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.
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2026
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Good point, thank god, wait a minute...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
And brain damage.
Ehh...rarher choose no bullets at all? ๐
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
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.
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