READERS TAKE AIM AT REPORT ON AMMUNITION

by David Bradley

You’d think you wouldn’t find a less controversial topic to write about than the analysis of heavy metals using thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS). But, when the metal in question is lead, and its source is ammunition, it comes as quite a shock to a British science writer like myself to be in the firing line of a flame-war from the American readership of the magazine in which I talked TIMS.

The feature in question was for the American Chemical Society publication Today’s Chemist at Work (“Lead Astray,” April 2003). In it, I described TIMS’ analytical prowess and the serendipitous discovery by Australian researchers that it is not only those looking down the barrel of a gun who can end up with a dose of lead, but possibly the shooters themselves. It seems I hit a rather raw nerve in ending my feature with a rather glib question asking whether this might be a “healthy argument against bearing arms.” Little did I realize how strongly a proportion of the readership would react to this casual query.

In finishing with this throwaway rhetoric you’d think I had been jeopardizing the very U.S. Constitution itself. At least that’s the impression I got when my editor began to forward the barrel load of letters of complaint. I was accused of ignorance (not the first time), of having a political agenda (almost certainly a first), and even of being a “liberal” (fair-minded, yes). One shooting chemist sent an e-mail to the editor in all uppercase letters and forgot his syntax to show his severe indignation:

THE LAST SENTANCE SHOW YOU TO BE A LIBERAL WHO THINKS THAT GUNS ARE AN EVIL.

Ironically, or should I say leadingly, another correspondent critical of the inaccurate portrayal of guns in fiction came to my rescue:

Keep up the good work, and kudos to David Bradley for a well-written article!

The spelling, grammar, and capital errors in the letters aside, the comments received highlighted an issue about which many readers of the magazine are obviously rather passionate. I must confess nothing I have written before has generated quite so many letters.

Was I naive to throw scorn, albeit flippantly, on the idea of bearing arms? Actually, I don’t think so. My editor and her colleagues were as stunned as I at how many letters the article generated, especially given that the magazine is targeted at industrial chemists and not the general public. 99,967 or so subscribers didn’t write in to complain . . . perhaps they were all just too shocked by my scurrilous suggestion. Or, maybe it’s simply that the transatlantic divide is not quite as wide as it seems.

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PDF file of the article is freely available at tinyurl.com/dbs9 or via the TCAW homepage at tinyurl.com/ditr.

David Bradley is a freelance science writer specializing in all things chemical; he can be reached through his Web site at www.sciencebase.com or davidbradley@nasw.org.