I have been thinking a lot since the election about what could explain the incredibly high numbers of Americans who seem incapable of critical thinking, or really any kind of high level rational thought or analysis.
Then I stumbled on this post https://old.reddit.com/r/guns/comments/16ires5/lead_exposure_from_shooting_is_a_much_more/
Which essentially explains that “Shooting lead bullets at firing ranges results in elevated BLLs at concentrations that are associated with a variety of adverse health outcome"
I looked at the pubmed abstract in that Reddit post and also this one https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5289032/
Which states, among other things, “Workers exposed to lead often show impaired performance on neurobehavioral test involving attention, processing, speed, visuospatial abilities, working memory and motor function. It has also been suggested that lead can adversely affect general intellectual performance.”
Now, given that there are well in excess of 300 million guns in the United States, is it possible lead exposure at least partially explains how brain dead many Americans seem to be?
This is a genuine question not a troll and id love to read some evidence to the contrary if any is available
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:
What a useless figure compared to the 2.6 per capita given earlier
IQ is a useless data point anyway as even IQ point values have shifted over the past 100-ish years. An average IQ now used to be genius level IQ in the past and it mostly comes down to basic education and not starving.
Adding all the points together feels useless as a metric. But 2.6 per individual doesn't sound as drastic as I was expecting leaded gas to impact. Still bad, just not what I'd call a huge impact.
The lowering of emotional self-regulation and impulse control on the other hand swings wildly with just a few percents over a population with a much more dangerous extreme on the bell curve