Consider this: Suppressors (no, they are not properly called “silencers”) are a device to reduce, to some degree, the muzzle report of a rifle or handgun. This is commonly accepted as a hearing-protection measure, as well as a device useful to lesson the annoyance factor of people in the vicinity of where shooting is taking place.
That is, except in the United States, where suppressors are regulated under the 1934 National Firearms Act, requiring much the same paperwork and other horse squeeze as it would require to buy, say, an original 1927 Thompson submachine gun, with the exception that, unlike NFA firearms, suppressors for the civilian market are still being produced. This is a perfectly ridiculous policy, one the Trump administration should undo forthwith.
Since the spy movie genre exploded during the Cold War, Hollywood has depicted firearm suppressors in a manner divorced from reality, idealizing them as a tool used by stealthy assassins to kill while remaining whisper quiet. Even today, as Hollywood churns out one movie, mini-series, and streaming series after another about elite soldiers, they maintain the fiction of the so-called “silenced” gun. While entertaining, the mythologized depiction of firearms suppressors is hardly truthful.
I don’t find it entertaining. I find it egregiously stupid and annoying, not to mention ignorant of the laws of physics. The worst one I ever saw was on some ’70s-era TV cop drama, I can’t remember which at this distance in time, when the bad guy twisted a little flash-hider on his handgun and proceeded to shoot it with a whisper-quiet thwipp – and it was a revolver.
That’s not how suppressors work. A rifle or handgun with a “can” on it is still pretty loud. But it is these silly misrepresentations that the gun-banners believe; they can’t be bothered to ascertain actual facts.
Noise from an AR-15 firing standard ammunition ranges from 160 to 175 decibels. The Spokane, WA, Police Department uses an AR-15 variant that clocks in at 152 decibels. To protect its officers from hearing loss, and that of any civilians who may be in proximity of a firearm discharged by Spokane’s police force, their rifles are equipped with suppressors. Even so, that gets the decibel level to 134, which is still louder than an ambulance siren. “It’s nothing more than like the muffler you put on your car,” a Spokane Police officer said by way of analogy. That’s a far cry from James Bond’s fictional suppressor, which might be comparable to the sound of rainfall (50 decibels) or a whisper (20-30 decibels).
This is as dumb as dumb policies get, and gun laws are full of dumb laws, just as advocates of more gun laws are full of dumb ideas.
See Related: Trump Issues Executive Order to Protect Gun Rights
There are, at the moment, moves being made in Congress to deal with this stupidity. H.R. 404, introduced by Congressman Ben Cline (R-VA), and S. 364, introduced by Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID). These bills would remove the classification of suppressors as “firearms.”
The arguments against these measures are, like the arguments against so many pro-firearms measures, loaded with emotional language and characterized by a profound ignorance of firearms and how they function. In Europe, where in most places it’s difficult if not impossible to own a firearm, what rifles are in private hands for sport or any other purpose are frequently sport suppressors – to save the shooter’s hearing and avoid annoying other people. One German friend told me, when I asked about the near-universal use of these devices in the Bavarian woods by sportsmen after roebuck, fallow deer, and red deer, “It’s just good manners.”
Fixing this bad policy is way overdue. This bill should make it onto President Trump’s desk, and he should sign it.
