If more bans on lead ammunition or even lead fishing sinkers do in fact come, it will be because of sportsmen who bought into the claims made by junk science and phony doctored statistics.
There is still no peer-reviewed scientific evidence that lead was causing population-level impacts to America’s migrating waterfowl. In fact, most of the population declines in the 1960's and 1970's has been attributed to breeding habitat loss and drought. We still see much of the same improper use of so-called science being used to promote other agendas. Global warming is another popular one that is widely promoted and fully accepted by people unwilling to look at simple facts and make up their own minds. We have had a .85 C degree increase in global temperatures since the 1880's which is within the standard deviation for error. But we are also monitoring temperatures in places that were not monitored in the 1880's. Arctic sea ice is in fact decreasing, but Antarctic sea ice has been increasing for several years and was at all time record levels last year. The Earth has always had natural cycles of warming and cooling. California's current drought appears to be due to a normal 1100-1200 year cycle, but that is not stopping rabid Chicken Little claims that the sky is falling due to man made global warming.
My Biology degree is from Pennsylvania State University. I have personally seen researchers doctor or fudge data in order to get continued government grant money. I ate trout that were killed by a researcher for a meal, and he reported that the fish died due to low pH levels from acid mine drainage which caused cancers in the fish. He told me that the surest way to get government grant money at the time was in cancer research, so you tell them what they want to hear. It embarrasses me that my Alma Mater was collaborating with East Anglia University in Great Britain to submit falsified climate data supporting Global Warming claims. The Liberal Media was pretty quiet about that, and claims of Global Warming were pretty subdued for a couple years until things cooled down and the scandal was largely forgotten.
We can quibble about steel shot ammunition being better than it was when first introduced, and fewer hunters engaging in sky-busting resulting in lower crippling losses, but to claim that crippling with steel shot in the last few years is lower than crippling with lead before the ban... at a time when waterfowl populations were lower... strains credulity. Anyone who thinks the anti-hunting and anti-gun forces will stop or be satisfied if and when they get lead ammunition banned is ignoring history and being foolish. I don't expect to change oskar's mind on this. Now he is trying to tell us again that sportsmen led the charge to ban lead shot by collecting carcasses for autopsies and studies without knowing where it would eventually lead. It was abundantly clear where it was headed as the calls for banning lead shot increased. oskar himself knows where it is headed if we sit on our hands and do nothing, because he has told us he is already shifting to non-lead ammo for other hunting. He has drank the Kool-Aid, but the rest of us should stay on top of this scam and remind our legislators that we do not support junk science aimed at reducing sport hunting and fishing.
