Ask Lemmy

Yeah but you oughta see the other guy

What a fucking retarded post

No.

No that's kind of stupid.

The amount of lead exposure from shooting is not particularly high and would be concentrated in a very small number of people who are doing things like firing uncoated bullets A LOT ie. reloaders. Most Americans don't own guns and even the ones that do don't fire them indoors extremely regularly and most indoor ranges have soap intended for lead. The lead exposure we're talking about is pretty tiny especially considering lead effects cognition the most during brain DEVELOPMENT and the amount of leaded gas and lead paint are going to be much, much more significant. People who occupationally encounter lead in things like bullets, such as range workers, armorers, etc, monitor their lead exposure and if they are within safe levels the average guy who goes to an indoor range a handful of times a year certainly is. Also, shooting is expensive, most people aren't shooting thousands of rounds a year, so countries with mandatory service where every 18 year old learns to shoot a rifle, likely using thousands of rounds of rifle ammo for every boy as an early adult would still be a much more statistically significant thing, as anyone who has ever received military training has, simply due to cost, shot more rounds than a very large chunk of any population

At first glance I thought this post was a bit facetious, but after thinking about it and reviewing some research around people manufacturing the bullets and how it affects them and understanding that detonating them in confined spaces probably is just as if not more problematic. And if you have a job that requires you to do it often, say a cop, does that create even more of an effect? Lead exposure causes a loss of impulse control as well as intelligence effects. Could that be one reason why cops are so much more violent than the average person? I'd love to see a study on lead content of blood in cops, especially ones who murder people they capture, but unfortunately, the NRA is probably too powerful to allow that to happen. And conservatives hate masks, so I doubt it would be easy to convince cops to wear them while practicing.

Most Americans don't shoot very often, even if they own a bunch of guns.

Part of it is that ammo is just expensive. A trip to the range can burn hundreds of dollars in ammo in just a few minutes.

Equating votes for a particular candidate to an incapability of critical thinking is probably where your hypothesis breaks down the most

Yes, but not because of guns. While the adverse effects of leaded gasoline were known in the 60s and leaded gasoline got banned in most countries, the US only phased it out in 1996. Which means that millions of people alive today are exposed as a child. This has a huge impact on IQ:

The average lead-linked loss in cognitive ability was 2.6 IQ points per person as of 2015. This amounted to a total loss of 824,097,690 IQ points, disproportionately endured by those born between 1951 and 1980.