study?

The UK went through the turmoil of Brexit. Surely, one of the benefits of Brexit should be the opportunity to redress the extremities of the EU environmental activists.

We seem to now be living in a world where many people are afraid of being “on the wrong side of history” (a phrase that ranks right up there with another bogus phrase favored by these people, “the science is settled.”)

The science is not “settled,” and the people who claim that it is are pursuing their own agendas.

They must be challenged.

Science is never “settled.” It is, or should be, constantly searching for additional information, new proof.

Where is the evidence? Has it been proved and peer-reviewed?

Steel shot will never be as effective as lead shot. It is a matter of density and pellet deformation.

(Has anyone ever studied what will happen if someone with a steel shot in their body goes through an MRI exam?)

(How about what happens when someone bites down on a steel pellet?)

Shooting birds with steel shot is similar to shooting game animals with solid bullets. They both whistle through while doing minimal internal damage and exit with most of their energy  intact. The bird or animal may travel some distance before dying, greatly increasing the possibility of being lost.

The shooting industry generates over two billion pounds per year for the British country people as well as over 75,000 much needed jobs.

What will happen to the shooting properties, the pubs, the hotels and restaurants, the feed suppliers, the transport companies, the innumerable country people who are Gamekeepers, loaders, beaters, flaggers, and pickers-up if the zealots get their wish and destroy the sport of shooting?

What will replace the cash injected into rural areas?

Will birdwatchers and hikers suddenly start paying big money to pursue their activities?

Will the Vegans pay the farmers to put livestock into the pastures because they are decorative and keep the meadows open and scenic?

Please remember, above all, that those opposed shooting, meat eating, even the raising of livestock will neither rest nor compromise until they have achieved their goals.

Do not repeat the mistakes of the US and the EU.

Do Not Take a Knife to a Gun Fight.