Duck Hunt (And We Mean Duck)

By Matt Wood in News on Oct 17, 2006 12:09PM

The Coast Guard is planning to create 34 live-fire training zones in the Great Lakes that could discharge over 400,000 lead and copper bullets into the waters. This would amount to more lead dumped in the water than the entire state of Michigan dumps in a year, even after the gunfire from Detroit celebrating the Tigers reaching the World Series.

The Coast Guard says it needs to fire real weapons with real bullets off real boats to train for protecting the lakes from terrorism. Of course, their health-risk assessment of the bullets' impact on the lake says, "No problem!" Fishermen and duck hunters near the live-fire zones aren't as convinced.

Maybe we missed the GOP campaign commercial that told us to be scared of terrorists on Lake Michigan, but we didn't realize that was such a threat. As skeptical as we are of just about any anti-terrorism measure these days though, when we think about it, this one at least makes more sense than making airline passengers put their shampoo in plastic baggies. A would-be terrorist could do some damage with a boat near one of our ports. Haven't you seen Syriana? We just wish this didn't mean nearly doubling the amount of toxic metal pollution in the water.