I swear, you can’t make this shit up.
Gun silencers are hard to buy. Donald Trump Jr. and silencer makers want to change that
My bold
On the upside, survivors of mass shootings won’t suffer any hearing loss. Which is good, because they won’t be able to access medical care for it anyway. Win-win.
How can these people spout this stuff with a straight face?
Actually, any supersonic round will render a suppressor useless as far as reducing the sound. The ballistic crack is about as loud as the muzzle blast.
Subsonic rounds will be quiet enough to not need hearing protection but it’s still far louder than what you hear in the movies.
Personally, I don’t believe that suppressor use is a major factor in crime.
Several countries actually require suppressor use when hunting near buildings.
Even if this is a good/sensible idea, I can’t see that it’s a very high priority. Plus, it just strikes me that the Trump Team has a plan to protect the hearing of 55 million gun owners but not to protect the health insurance of 20-30 million other people.
“There’s too much health in America; we are dedicated to changing that!”
Bill introduced to remove suppressors from NFA regulation Dated 10/22/2015
The difference is, gun owners would purchase their own suppressors, whereas the 20-30M people you refer to require a subsidy from someone not themselves.
It certainly is a good idea. It helps reduce hearing loss, and noise pollution in and around firing ranges. At best a suppressor will reduce approximately 20-40 db off of a gun shot - still very loud and I don’t think anything greater than subsonic .22lr would be safe without hearing protection, with or without a suppressor.
National reciprocity HR 38 along with this are some of the things I’m looking forward to in the new congress. Cross your fingers that they pass!
The first potential silver lining (for me, personally) I can see to the election of the Circus Peanut. I like to shoot, would like to have a couple suppressors for my .22 pistols and rifles. Not enough to go through the current process.
I’m sure there are plenty of other things, too, that are different. Not the point. The point is, why is this even a priority at the moment?
You find the current process onerous and expensive? :rolleyes: With all due respect, so what? Seriously, lots of things in life are embedded in nuisance factors and cost money.
As I understand it, supressors are legal, so this bill is not about making something legal that is currently not legal. It’s about (from the original cite)
Why can’t the people who want them just pay the tax and wait the waiting period. Why the urgency, why quibble over the tax (my late husband was a hunter, so I know that guns and their accoutrements cost money), and why is this a Congressional priority at this time?
The way I see it (and I’m sure some will argue), now that the Republicans have no opposition they’re digging back in the closets, the backs of drawers, and down among the sofa cushions to find all the crap that they couldn’t get passed in the last eight years, brushing off the lint and crumbs and letting it all hang out. It’s only just starting.
Perhaps it is because different people have different priorities. Shocking!
So what? Same response as above - different people prioritize things differently. I don’t necessarily find the process onerous and expensive - since they are completely banned in my state. Hopefully as exposure increases people will see that the banning is silly and eventually I’ll be permitted to purchase one, or many.
As noted above you’re factually wrong on this. This is not a new bill and was introduced well before the latest election.
What is your opinion on why it is seeing the light of day now?
It could be asked why you’re wasting time on such a minor issue when there are bigger issues at stake.
It may be be because folks are looking for all manner of things to be outraged about. Given the prior year bill hasn’t been reintroduced yet that seems the most likely. What was the motivation on starting the thread if the most recent introduction of the bill was 2015?
It is possible to work on more than one thing at once and this one is a good idea. Silencers never should have been put in the same category as Tommy guns in the first place but that is what happened thanks to the National Firearms Act of 1934.
It is already possible to legally own silencers but it is a pain in the ass for normal gun owners to put it mildly. There are also plenty of homemade and illegal ones around for the criminally inclined but, as noted, they don’t have much utility in criminal activity.
I don’t know how familiar you are with firearms but many people are completely ignorant of them and silencers. Firearms, especially anything larger than a .22 produces what is likely one of the loudest sounds you have ever heard in your life with every pull of the trigger and that can cause permanent hearing loss and ringing in the ears for days with just a shot or two.
