No.

No that's kind of stupid.

The amount of lead exposure from shooting is not particularly high and would be concentrated in a very small number of people who are doing things like firing uncoated bullets A LOT ie. reloaders. Most Americans don't own guns and even the ones that do don't fire them indoors extremely regularly and most indoor ranges have soap intended for lead. The lead exposure we're talking about is pretty tiny especially considering lead effects cognition the most during brain DEVELOPMENT and the amount of leaded gas and lead paint are going to be much, much more significant. People who occupationally encounter lead in things like bullets, such as range workers, armorers, etc, monitor their lead exposure and if they are within safe levels the average guy who goes to an indoor range a handful of times a year certainly is. Also, shooting is expensive, most people aren't shooting thousands of rounds a year, so countries with mandatory service where every 18 year old learns to shoot a rifle, likely using thousands of rounds of rifle ammo for every boy as an early adult would still be a much more statistically significant thing, as anyone who has ever received military training has, simply due to cost, shot more rounds than a very large chunk of any population

Yes, but not because of guns. While the adverse effects of leaded gasoline were known in the 60s and leaded gasoline got banned in most countries, the US only phased it out in 1996. Which means that millions of people alive today are exposed as a child. This has a huge impact on IQ:

The average lead-linked loss in cognitive ability was 2.6 IQ points per person as of 2015. This amounted to a total loss of 824,097,690 IQ points, disproportionately endured by those born between 1951 and 1980.

My aunt spent a long time working in education in the USA, much of it in leadership roles. When she incorporated lessons on critical thinking into the curriculum, it resulted in a lot of pushback from parents who did not appreciate their kids applying the lessons at home.

People who actively resist the use of critical thinking will seem cognitively impaired because they are, in fact intentionally impairing their cognition. My intuition here is to blame religious fundamentalism, but that's not a well-researched position.

I doubt that there are enough people shooting enough guns often enough for it to be more than just trace exposures, it likely must be something else.

Most Americans don't even own guns. A minority of Americans own lots of guns.

Most Americans don't shoot very often, even if they own a bunch of guns.

Part of it is that ammo is just expensive. A trip to the range can burn hundreds of dollars in ammo in just a few minutes.

What a fucking retarded post

Post reads like some violently uninformed person making a lot of... I don't want to say racist cuz that's not really right, but similar sentiments about Americans

Y'all are stupid cuz of your guns

Is about as stupid a thought as possible as you're you're claiming we are because of shooting guns and the fact that anyone in the comments is taking it seriously shows y'all have the exact same level of critical thinking skills as those you're insulting

At first glance I thought this post was a bit facetious, but after thinking about it and reviewing some research around people manufacturing the bullets and how it affects them and understanding that detonating them in confined spaces probably is just as if not more problematic. And if you have a job that requires you to do it often, say a cop, does that create even more of an effect? Lead exposure causes a loss of impulse control as well as intelligence effects. Could that be one reason why cops are so much more violent than the average person? I'd love to see a study on lead content of blood in cops, especially ones who murder people they capture, but unfortunately, the NRA is probably too powerful to allow that to happen. And conservatives hate masks, so I doubt it would be easy to convince cops to wear them while practicing.

I see where you are going, but you probably should focus less on the guns. Most Americans don't regularly shoot guns, even those that have them. A whole lot also don't own any. But lead is all over in shit like water pipes. Other heavy metals and chemicals are present in higher levels than allowed elsewhere. Also full metal jacket is much more common than it used to be which reduces the lead particles when shooting.

Was the majority of the German voting public lead-poisoned in the 30s? I don't think lead was even put in gas then. Those Germans almost certainly were not lead poisoned, and they put a monster into power.

I get wanting a good explanation, but in reality, it's a simple but unsatisfying explanation. It applies to every country and every population in every era. People are fuckin' stupid. Carlin said it best:

"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."

haven't shot a gun in at least 20 years and I'm retarded as shit. so....

I think far more people are exposed to lead in water than from guns. Even gun-owning Americans don't go to the range that often.

The vast majority of Americans don’t own/shoot guns. There’s 300 million guns because some people own multiple.

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/

Also, the British literally voted to have a worse economy. We don’t have a monopoly on headassery.

This seems like reaching for the most esoteric and niche explanation to a fairly simple phenomenon.

America's school system sucks, and the anti-authoritarian nature of a culture formed by rejecting monarchy has been coopted to convince people that science and reason are authority figures you ought to fight back against.

The vast majority of Americans aren't gun owners, and the vast majority of gun owners don't shoot very often. You haven't provided evidence for Americans being incapable of critical thinking, but you want evidence for why guns aren't the source of american stupidity.

This is a very silly post. 😅

Some of us were around when leaded gasoline was the norm, and every municipality had a crime rate drop that corellates to their unleaded gas mandate.

Then there's lead in candy which was a problem until the FDA shut that down.

There still is lead in fuel, and so kids who play in urban playgrounds are supposed to wash their hands before eating anything.

So if our people have detectable elevated lead levels (it has a plenty-long bio half life), I'd question automotive exhaust and industry before worrying about guns at the range. Unless someone is squeezing off a hundred rounds a day.

Or, you know, the lead that we put into the air for decades burning leaded gasoline...

Even though we've (mostly) stopped doing that, the effects are cumulative, and there are still plenty of people alive who were around when that was still a thing.

Yeah but you oughta see the other guy