doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Lead shot ban in Washington

Yeah, 11 Canadians killed in Afghanistan since December taking the fight to the Taliban in the country's most volatile sector, the eleventh yesterday in action with our British and American comrades. Canada's casualties are highest per capita of ISAF forces; in American terms more than 55 killed a month while a retired US diplomat here tells us we don't pull our weight.

King, if you prefer your gun laws, so be it. I can sit right here in Iowa, order any legal firearm I wish (including handguns), have it shipped to a local licensed dealer, and not only is there no registration, but there's not even a requirement that any phone call be made to approve my purchase--because my CC permit essentially makes me pre-approved by the state. Sorry you were misled, or overreacted on how hard it is to buy guns in this country vs elsewhere--especially from "across the sea" (which requires either obtaining an import license or paying a fairly significant fee to someone who already has one).

And I suggest you look at Salopian's first post, relative to how WE (assuming he meant the US is the greatest nation on earth, not the Brits) rolled over on a lead shot ban, how we pollute, etc etc. I was only responding in kind. If you expect Americans to sit around and take BS like that, regardless of whether we've now elected a kinder and gentler president (which remains to be seen, unless you think politicians always follow through on all their promises), then think again--at least as far as this American is concerned. And if you prefer British gun laws to ours, please stand up and be counted. Likely all by yourself.

As for who does or doesn't pull one's weight, a small number of Canadians being killed can look large because of your small population. Canada, like the US (and Great Britain) is a part of NATO. Has Canada ever, since WWII, spent anything approaching the same % of your GDP on defense that we spend on ours? And remember, those were OUR guys, sitting in Germany in disproportionate numbers from the end of WWII to the fall of the Soviet Union, while the rest of NATO made disproportionately smaller contributions. And, for the most part, hid behind our nuclear umbrella.

Great Britain has been one of our few stalwart allies in Iraq, although just about all the British troops are now gone.

As for our Patriot Act, I suggest the both of you might want to look at what the Brits did to German spies (more or less the equivalent of the scum we swept up off the battlefields of Afghanistan and shipped to Gitmo) in WWII. They were given a choice: cooperate or die. Most of them chose to cooperate, which is one reason--along with breaking the Enigma codes--why British intelligence played such an important role in the war. But then maybe using sleep deprivation, making someone sleep in a cold or hot cell, and even waterboarding them (which we do to some of our own troops, in training) is harsher than the Brits summarily executing German spies in WWII (as we did in this country as well). Somehow we forget that stalwart leaders like FDR and Churchill helped us win that war. Weak leaders, like Chamberlain, might have taken action to stop Hitler years earlier rather than promising "peace in our time". Whether our "kinder and gentler" policy towards terrorists pays off in the long run remains to be seen, but I would remind you that virtually the entire American counterterrorist community promised that we would be attacked again following 9/11. Whatever else President Bush did or did not do, we were not attacked again. Nor did we round up Arabs and put them in camps, as we did Japanese-Americans back in WWII. So how "harsh" we've been, or how much we've violated international law, needs to be put into historical perspective--doesn't it? And we did win WWII, lest anyone forget the results of those even harsher tactics.

And I'm still waiting for the Europeans (and toss in the Canadians, if you like) to handle any sort of significant military crisis all on their own. Darfur . . . part of a former British colony. Nothing's happened. Rwanda . . . former Belgian colony. Nothing happened. Somalia . . . formerly British and Italian colony. Americans went in and died. Bosnia and Kosovo . . .UN troops sat back and watched Bosnians being slaughtered, and the other European nations did nothing until the US got involved.

Sorry to distract from the lead shot discussion, to which I believe I've made a more meaningful contribution than most others here, citing from a report from another state that's contemplating additional lead restrictions. And I can promise you that I do not intend to roll over to the no science/bad science nonsense of banning lead shot for upland hunting. Seeing that I write for American hunting magazines, I intend to do my very best--providing the editors cooperate, and I think at least some of them will--to make sure that American upland hunters know we're being sold a bill of goods on the "dangers" posed by lead used in upland hunting.

The historical perspective, Larry, is that was then and this is now: Canada and the UK fight terrorism as any other criminal activity, within the rule of law, and not by breaking sacred constitutional commitments and international law. Fighting the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time has not strengthened our security; by all accounts the other side is growing stronger. We're no longer just looking for a guy in a cave.

That nuclear umbrella you gave us is a dandy analogy for now: The nuclear arsenal was as useless then as it is now in the age of terrorism, fundamentally useless as a deterrent (and Canada had a brigade and CF-104 nuclear-tipped Air Division over there). The threat now is loose nukes escaping from Pakistan and, without some deal with Iran, from there, too.

