Is lead toxicity from shooting guns a primary reason many Americans seem cognitively impaired ?

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

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There is an episode of Mind Field on youtube, it's their halloween episode that explored the source of fear in humans. It had a campy feel to it but also contained a lot of good information.

The conclusion made in the video is that there are very few "universal fears", things that cause fear in every human test subject regardless of race, culture, age, etc.

They were able to find one though: humans universally do not like the feeling of suffocation, specifically we are pretty sensitive to the ratio of oxygen and CO2 we are inhaling.

The brain interprets an increase in the CO2 concentration in the blood as "suffocation" and activates the fear response to try to protect us.

What have been dumping absolute metric fuck loads into the atmosphere in the past centuries? Countless amounts of CO2. And the concentration is only going up and up and up.

All of us are experiencing elevated amounts of CO2 in the blood, and all of us are universally feeling some level of the fear response because of it. Might explain what seems to be a lot of really bad decision making across all of society, people are scared, don't know where it's coming from, and are seeking anyone and anything that can help fix it immediately, whether or not it's actually helping.

Fear is the mind killer.
- I really can't imagine CO2 concentrations in the air is "suffocating" us. Air is mostly nitrogen, then oxygen, CO2 is a tiny sliver (which yes traps heat, different problem.)
  
  The other commenter didnt say it's suffocating us, just that CO2 levels are used by the body to figure out whether we are suffocating, and that the elevated levels might cause a subconscious reaction. We nearly doubled the CO2 compared to before industrialization.
  
  Seriously? I used the word suffocating to reference what he said about suffocating, however he danced around it. It's called context. *I added quotation marks to match his quotation marks if that helps.
  
  First off, no need to be so condescending.
  
  Next, what do you mean by dancing around it? The original comment just said that we might have some adverse effects, not that it is suffocating us. The word suffocation was originally only mentioned to explain that our body is capable of noticing differences in CO2 concentration.
  
  I matched the energy you gave.
  
  Whatever their attitude, the poster is right. They added valuable information that disproved the OPs hypothesis.
  
  I still dont see how it disproves anything. Yeah, we have little amounts of co2 in our air, why should that mean that we can't detect a change?
  
  Because it's 0.3%. Our body is not sensitive enough to notice this. Causing climate change through the greenhouse effect, destroying the planet, absolutely. But it's not suffocating anyone.
- Get a CO2 sensor, and you will see CO2 levels spike massively in occupied rooms with poor ventilation. Indoor CO2 levels can easily exceed 4x the normal outdoor level. Because of this, and critical thinking, I don’t believe for a second that a global rise in CO2 has any direct effect on our behavior. I could be convinced that increasing time spent indoors (and online) does, though
  
  Typical CO2 concentrations:
  
  Outdoors (2024): ~430ppm
  
  Outdoors (2000): ~370ppm
  
  Indoors (depends on ventilation): 800ppm ~ 2000ppm+

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