GWCT lead ban : One for the BASC bashers

[enfieldspares]

As a tangent this is a link to Churchill and the "sticky bomb" to illustrate how he viewed some new technology and over ruled objections to it with the order in his memo of October 1940 that simply read "Sticky bomb. Make one million".

Sticky bomb - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Apthorpe]

As a tangent this is a link to Churchill and the "sticky bomb" to illustrate how he viewed some new technology and over ruled objections to it with the order in his memo of October 1940 that simply read "Sticky bomb. Make one million".

Sticky bomb - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Following the tangent, I'd question whether that was new technology or just one of a set of hastily improvised (but slowly produced) weapons of very little utility. The clue might be in the fact that they were all ditched the moment proper weapons became available.

 

[timbrayford]

Interesting comments on the GWCT link from people - more in favour of lead than against.
Would this reflect the general consensus as opposed the great & mighty who would like to impose

If wonder, someone were to come up with an alternative product that performed better than lead at the same price, would we be having this discussion now? Would the shooting community still be refusing to accept that change might be a good thing, and continue to defend the use of lead?


(Probably! )

Having transitioned to copper for c/f rifle shooting in effect its a pretty good alternative to lead, I can't say that about steel shot for shotguns. The gun trade refuses point blank to warranty my barrels against damage without all that "if, but, maybe" nonsense, ballistically it is in no way comparable to lead and there are all the lack of clean kill, environmental plastic wad and health and safety from ricochet issues, hopefully Hortonium or something similar will fill the void , in the meantime I'll give steel shot a miss.

 

[jall55]

It is a practice (eating game) that has been going on for over 300 years. We would certainly know by now if that was the case, and there would be a large number of cases. The fact is that there are zero. You're flogging a dead horse.

Large numbers of people die from lead exposure because of occupational exposure or frankly, idiotic practices in the Third World. Even the WHO does not claim anyone ever became ill from eating game.

Im not flogging anything tbh - you seem a very bright chap - more so than me - do you not wonder if it may be storing issues up for us further down the line ?

 

[Apthorpe]

Having transitioned to copper for c/f rifle shooting in effect its a pretty good alternative to lead, I can't say that about steel shot for shotguns. The gun trade refuses point blank to warranty my barrels against damage without all that "if, but, maybe" nonsense, ballistically it is in no way comparable to lead and there are all the lack of clean kill, environmental plastic wad and health and safety from ricochet issues, hopefully Hortonium or something similar will fill the void , in the meantime I'll give steel shot a miss.

A very sensible man. I am sceptical that this Hortonium will ever become a significant new material. There's no good reason why it should not be in mass production already, if it were any good and likely to be of a reasonable price. There's been little recent news except that the British firm which invented it has closed down, pending a new venture in the US. There was also a video posted of their new shot making machinery in testing which they claimed would be able to produce 2-3 tonnes of shot per shift. If that was true, then the video must have been in slo-mo! The shot was also of terrible quality - misshapen, uneven sizes etc.

MY guess is that it won't go further than prototyping, and will suck up some investors' money before fading without trace. And that British sporting arms and ammunition manufacture will disappear too, killed by idiots.

 

[jall55]

really is that like the 100,000 wild fowl, find that 1 million hard to believe, however i do not dispute that lead is toxic.

I agree - so much of it is lies damn lies and statistics im sure

When my grandparent passed they wanted to log the deaths as Covid - despite the fact COPD and other ailments at mid 80s were rife - my family pushed back and got the "correct" reason recorded - we and im sure many heard tails of covid deaths being recorded where people had been run over with covid

I also have stated on here that despite us shooting a flight pond for many many years when it was all legal we never found any - none - dead ducks from lead ingestion

 

[timbrayford]

A very sensible man. I am sceptical that this Hortonium will ever become a significant new material. There's no good reason why it should not be in mass production already, if it were any good and likely to be of a reasonable price. There's been little recent news except that the British firm which invented it has closed down, pending a new venture in the US. There was also a video posted of their new shot making machinery in testing which they claimed would be able to produce 2-3 tonnes of shot per shift. If that was true, then the video must have been in slo-mo! The shot was also of terrible quality - misshapen, uneven sizes etc.

MY guess is that it won't go further than prototyping, and will suck up some investors' money before fading without trace. And that British sporting arms and ammunition manufacture will disappear too, killed by idiots.

