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US gun lobby blogs Thanksgiving gun 'facts'

Shoot now, chow later

The US gun industry has chosen the week of America's massive Thanksgiving holiday to unveil its foray into Web 2.0.

The National Shooting and Sports Federation (NSSF) has announced its brand-spanking new blog, Aiming for Accuracy, to further its claim hunting is a safe sport.

Aiming for Accuracy is "aimed at hunting down and correcting inaccuracies about firearms and the firearms industry." The NSSF wants readers to bring media inaccuracies to its attention, and forward blog postings to other bloggers and media.

The NSSF is the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting, and shooting sports industry and among other tidbits Aiming for Accuracy features a "handy" YouTube video guide to assault weapons.

Why pick Thanksgiving, when millions of Americans spend one day eating turkey followed by a day of leisure invariably shopping or - possibly - shooting? Judging by the two November blog entries, the NSSF is rattled by "negative" reports on the effects to people of consuming meat from animals shot using lead bullets.

Like he National Rifle Association (NRA) on its site, NSSF has flagged up a curious Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that claims hunters have actually lower levels of lead in their blood than the average American. Translation: eating what you kill does not exposure you to lead from the bullet you used, and - miraculously - can even help reduce lead levels in your blood.

It's also pointed to what it believes is a piece of balanced reporting from the Pennsylvania-based The Daily Item on the subject.

Lead-in meat is a hot-button issue to The Daily Item, as Pennsylvania's rifled deer-hunting season is now underway.

Reassuringly, Aiming for Accuracy is already living up to the Web 2.0 tradition of selective reporting. The favorable The Daily Item article links to a North-Dakota Lead Exposure Study here (warning: PDF) that, while mentioning the CDC report, goes on to say that further study is needed on the dangers of lead in hunted meat.®

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