By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
It must be a difficult time to be an anti-gun activist working at the Trace—the propaganda arm of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire. After all, things are certainly not going their way.
The National Firearms Act has been gutted. You can buy suppressors with ease, and America’s favorite rifle will likely become legal in all 50 states thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court. The changes are even more impressive at the lower levels. We’re seeing pro-gun triumphs almost every single week.
Finding any anti-gun story has got to be a daily concern for the kids at the Trace. They can’t report the facts because they’re not real reporters. So, instead of reporting that President Donald J. Trump—the most pro-gun President since Teddy Rooselvelt—is restoring our Second Amendment rights on a regular basis, what can the Trace possibly tell its readers?
Lead—specifically, lead is bad. In fact, it’s dangerous.
That’s the best the Trace kids could come up with.
According to a story in the Oct. 21 edition of The Bulletin, which the Trace publishes, “Six million children in the U.S. live in homes with people who use firearms with lead-based ammunition but don’t engage in post-shooting hygiene. That leaves the kids vulnerable to lead exposure.”
So, if you go shooting and don’t wash up, your kids are at risk, the Trace claims. Evidently, they know who’s washing up and who’s not.
This super-worrisome story was written by Fairriona Magee, who describes herself as the public health reporter for the Trace. She joined the Trace right after college. It’s her first paid gig. She also volunteers at a local food bank.
How does Magee prove her point that lead imperils every single shooter? She finds an expert, of course, who cites the “risk.”
“These findings just provide a suggestion that this is a bigger risk than I think people realize,” Christian Hoover, the study’s lead author and public health researcher at Harvard University, told me. “Hopefully, they’re willing to consider some of the suggestions that we make in the study, like changing your clothes after shooting, not bringing things into the home with you, and treating this activity when you’re using lead-based ammunition as though it were toxic.”
Unfortunately for her readers, Hoover, whom Magee described as a “public health researcher at Harvard University,” uses another title on his LinkedIn: Co-Investigator, Firearm Exposure Research Team at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
I’m sure Harvard’s Firearm Exposure Research Team fully respects our Second Amendment rights, right?
Magee’s bulletin is short, thankfully. For anyone with even a modicum of firearm knowledge, it’s so bad it’s almost funny.
Magee never mentions that shooting outdoors lowers your risk of lead exposure dramatically, or that Americans have been shooting lead bullets downrange since before there was a United States of America.
Instead, she touted her company line—guns are super dangerous. If you own one, you’re at risk.
Magee wrote that she found the lead story while reading “gun violence” studies, which she does on a daily basis.
That type of shoddy research is also expected from the kids at the Trace.
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