Who knows but we will be between the proverbial rock and hard place when the ban comes in if a suitable alternative hasn't materialised by then, especially in anything less than 12 bore

 

[jall55]

Having transitioned to copper for c/f rifle shooting in effect its a pretty good alternative to lead, I can't say that about steel shot for shotguns. The gun trade refuses point blank to warranty my barrels against damage without all that "if, but, maybe" nonsense, ballistically it is in no way comparable to lead and there are all the lack of clean kill, environmental plastic wad and health and safety from ricochet issues, hopefully Hortonium or something similar will fill the void , in the meantime I'll give steel shot a miss.

As said now 1000 times - steel works - you cant get them fair enough - but Eley Eco wad No 5 32 gram -DO THE JOB
and the wad is gone into mineral salts and bio mass in 24/ 48 hours - MOST guns i believe can use them too

There is no need for plastic wads

I was very worried about ricochets tbh as i do a lot of night shooting of rats - but again so far so ok on that count too - but yes it is a concern as indeed it was with lead

 

[countrryboy]

View attachment 428651View attachment 428651

U may not be that far off.

I agree - so much of it is lies damn lies and statistics im sure

When my grandparent passed they wanted to log the deaths as Covid - despite the fact COPD and other ailments at mid 80s were rife - my family pushed back and got the "correct" reason recorded - we and im sure many heard tails of covid deaths being recorded where people had been run over with covid

I also have stated on here that despite us shooting a flight pond for many many years when it was all legal we never found any - none - dead ducks from lead ingestion

I seived Ts of stinking silt from a ponds, 1 that shoots 200 duck on a drive, never found a single pellet.
And its been heavily shot for many many decades.

Plus with flighting duck ur shot trajectory will be very different to driven duck,, so unless a very very big pond i wouldnae imagibe ur shots landing anywhere near it.

 

[Apthorpe]

Im not flogging anything tbh - you seem a very bright chap - more so than me - do you not wonder if it may be storing issues up for us further down the line ?

Yes, I did. However, the facts don't support those fears. People have been doing this for at least 300 years, and all that time the toxicity of lead was known, and that it might be in the food. If it had happened, we'd know about it. At a bare minimum we would have detected at least some cases. The total absence of cases, is both surprising, and informative that shooters understand and mitigate the risks of lead very well.

There are various other situations where such fears exist. e.g .BSE and vCJD. If you remember, scientists at the time projected that hundreds of thousands of us would be dying very unpleasant deaths of CJD by now. Who knows, perhaps we will eventually. However, that case involved not known poisons and known routes of exposure, but involved the creation/discovery of an entirely new class of infectious particle, a new disease, and mechanisms of action which weren't known. In those types of case your type of concern seems very prudent.

Part of the problem is that the public/media view of science and scientists is rather at odds with reality.The neutral view is that if scientists say something, it must be (or is very likely to be) true. That is frequently not the case. It is a mathematical reality that a high proportion of scientific studies tend to produce erroneous conclusions. This is not owing to bias, but to probability and inherent uncertainty. There is also the set of cases where scientists make claims that are biased, and even rarely - but increasingly - actually dishonest or fabricated. The public also seems to see scientists as being uniformly expert, but this is also ridiculous. The quality of scientists varies just as much as the quality of runners at a primary school sports day. There are Einsteins, Penroses, and so on, but there are also lots of Fatty Lardbuckets at the other end of the spectrum. It may not surprise everyone to guess which fields of science each gravitate towards.

People also tend to believe that scientists are impartial and apolitical. Sadly, that is also increasingly not true.


Another part is that policymakers tend not to have the necessary faculties for making good policy decisions - in particular, an inability to understand and deal sensibly with both risk and number.

It is surprising to me that, assuming the motive for lead ammo restrictions was health /environmental, there has been almost no attention paid to lead compound based primers, which create considerably more toxic compounds and distribute them more widely, and that the very large amounts of lead ammo used by police and military are exempt from these considerations. That to me is proof that there is no harm to humans. There is no way in this day and age that the Home Office would, knowing of a danger, create specific legal exemptions to continue to expose large numbers of employees to a known toxic danger.

 

[Chris Richardson]

I’ll just leave this list here for you to read. Have a look at the risks to human health section.

https://leadammunitiongroup.org.uk/

http://

Can you read ?
Look at GWCT website - i said im no whizz at copying links etc - and as i conceded yesterday if you read it - the explicit statement that lead shot kills people i would imagine will be lacking - but please we cant argue that lead is toxic surely - and no amount is "safe "

ok I think I need to make it more simple for you , show me one case where lead shot game has been linked to an illness in humans ? I think you’ll struggle

 

[jall55]

http://

ok I think I need to make it more simple for you , show me one case where lead shot game has been linked to an illness in humans ? I think you’ll struggle

And again as above

 

[countrryboy]

Not really - the goal with air travel is not to fall from height
Eating lead - or should i say actually ingestion of lead is toxic and has no safe limit - according to scientists

Again it comes down to the state the lead is in wethervits toxic or not.
Solid state is pretty safe, usually a weak point of solid statr would be if can be diluted, but considering its used for water pipes.
Id say that is a far greater risk to the general public and no one knows which houses are supplied by lead.
And their seems to be absolutely no urgency with it.
Airbourne or diluted will be the 2 most likely ways lead will be absorbed into ur body.

