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VPC - Poisonous Pastime - Section One Page 10 of 16 <br />for renovation, it found lead contamination at a school rifle range left over from an old ROTC <br />program that had been shut down years earlier.61 <br />Bad management, poor facilities. The primary causes of the dismal record of shooting ranges in <br />lead contamination and other health matters are ignorance, bad or indifferent management, and <br />antiquated facilities. <br />These problems are no secret within the gun industry. For example, the Boston -based Strategic <br />Planning Institute found in a recent report outlining a gun industry survival strategy for the National <br />Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) that "a large majority of shooting facilities in the country are not <br />professionally managed, commercial operations."62 Similarly, a major supplier of shooting range <br />equipment, Caswell International Corp., was reported in 1989 by the NRA's American Rifleman <br />magazine to have found that "a lot of people trying to get in on a shoestring" in the shooting range <br />market were "cutting corners on costs that resulted in substandard ranges in terms of safety, <br />environmental concerns and cleanliness.i63 An engineering consulting firm specializing in shooting <br />ranges notes in its promotional materials that the increased attention to lead contamination and <br />human health exposure "has put range owners and operators into areas outside of their <br />expertise. '64 <br />Even the most well -designed indoor range demands constant and sometimes expensive attention in <br />order to keep delicately balanced air filtration systems working effectively. <br />FrontPage Magazine web site at www.frontpagemag.com, downloaded April 20, 2001 <br />Outdoor Shooting Ranges <br />Just as shooters at indoor ranges fired away for decades ignorant of the public health risks, so have <br />outdoor range shooters poured millions of tons of lead downrange, ignorant (or heedless) of the <br />damage they have been inflicting on the environment. Although human lead poisoning is less of a <br />problem at outdoor ranges, negative effects on the environment are far greater. Lead bullets and <br />shot used in outdoor shooting ranges present at least three dangers to the environment: <br />• poisoning of wildlife, especially waterfowl, that ingest lead pellets; <br />http://www.vpc.org/studies/leadone.htm 2/5/2014 <br />