HSUS BS

The Humane Society of the United States is taking the opportunity to spin a little BS and call for an ammo ban.

In a press release yesterday, HSUS called for a nationwide ban on ammunition containing lead.  Quotes from the press release are in red text.

November 10, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Humane Society of the United States renewed a call for a nationwide ban on lead-shot ammunition after the North Dakota Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the results of a lead study last week. According to preliminary findings, North Dakotans who ate wildlife killed with lead bullets had higher levels of lead in their blood than people who ate little or no meat from wild animals. 

 
Actually, the CDC found that lead levels in hunters and children of hunters was lower than average:

While this study suggests that consumption of wild game meat can adversely affect PbB, no participant had PbB higher than the CDC recommended threshold of 10µg/dl—the level at which CDC recommends case management; and the geometric mean PbB among this study population (1.17µg/dl) was lower than the overall population geometric mean PbB in the United States (1.60 µg/dl) (CDC 2005).

The HSUS release also claims:

The North Dakota Department of Health is now recommending that pregnant women and children younger than 6 avoid eating any venison killed with lead bullets. The department also stated that the best way to avoid lead bullet fragments in wild animals is to hunt with non-lead bullets.

But according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), after the CDC study was released the ND Department of Health reversed their earlier decision:

Also demonstrating their understanding that game harvested with traditional ammunition is safe to consume, the ND Department of Health, following the release of the CDC study results, encouraged hunters to continue donating venison to local food banks as long as processing guidelines were adhered to. 

And it turns out that the original non-peer reviewed study may have been flawed:

NSSF was critical of the ND Department of Health when earlier this year the Department overreacted to a non-peer reviewed study by a dermatologist who claimed to have collected packages of venison from food banks that contained lead fragments. North Dakota health officials did not conduct their own study, but merely accepted the lead-contaminated meat samples from the dermatologist. The ND Department of Health then ordered all food banks to discard their venison. Serious questions were raised in a subsequent investigative journalism piece published this summer about the scientific validity of the testing of venison samples from the ND food pantries, including concerns regarding the non-random selection of the samples.

And even more disturbing:

It has since come to light that the dermatologist’s efforts were not the independent actions of a concerned hunter, as he claimed. It was an orchestrated strategy by the Peregrine Fund — an organization dedicated to eliminating the use of lead ammunition for hunting. The dermatologist serves on the Fund’s Board of Directors.

 

Ammunition bans are a tactic by anti-gun special interest groups to ban firearms in the US.   It’s a wedge designed to drive apart hunters and shooters and make firearm ownership more expensive thereby decreasing the number of gun owners.  Their ultimate goal is to make hunting and firearm ownership illegal in the US and they will lie, cheat and steal to make it happen.

 

-via Sebastian
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