According to WHO circa 1 million people die each year from lead exposure - so maybe eating it is storing up health problems for us later in life ?

Id almost be amazed if 1 million folk eat game a year never mind die from lead.
So to even bring it up in that manner is a wee bit silly.
And hardly relevant

How many things do u do in modern life that might not be good for u?
E numbers, artificail sweetners, processed foods.
Never mind smoking vaping and drinking.
Yet vast numbers of the population do all 3.
The above pose a far greater risk to public health than eating game.
Hell even vaccines and medicine has more kbown side effects than lead.

Nowadays apart from the very few folk living subsistance lifestyles very few folk will eat that much lead.
Esp in uk, i eat a lot as im a cheapskate and always got it for nowt.
Im pretty sure my ham that i put in ny piece is far worse for me. Any meat that comes square or round is not the best.
Probably been washed off the pig with pressure washers and mixed with god knows wot.

Lead shot has been politicised and weaponised to beat shooters with.
Now antis have made things slightly harder they will move onto the next target

 

[jall55]

Again it comes down to the state the lead is in wethervits toxic or not.
Solid state is pretty safe, usually a weak point of solid statr would be if can be diluted, but considering its used for water pipes.
Id say that is a far greater risk to the general public and no one knows which houses are supplied by lead.
And their seems to be absolutely no urgency with it.
Airbourne or diluted will be the 2 most likely ways lead will be absorbed into ur body.



Id almost be amazed if 1 million folk eat game a year never mind die from lead.
So to even bring it up in that manner is a wee bit silly.
And hardly relevant

How many things do u do in modern life that might not be good for u?
E numbers, artificail sweetners, processed foods.
Never mind smoking vaping and drinking.
Yet vast numbers of the population do all 3.
The above pose a far greater risk to public health than eating game.
Hell even vaccines and medicine has more kbown side effects than lead.

Nowadays apart from the very few folk living subsistance lifestyles very few folk will eat that much lead.
Esp in uk, i eat a lot as im a cheapskate and always got it for nowt.
Im pretty sure my ham that i put in ny piece is far worse for me. Any meat that comes square or round is not the best.
Probably been washed off the pig with pressure washers and mixed with god knows wot.

Lead shot has been politicised and weaponised to beat shooters with.
Now antis have made things slightly harder they will move onto the next target

Imagine then if lead does kill all those people and thats without them actually eating it

 

[Spear Chucker]

For all on here who have it in their heads that all their lead woes are down to BASC!

GWCT response to government announcement on a lead shot ban - Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust

www.gwct.org.uk

They are all as bad as each other. Bonner and Co at the CA were also in the forefront of the sell-out. Read his sewage on "social license" and shoot accreditation schemes.
These people are just so far detached from their membership it defies belief.

 

[VSS]

.
These people are just so far detached from their membership it defies belief.

Or it could be that the membership are so far detached from the world in which we live?

 

[Apthorpe]

Imagine then if lead does kill all those people and thats without the actually eating it

Please let us try to remain in the realms of reality not imagination.

Of the million odd people who are ESTIMATED to die each year from lead poisoning, absolutely zero die from eating food contaminated with lead ammunition. Many are killed by their cooking pans, by deplorable and wilfully ignorant working conditions in the undeveloped world, most countries still haven't banned lead paint, etc.

A study of cookware found some pans were producing over 1400 times the legal limit of lead exposure for children. In a cruel irony, much of this harm is caused by recycling.

Evaluating metal cookware as a source of lead exposure - Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology

We previously demonstrated that aluminum cookware brought from Afghanistan by resettled families as well as some aluminum cookware available for purchase in the United States represent a previously unrecognized source of lead exposure. However, the extent to which this cookware represents a...

www.nature.com

 

[Apthorpe]

Or it could be that the membership are so far detached from the world in which we live?

More probably vice versa.

 

[JTO]

RSPB rules UK?

 

[enfieldspares]

I am sceptical that this Hortonium will ever become a significant new material.

I fear that you are right on every count.