Firearms with silencers don’t sound anything like they do in movies. They are still very loud by most standards but the noise is suppressed enough not to be such a threat to the hearing of the shooter or bystanders. In short silencers already exist, they are technically legal in many states but unnecessarily regulated due to a very old law, they are legal in many countries and they aren’t generally attractive to criminals because they add bulk to the gun.
There is no reason for them to be included in the National Firearms Act of 1934 so it makes sense to exclude them now. It shouldn’t take a big debate from anyone to do that. The law is already written and Congress can pass it if they get weary listening to debates on much more complicated topics.
To be fair, there is one criminal enterprise that could benefit from deregulating suppressors. Wildlife poachers.
A gun with a silencer may still be pretty loud, but is it loud enough? The whole point of restricting silencers is that they make getting away with murder too easy. It’s very easy to kill someone with a gun, so one of the main deterrents is that everyone around will hear the gunshots and call the police. A silenced gun might be loud if you’re in the room with it, but is it loud enough for the neighbors to hear it?
Ear damage can be prevented by always wearing protection when hunting or target shooting. It might not be possible to wear it in self-defense situations, but it seems like a bad idea to do something that will make murder a lot easier, in order so save fairly small numbers of people from some hearing damage.
Violence Policy Center (PDF)
While they state there are 792,282 suppressors in the US, they document only eight crimes involving suppressors. Three of which involved crimes still in the planning stage.
Besides, anyone wanting to commit crimes most likely won’t go through the background check. Much easier to steal or obtain on the black market.
That we know of. The point is, it’s easier to get away if you have hours before anyone discovers the body, as opposed to having the police called immediately. Perhaps a number of people have used them and gotten away with it, so nobody knows they used them.
Both of which will be easier to do when there are a lot more suppressors around.
Maybe it would be helpful to think of guns compared to the exhaust system of a Harley Davidson motorcycle. New Harleys come with mufflers that quiet the exhaust noise almost to that of a new Toyota car. However, they are big and bulky and to some, unattractive. On the other hand you can take the mufflers completely off and make the motorcycle really, really loud. Like an un-suppressed gun. Many if not most Harley owners ditch the stock exhaust system and go with a medium sized muffler which lets the engine roar but much less than an un-muffled bike. Those mufflers are smaller, lighter and to some, more attractive. Similarly, firearm suppressors come in a variety of sizes and designs. Forgetting for a second the supersonic crack of the bullet itself a suppressor can be made very quiet but that means more weight and bulk. I once got the chance to fire a full auto UZI in 9mm with a suppressor. With subsonic ammo it was very quiet to the point that the cycling of the action was louder (from the shooters perspective) than the firing of the bullets. You could hear the bullets tearing through the grass and thumping into the dirt. It was a huge suppressor though. About like two beer cans, end to end and maybe a little bigger diameter. Most of them aren’t that big.
You know who probably wishes suppressors weren’t so onerous and expensive to get?
My neighbors. 
Do you have a cite for this claim? My understanding was that suppressors were included in the NFA to add additional criminal charges to poachers. At the time of the 1934 NFA, the depression meant that folks might resort to illegal hunting out of season for food.
A suppressor would be effective at reducing noise at around 30db. That would make the sound from a 9mm using typical ammo still exceed 120db. Still freaking loud and hearing protection should still be worn.
Silencers are used very infrequently in the commission of a crime. Over the period from 1995 to 2005, less than 20 instances. They increase the size of a firearm significantly, making them more difficult to conceal. However, if they were easier to legally acquire their use would be in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions - Gun people like accessories. Why do you think the illegal use would outnumber the legal use?
Those three at least. I shoot at an indoors range sometimes with several people using suppressors and silent they aren’t. But they do make it easier on me and other people around them. Think of the sound suppressor as you would a flash suppressor; not high on some criminals shopping list. If its there he probably won’t remove it but I don’t think he’s going to shop around to find one.