The brighter side of the mess of Iraq which cost the US so much sympathy and support that it's out of synch with 21st century vulnerabilities and a worn-out 20th century military force, is that the whole world now is pulling for your new President because it's witnessing again the idealism, courage and hope that made modern America the most admired country in the world.

please I need your help I have a antique shotgun made in italy in 1956 20 guage for mario fabbrizioli & fligi rimini muy garnd father by in genova armeria L.cozzy please I need more guns for by and more information, I tell whit the family in italy and the family maked guns and musical oboe and traversa instruments the Mario Fabrizzioli & figli rimini sorry may english Im fron chile south america

please I need your help I have a antique shotgun made in italy in 1956 20 guage for mario fabbrizioli & fligi rimini muy garnd father by in genova armeria L.cozzy please I need more guns for by and more information, I tell whit the family in italy and the family maked guns and musical oboe and traversa instruments the Mario Fabrizzioli & figli rimini sorry may english Im fron chile south america my mail is marcelloavatte@hotmail.com

There isn't any hard science that lead shot kills anything but waterfowl and the science on that is pretty weak as well.

Somebody said steel isn't bad, well I guess it isn't but none of the guys here want to shoot it through their old double guns. My guess is that's why this thread got started, hence it does relate to doubles.

The firearm manufacturers jumped on the lead ban bandwagon because it meant every waterfowler in the country would need to buy a new gun. Once it had their support and the support of liberals it was a done deal. New non-toxic shot rules in every country that has them have been a direct result of this. As the boys from across the water say, they have no proof of any lead poisoning in any waterfowl in the UK at all and neither does any other country that has the same rules. BASC didn't fight it too hard because it sounded good to the public and they're all about public relations. Anything they can do to make shooters look like conservationists and less like bloody fisted murderers to the general populace.

They managed to beat this back in Minnesota recently, hopefully Washington will do it as well. It got through in Alaska because they didn't publicize it and there aren't that many folks to speak up anyway. What stuns me is that the Liberal Republic of Illinois hasn't gone for it yet, I keep waiting for that one.

I hope you boys on the left coast fight it hard all day long. The fight is coming here in the midwest, hopefully we're ready for it.

Destry

"within the rule of law, and not by breaking sacred constitutional commitments and international law" - I wasn't aware that Islamic Jihadists had any Constitional Rights in the US (especially those who have never set foot in the US).

Once again, King, you're sticking your nose into our politics. I don't do that with other countries represented by posters on this BB, other than when they choose to take cheap shots at the USA. Then I do indeed respond in kind, as I did in response to salopian's "sniping". You might want to consider the same policy.

"The wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" is your opinion, but it's not the opinion of everyone in this country (by a long shot) regardless of the results of our recent election. For example, the following came from former senator and governor Bob Kerrey (a Democrat)--and a member of the 9/11 Commission (thus somewhat more knowledgeable about terrorism than most politicians) and a Medal of Honor winner in Vietnam:

"The key question for Congress is whether or not Iraq has become the primary battleground against the same radical Islamists who declared war on the US in the 1990's and who have carried out a series of terrorist operations including 9/11. The answer is emphatically 'yes'".

"This does not mean that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11; he was not. Nor does it mean that the war to overthrow him was justified--though I believe it was. It only means that a unilateral withdrawal from Iraq would hand Osama bin Laden a substantial psychological victory." Wall Street Journal, May 2007. The primary battleground may now have shifted to Afghanistan, but other than that, I believe Senator Kerrey's assessment was quite accurate at the time he wrote it.

The "nuclear umbrella" likely prevented WWIII, in which a lot of American (and British and Canadian) boys would have died--as they did in WWII. Anyone who doesn't think the doctrine of "mutually assured destruction" prevented WWIII may need to read about half a century's worth of history.

And I know of nothing unconstitutional that's been done in the war on terror. FDR had German "saboteurs"--who had not even attempted to commit sabotage--tried by military tribunal (the same system Bush set up), then executed. All approved by the Supreme Court. I'm unaware of any constitutional change since the end of WWII that rendered military tribunals illegal. As for international law and the rights of prisoners, you might want to read the Geneva Convention. In order to qualify as a prisoner of war, an individual must bear arms openly, must wear a uniform, and must follow the laws of war. ALL OF THOSE must apply. Of course if we had categorized the Gitmo detainees as PW's, they could not have been subjected to "harsh interrogation techniques". On the other hand, a PW doesn't go home until the war is over, so it might not have been such a good thing for them.

As a former diplomat you know politics is not government or a political system, it's everything, the art of life, the science of how people manage their affairs, making laws, choosing lead, no lead, hunting foxes---it's all politics. Sniping is politics. Your declaiming post of the UK rolling over was politics, too, as was mine. Let's not get into where we're sticking our noses.

There is hard science that lead kills birds other than waterfowl. The studies I have read this past year concentrated on dove and quail. The quail study I read was done on quail near dove fields and showed no lead toxcicity. The dove studies however showed lead toxcicity in birds that had trapped lead in their digestive systems. I believe that a lead ban on dove fields is going to be our next challenge nationwide. Dove being migratory bird, I would expect this to be a national ban.