Ask Lemmy

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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."

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.

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. 😅

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.

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.

It's a known risk, and there are guidelines to lessen or prevent lead exposure at the range, but I'd wager most shooters aren't aware.

For example:

Use jacketed or lead free bullets and primers.

Wash your face, arms and hands after using the range.

Change your clothes and shoes after using the range.

Wash your range clothes separately from your families.

Do not eat, drink, or smoke on the range.

Take the same precautions after cleaning your guns.

That being said, the folks at largest risk for this kind of exposure would be those who fire guns the most often, so that population would be the canary in the coal mine so to speak.

https://www.quora.com/How-often-do-police-officers-practice-at-ranges

"How often do police officers practice at ranges?

Most departments require re-qualification training once a year.

My department required shooting three times a year, once with our sidearm, once with our 12 gauge shotguns, and once with our AR 15 carbines.

As for my self, I go to the range 8 to 10 times a year. I am usually accompanied by 5 or 6 of my fellow officers. We are not for the fun, we are training by using the state required shooting plans and we add a little extra to it.

Most officers I know only go to range when required for re-qualification. Not because they don’t want to, shooting off a couple hundreds rounds is an expensive proposition."

Yeah... Might be a reason cops seem dumber than average, and they don't hire the brightest to begin with.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836

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.

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.

Is it possible? Yes

Could it at least in part explain some behaviour? Yes.

But the missing question really is how much, and the answer is probably infitessimally small even if Real.

For lead exposure there are far easier and more common ways to get exposed such as lead pipes (which the US has a lot of).

But also you'd have to establish that the underlying problem is brain damage, and that is probably not true and instead reflects cultural bias.

There are many other reasons to explain American culture and behaviour which does not default to brain damage (or at least provable brain damage).

I would look at social and cultural issues first: an extremely weak political system, a poor quality general education system, high levels of religion, poor quality general health care, high levels of inequality including shocking levels of poverty.

The problem with the US is the extremes - if you have money you have the best the world can offer; if you don't then the state provision is shockingly poor. But alot of the crazies are also rich, and that comes down to the culture and society.

Lead poisoning is the least likely explanation, and is almost wishful thinking to try and explain things as a disease rather than normal human nature.

I've been thinking long covid might also be a factor for it getting worse over the last few years.

iirc most spectacular form of neurotoxic damage really only shows years later if lead exposure happened during childhood which also means that little effect will be seen immediately after cleaning up lead but will show up 20 years later or so. that's still leaded gasoline and maybe paint and water pipes to some degree

What a fucking retarded post

The brain follows the same patterns as muscles: use it or lose it. The general population in America is very much not educated at all. So their brains lose the ability to think rapidly.

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.

As an outsider (most people in my country don't shoot guns for fun, but we still have our fair share of morons) I think not educating oneself/not being educated may be a more important cause.

My personal opinion is that it's more related to the way people spend (waste) their time. All of us, I mean. The way we (do not) educate ourselves, the way we do (not) value intelligence and knowledge.

• How many people shoot guns? vs How many don't ever read a book (a difficult one, I mean, say one essay a year)? or How many students reach university level without having read a single book? FFS, if that doesn't ring an alarm bell...
• How many people are (not) being taught how to have heated but articulated discussions, in the literal sense of debating against someone, having a dispute with someone, while still being able to not want to kill one another?
• How many people are willing to be told (and willing to admit that) they were wrong... when they were?

That lack of education and an overall cheerful ignorance of all facts that dare not fit their viewpoint, no matter which one it is, seems to me a much more likely cause to explain why more and more people around the world (not just Americans) 'seem cognitively impaired'. And that's because, well, they are. Sadly.

We don't value knowledge anymore, we value money and success. Once again, suffice to ask people: how many essays did you read in the last 12 months? Or to look at kids, how many of them want to be, say, a doctor, a scientist of some sort or, even funnier, a writer? And how many want to become 'an influencer' on YT (or TikTok, or whatever) or to become some star singer or sport star?

Kids have not suddenly become allergic to smartness. They're only the mirror of what our real values as a society are (not the ones we pretend to have). Which are not being smart, not even talented as a matter of fact. They are: easy money and success.

imho, this is the main cause of dumbification going on everywhere. Obviously, I may be wrong and maybe I should stop eating lead bars as a snack?

I think there's a much higher chance of slow-poisoning with heavy metals and other chemicals by food then shooting guns. Food quality standards in the US are poor. As well as nutrition wise. Malnutrition has a big effect on people their brain. The brain needs loads of stuff to function properly, not just corn syrup and fats. And with the poor US food safety regulations and poor tap water there's more poison then nutricions coming into your body.