I don't wash my face after seeing a dog. What a barbar I am!

*Most US gun owners.

Is it possible the political divide in this country is people with lead poisoning vs. those without it?

Lead is pretty bad. There's literally no safe exposure level for it especially if you're putting explosions next to the stuff. A lot of the sharp drop in crime in the 1990s is attributed to the phase out of leaded gasoline in the 1970s

Does your dog do a lot of skeet shooting?

Birds would disagree.

Is anybody aware of studies quantifying direct (shooter) and indirect (household member) lead exposure? The gold standard (so to speak) is bloodstream lead levels, but I think that's hard to measure as it relates to specific events like going to the gun range.

When you shoot bits of the lead projectile get aerosolized as it rips through the barrel and caught in the expanding gas cloud of the propellant. This gets deposited on you and your clothes, especially at an indoor range. Since you can’t remove lead from your system this can build up over time.

Why is lead used for bullets?

Gun shot residue contains lead particulate, which spreads onto your hands, arms, and face when shooting and can be ingested, for example, by handling food without cleaning your hands. Or cleaning a gun somewhere where you prepare or eat food.

It's heavy and soft

Lead seems pretty bad to me. It's inherently neurotoxic and gets in the brain easily enough. If you are breathing in aerosolized lead regularly it has a real potential to do harm, even if it doesn't necessarily kill you there will be negative consequences.

I disagree for two reasons. First, there's lots of ammo that's non jacketed lead. Start with .22LR, which is probably the most common ammo.

Second, I didn't think the jacketing helps that much in either hunting or indoor range contexts. In hunting, the bullet mushrooms or fragments or disintegrates, dispersing it's kinetic energy through lots of tissue; that's how it kills. Disintegration means there are lots of tiny lead bits scattered in the meat. And at the range, if the bullet hits a hard backstop, it again disintegrates into even finer pieces, making lead dust.

And heavier is better because it does more damage?

I wouldn't rule it out. They wanted a new Rome, and they're getting one - complete with Diarrhea Forever(tm)

So is a ton of feathers. Lead is dense.

It maintains more momentum.

Throw a ping pong ball and a golf ball, see which goes farther.

Cheap .22 target loads, shotgun target loads, and even some birdshot are full of the stuff.

But, even if you don't shoot those often, lead is still in all smokeless powder and primers. Every time you fire a round of any kind, there's airborne lead being aerosolized. That's why indoor ranges are required to be ventilated and why many don't allow pregnant women in the shooting area.

Lead is "that bad". The health effects are serious and undeniable. But don't take my word for it, please educate yourself and do better: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning

Even if you don't care about your own health, lead exposure isn't taken seriously enough in our hobby, and your attitude makes all us look ignorant.

Also, it's easier to throw a golf ball accurately than it is to throw a ping pong ball.

The "Super gun owners" account for only like 3% of Americans. And a lot of those still don't shoot enough to meaningfully manifest the symptoms of lead poisoning on its own.

It's probably just medical advances letting bitter racist old fucks live longer.

To be fair, they probably don't make a habit of practicing any hygiene behaviors, not just bullet related

Lead being a soft material is a part of it too.

A lead bullet deforms on impact, getting wider, which causes more damage as it passes through flesh.

Also golf ball hurts hell of a lot more.

Most practice ammunition has a lead core wrapped in copper. There is very little contact.

Some evidence suggests that coriander can help remove lead in lab rats.

Old fucks who grew up with so much lead in the atmosphere from burning gasoline that the lead from a few recreational bullets is just noise.

Bruh they put lead in gasoline until the 80s.

MAGA is 10% nazis, 10% cult members, 10% painfully-ignorant cunts, 69% lead addled boomers/genx

and 1% rich fucks manipulating the rest of them.

Kinetic energy = (mass * velocity²)/2. It's not as important as velocity, but yeah it's important. The real key is that it is soft. Meaning it will deform more readily when it impacts a target. When it deforms it spreads out, creates a larger wound channel, and more effectively dumps its energy into the object it hit target than just cleanly passing through.

That said, these days there is a big push to move to all copper bullets for hunting. They're more expensive, they don't deform quite as well, but they do consistently pedal now, they don't shed mass, and they're basically inert to our bodies. I practice with cheaper lead core bullets, but I have the more expensive copper stuff to hunt with.

Don't you know that washing your own ass makes you gay? /s

There's often lead in the primers too 💀

Oh so now I can't lick my fingers clean after a day of plinking?!?

I guess it's very dependent on how many times the shooter shoots the household member.

You probably get more lead from your plumbing, at least in America.

Not .22 - the cheaper stuff tends to be exposed lead

Yep, they literally used leaded gasoline to wash off their hands in the 70s. Nevermind the exhausts blanketing everything with it.

Currently there is a push for hunters to switch to all copper bullets. The bullet technology has gotten good enough that solid copper bullets can be designed in a way to consistently petal and create big wound channels. They're obviously more expensive so I stick with lead for the range and practice.

At the learn to hunt deer class I went to they reviewed a study that showed that lead bullets fragment and shed when they hit the target. The study shot a hog cadaver (iirc), and noted that when they scanned the result they found lead up to 16" away from the impact point and that it was probably even further but their scanner was limited to scanning just that size. The class then demonstrated shooting an all copper bullet at a series of water jugs in a bullet trap to show how it petals.

All that to say, this is a current topic in the hunting community and people are switching away from lead. More and more manufacturers are making copper core bullets and they're coming down in price. If you're interested Barnes is the go to manufacturer for these right now.

Edit: Also bird shot moved away from lead a long time ago. It's not even legal to use it anymore.

