“Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun” ― Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
People have known that lead is poisonous to humans for over 4,000 years, yet it was a common ingredient in consumer products in the US until the early 1970s. This travesty was due to the fierce opposition of American businesses that did not want to go to the expense of making their products safer.
In 1921, General Motors was desperate to dislodge Ford from its dominant position in the young American automobile industry. Charles Kettering, GM’s research director, introduced tetraethyl lead (TEL) as an anti-knock compound that allowed engines to run with higher compression (more power) — a direct challenge to Ford’s low-power Model-T.
Soon workers at the factory making the new fuel — called Ethyl Gas to disguise its lead content — started to fall ill as a result of the sardonically named “looney gas” in the mordantly christened “House of Butterflies” (so called because of the image of lead-poisoned workers trying to brush phantom insects off of their arms). At least 13 workers died, and more than 300 developed psychoses.
The US Surgeon General, Hugh S. Cummings, put a moratorium on the production of TEL until an Assistant Professor of Pathology at the University of Cincinnati, Robert Kehoe, dismissed the dangers of lead by saying it occurred ‘normally’ in the body. This poorly researched conclusion was enough for GM and the pro-corporate political class. Leaded gas became the norm until more responsible scientists raised questions in the late 1960s.
GM’s bigwigs rewarded Kehoe by making him the Director of the Kettering Laboratory on the University of Cincinnati Medical campus. They also appointed him Medical Director of the Ethyl Corp. and a corporate officer at GM.
Airborne lead pollution combined with lead in paint and plumbing products led to millions of lead-poisoned kids who suffered chronic neurological damage. Meanwhile, American car, paint, and plumbing manufacturers made billions.
The same corporate drive to make money no matter who got hurt was embraced by the tobacco, fossil fuel, and food industries. Lung cancer rates increased, the planet warmed, and Americans got sicker and fatter — while stockholders and corporate management raked it in. The gun industry uses the same playbook.
For decades the tobacco lobby used its own ‘experts’ to cloud the science that indicated smoking harmed the health of tobacco users. It turned out that the tobacco companies knew their product was fatal as early as the 1950s.
The food industry has been equally evil in denying how unhealthy its products are. They committed to their profitable denial by waging a political campaign against pro-health measures such as publishing calorie counts on fast food menus and soda taxes.
The fossil fuel giants are no better. They have known since the 1970s that burning stuff to create energy has caused global warming and climate change.
Today, the gun industry is working equally diligently to protect its profits. However, there are two differences between these merchants of death and the others. On the downside, the gun lobby cannot deny that their products hurt people. After all, that is what gun manufacturers design their products to do. While high-powered lawyers using highly-paid experts can obfuscate the causes of obesity or lung cancer, a kid's head blasted off by a high-powered bullet is a clear example of cause and effect.
On the upside, the gun industry can hide behind the second amendment. The lead, car, paint, and food industries could only dream of using the Constitution to justify peddling their heath-destroying wares.
It is a rare American who celebrates a mass murderer. Yet the gun industry’s satanic marketing geniuses have cast the tools of mass murder as American as apple pie and forced birth.
The NRA may have started as an organization founded to promote responsible gun ownership that once supported a ban on automatic weapons. It is now committed to the idea that patriotism demands every American owns a gun in case they need to shoot up the government.
Their message to America's angry and disaffected young men is that you do not count until you own a big metal dick — a message that resonates with guys who cannot get laid and are scared by imaginary enemies created by a political party that has no policies to sell.
Not that the gun lobby is ignoring women. Backed by plenty of free advertising from dingbats like Boebert and Greene, the industry is pumping out weapons in fashion colors.
Big Tobacco sold Virginia Slims as the feminine way to get emphysema. Now Big Gun offers the distaff buyer a selection of weapons designed for women.
If this newly empowered woman leaves a gun lying around unlocked — because she lives in a state that does not value children by passing gun laws to protect them from guns — the gun lobby shrugs. Death is a small price to pay for freedom.
The NRA says its mission is to protect the civil rights of regular Americans to own guns. Why not? We all enjoy myths. However, its true raison d’etre is to keep its CEO in the luxury he has become accustomed to. Would Wayne LaPierre keep his shoulder to the wheel for minimum wage? Of course not. His mission is not the American gun owner — his cause is Wayne Pierre.
Gun massacres, domestic shootings, armed robbery, drunken brawls, gang wars, road rage killings, and dead innocent bystanders are the carnage most associated with the gun lobby. However, their malevolence is all-embracing. Their complete disregard for life inspired the NRA’s campaign to overturn an Obama ban on lead shot use on federal lands.
The gun lobby is so monomaniacal that no law or regulation should impact its ability to profit from death that Ryan Zincke kowtowed to its authority. On his first day as Trump’s Interior Secretary, his first official act was to reallow lead ammunition on government property. Now bird species are at risk — especially the apex predators — from lead shot and lead poisoning. In effect, the gun zealots are killing one bird with two stones.
No one should hold their breath that this baleful leopard will change its spots. An organization whose actions and rhetoric show a fatal disregard for children is not about to give a damn about wildlife - even if that wildlife is America’s symbol, the bald eagle.