Fun fact: Fewer California Condors exist on earth than there are current members of Congress.
Well, it's finally happened. The National Rifle Association has at long last turned its sights on America's zoos. Damn stupid zoos, with their
please-don't-shoot-our-animals policies.
In a move bizarrely reminiscent of its "anti-gun" enemies list, the National Rifle Association announced a new plan Friday to target scientists, environmental groups, government regulators and individuals who favor banning the use of lead in gun ammunition.
Oh, all right. It's about efforts to switch to non-lead-based shooty bits. Well, that is a tragedy. No, wait—a
conspiracy.
In order to rally its members to oppose the lead regulation, the NRA described a conspiracy theory involving crooked scientists, phony research, and a shadowy network of nonprofits, zoos and government agencies all conspiring to ban hunting. […]
Scientists aren't the NRA's only new targets. Nonprofits like the San Diego Zoo and the California Condor Recovery Team are also on the enemies list. The NRA claims these groups "have considerable influence over many legislators and regulators," which they use to "capture" the regulatory agencies and bureaucrats responsible for lead ammunition restrictions.
Oh, definitely. There's no force in Congress more powerful than the pro-Condor lobby—certainly, it's not something that the wee tots of the National Rifle Association can hope to counter. That's why you see condors all over the damn place these days. I hear they're driving our cabs now.
More on the NRA and the zoo conspiracy below the fold.
I am not kidding when I say that these people will reflexively do anything if you suggest to them that it might be in everybody's best interest for them to do the opposite. We've finally got an alternative to lead bullets? Great! We've gotten lead out of our paint and out of our gasoline, it seems like a logical choice to not poison millions and millions of animals that eat the lead shot out of abandoned carcasses, just as a general don't-be-an-asshole move. But no, this is gonna be a lightbulb thing. I promise you, if you went out and told people not to drink lead paint, you could make an entire television series out of the various people who were willing to do it on camera just to spite you. Have someone from the government announce that it's a bad idea to stick your fingers in electrical outlets, you could have an entire YouTube channel devoted to the True Goddamn Patriots who were doing it anyway. Drinking lead paint and getting electrocuted was good enough for my grandpappy, they will say, and damn the government trying to take that experience away from the younger generations.
So here's how this is gonna go down. The gun industry is going to say that there's a worldwide conspiracy to make it look like lead poisons birds when it really doesn't, really it's just a devious plot to ban all hunting everywhere because of course it is. Having lead-free hunting zones surrounding the bare few condor populations that still exist is, of course, all part of a deeper plot by the San Diego Zoo and the Arizona Game and Fish Department. If we were true Americans we'd just be shooting those condors outright like God told us to do, but no, some jackasses still insist on keeping those last few birds around instead of letting freedom-lovers mount them and display them down in the game room. Also, the only scientists you can trust are the good people who work for the tobacco companies at the National Rifle Association.
You're on notice, you wily zoologists. Oh, the National Rifle Association is onto you now.