Edit 2: Turns out lead bird shot isn't illegal to use, it's only outright banned for water fowl hunting. https://www.fws.gov/story/2022-04/nontoxic-shot-regulations-hunting-waterfowl-and-coots-us. You should also check your local laws, here in Wisconsin it's also banned for mourning dove hunting.

In 1991, the US Fish and Wildlife Service launched a nationwide ban on lead shot for waterfowl hunting to reduce the number of lead shot falling into waterbodies. Since the inception of dove hunting in Wisconsin in 2003, the DNR has prohibited the use of lead shot for hunting mourning doves on state-managed lands.

In my mind I just equated that with being banned all together. Who wants to study the law just to find out when they can use toxic shot?

Don't forget cheap.

Here's one: https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/l/2014/lead-among-shooters.pdf

Lots of relevant links to other studies in the References section. A couple relevant paragraphs from the link PDF:

A health care practitioner notified a local health unit after seeing an asymptomatic 70 year old male
patient with a blood lead level (BLL) of 12 μg/dL (0.61 μmol/L1). The patient reported that he shoots
twice weekly at an indoor firing range operated by volunteers. Public Health Ontario (PHO) was asked to “review the patient’s BLL and provide advice on the significance of the results relative to expected background levels”. As a result of this advice, a lead
exposure assessment of the firing range was initiated by the health unit.

Results from the exposure assessment found that four of the five breathing zone samples performed on
shooters [task-based time-weighted average (TWA) lead concentrations ranged from 3–147 μg/m3 over
the sampling periods (19–47 minutes)] exceeded Ontario’s occupational exposure limit of 50 μg/m3 (8 hr
TWA). This indicated the inadequacy of the existing ventilation system to reduce inhalable airborne lead
generated during shooting. Wipe and vacuum samples showed the presence of lead on eight of the nine
surfaces tested. Lead dust on surfaces inside a firing range can be easily transferred to hands, which can
result in ingestion of lead through hand-to-mouth contact.

A good gun range should have ventilation systems that filter air from the range itself and prevent any lead particles from migrating into the non-range areas (lounge / weapons-maintenance areas, any attached ammo shop, bathrooms, etc.). The highest-risk area is where the targets sit. The amount of lead particulate at the shooting bays will vary depending on the type of ammo (copper jacketed bullets would likely generate less lead particulate, plain lead wadcutter would likely generate more), but any ammo type is going to get smashed into bits when it hits the backstop behind the target. The ventilation system needs to pull air at the targets, and pull it away from people. I'm sure many ranges have less-than-adequate ventilation systems. Shooters should still wash their face and everything south of their elbows really well after using the range, even if the range has great ventilation, because the amount of lead exposure in recreational shooting will always be non-zero.

There is non-lead ammunition, particularly bismuth. Similar density to lead but non-toxic. (Edit: also tungsten ammo, but I believe tungsten has similar toxicity issues to lead). Lead ammunition has been outright banned for waterfowl hunting in some areas, because lead pellets would inevitably wide up in the environment and leach into the wetlands. Lead is still the overall most common ammo type, because it's the cheapest material for the purpose.

Leaded gas was prominent in the US until it was phased out ~1980-90s. I've always wonder if this had a large effect on those growing up in earlier times, i.e. those in their 60-70s now, or the baby boomer generation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead

I don't think I've ever seen FMJ .22 ammo. The best you can find is "copper washed" or "brass washed" which I guess is electroplated or painted or something with a metal solution that seems like it's about one molecule thick. It still gets lead marks all over everything.

Shotgun shot is also traditionally just lead, unjacketed, although nobody should be coming into contact with that much except the recipient because it all stays inside the shell. And non-lead shot is mandated for hunting in a lot of places now for obvious environmental reasons, either being steel or tungsten or bismuth or whatever.

.22s are generally electroplated. Lead tends to stick to rifling, that's why most people don't like to shoot lead.

Also, golf balls have cute little dimples.

I'm using lead free ammo since last year and I'm content with the results.
Many conservative, mostly older hunters claim that the killing power is inferior. But in my experience, even with a lead-free deformable bullet, the killing power is still perfectly adequate, even for smaller game. Killing power depends largely on the point of impact, so if the animal runs a long way, it’s the hunter’s fault, not the ammunition’s.

also easy to DIY lead bullets for cost and prepper types.

It also deforms in the barrel, allowing the grooves to impart a spin, improving accuracy

Bismuth also has the added advantage of being able to cure your upset stomach,. diarrhea, indigestion/acid reflux!

You just have to dissolve the round in hot nitric acid, then separate the white (tin) crystals that form (after an hour of keeping it hot) by pouring the resulting liquid through an acid-resistant paper filter (or a fancy glass microfiber), and finally react the purified bismuth solution with salicylic acid and BAM! DIY Pepto Bismol 👍

I actually pack purpose built lead wipes in my bag when I shoot, and I will refrain from eating or even touching my face until I'm properly able to wash my hands thoroughly. Clothes usually need changing from mud/sweat and there's always a shower as soon as I get home. When I'm on a long enough day that eating is desired I'll only pack food that I can eat without directly manipulating with my hands, ie peanuts I can pour out of the bag or some form of MANLY MEAT STICK IT'S TOTALLY NOT A DICK EWW that I can peel/push up out of packaging without touching.

I've even started wearing gloves when cleaning guns since that's actually where you will get the most acute lead exposure, even when it's summer time and humid in my non climate controlled garage.

Some of us care, just not that many.

I've always been confused by the killing power argument.

A sufficiently high velocity impact to the correct location kills regardless of the material in question typically.

So as long as the material does not cause fov to go to absolute shit or something then functionally it shouldn't matter.