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this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
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Shooting firearms is messy and dirty. You get all kinds of oils, fouling, lead, particulates on your upper body and hands. If there's no room at the range, I go home, clean my guns up depending on how much shooting was done, then wipe up and shower. My hands are visibly soiled after shooting a few dozen rounds.
The fuck are you shooting, that you're hands are soiled after a few dozen rounds?
I can shoot for hours and not have anything on my hands.
Sounds like you're shooting muzzle loaded pistols or some really shit ammo.
What? You'll have gpr on you with a single round. You will absolutely have something on you after hours of shooting.
Can't speak for them, but my hands are usually pretty dirty after shooting a few mags due to reloading. Handling 7.62x39 surplus or 22lr is nasty work. Even cheaper 5.56 seems to be pretty gross. Was out just the other day and my hands were black from a box of Remington golden bullet.
That's not lead though, that's usually brass or in your case x39 that's steel cased(love my mini30 and sks). The rounds are always jacketed in either copper or something else with a lead core. Hell even most 22lr these days is copper coated or wax coated.
My AK eats steel all day, but I tend to feed it brass. All I know is my hands is black and bullets is gross, so it gets the abrasive lead soap from my range bag when I'm done. I was more commenting on how one's hands would get dirty from a small amount of shooting than the composition of the dirt in a box of ammo. I agree, I suspect most of that is mostly inert yet gross.
O yea if you're shooting mil surplus, that shit is nasty nasty. Yourhands are getting dirty from handling the rounds more than anything though. I've shot for hours and don't get powder that makes my hands dirty. It's from loading steel cased shit into my mags or crappy 22lr ammo into my mags.
Unless you're shooting some expensive shit, most ammo in bulk has that manufacturers machine film on it from not being cleaned after it's been manufactured. Those facilities aren't exactly clean lol
Your hands are covered in particulate after firing guns, dude. That's how cops can test you to see if you recently fired a gun.
That same shit gets on your clothes and in your hair.
The study says people are only dealing with the residue that gets on your hands (at best) and many, many people are ignoring the residue that is now all over the rest of their body, their clothes, their hair, etc.
It's not a fucking conspiracy to make gun owners look stupid. It's a study that shows many gun owners ARE stupid. There's math and everything. You not liking the result of said math does not make the math invalid.
Lead and fouling come out of the chamber when a round is extracted, you're breathing that in. Fouling has lead in it that gets over the internals of a firearm and the magazine. You're touching that. Lead is essentially vaporized out of the muzzle of the weapon, you breathe that in. There's lead on the casing, other particulars of rounds. When you clean that, unless you're wearing gloves you're exposing yourself to it. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not happening.
Gun owners are known for their solid stash of n95 masks for this very reason.
Laughs in P-100's
Cleaning sure, and as I stated elsewhere most rounds are jacketed with copper and a lead core, the only lead you're being exposed to is from the primer, which is around 40% lead derivatives and a massive amount of that is blasted out the muzzle, you're not breathing in much more if much more than natural back ground amounts of lead that's already in the soil around us.
Cleaning the firearm? Sure, but you shouldn't be cleaning it and then grabbing a sandwich without cleaning your hands anyways.
What is it with dudes man, just wash your fucking hands. Why do we need to argue about this?
I'm not arguing about it lol my entire point has been calling out this shit study, that's just feeding people who are antigun a "gun owners are stupid because of lead"...
Hell most of my comments have been about washing your hands after the range. It's just good hygiene anyways.