Sattle Times Lead Bullet Witch Hunt!

Oldtrader3

Ammo Smith
Nov 6, 2009
8,406
5
It is my understanding that the Seattle Times is running a Witch hunt on this topic, based on their misuse of medical statistics and creating a mountain out of a mole hill. My understanding is that they were only able to find one indoor range out of compliance on filtering lead levels out of the air. Within this facility which has been cited for endangering their members, The Times had 50 shooters tested for lead levels in their blood. The testing only found two individuals with significant lead in the bloodstream. These two individuals out of 50 (4%) people tested at .2 micrograms of lead per deciliter. The state of Washington health standard states that a person must have .6 micrograms or three times the level cited in the Times article. The medical lab further stated that this level of lead is not considered hazardous to the person and will return to normal levels when the range has cleaned their filters.

This to me constitutes a Witch Hunt by the Seattle Times consisting after all their testing of all the indoor ranges in the city, they only found one out of compliance and that one is complying and has not endangered anyone, child or not! This rate of lead in the blood of these two persons comprises 4% contamination rate with only 1/3rd of hazardous levels in their blood. This does not warrant a Witch Hunt and all the staff time and warrantless charges made against indoor pistol ranges, many of which require copper plated bullets with no exposed lead anyway. Plus, all of these have filtration systems that prevent any unusual contamination levels of any shooters with more than normal lead chelation in their blood.!

I have personally spoken to the Lady PhD who is in charge of lead testing for the Departments of Fish and Game and she supported removing lead from shotgun shells which is settled law already. However her statistics have shown no lead contamination issues at any outdoor ranges that she has tested. With hunting being as limited as it presently is in this state, there is 0% possibility of any lead poisoning danger to any animal which has not been shot with lead!

These statistics shown are at best partial and therefore are Bogus! They are not normalized for local populations or against. They need thing such as T-Tests to compare these populations against populations of random residents, people who shoot outdoors, people who own the older houses in that area with lead paint and piping, for instance. Or maybe people who eat tuna sushi (w/ lead). Maybe these other populations have similar levels of lead? People who wash their hands after shooting will eliminate almost all lead contamination.

These are the same tactics and tricks that Adolph Hitler used to take the guns away from the German people in 1930-33. Scare the people, demonize a group that most people don't belong to and take away their guns! This is what defines a Witch Hunt. Most Germans who had guns and could hunt were wealthy land owners or Nobles and easy to make look bad. Is this the same tactic? Maybe because their are no comparison or statistics to prove otherwise? It is hard to learn anything about this issue from only 50 people! Statistical probability tests for this group are zilch in this study!
 
That's the problem with the news. If they don't know, they invent. I hardly ever watch the news or read a newspaper anymore. A person can get better reports from DC Comics than the newsstands.
 
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