# Gun control wouldn't have stopped what happened in Vegas...should we do it anyway? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 3, 2017, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873 "2017-10-03T15:32:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2017, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/341 "2017-10-05T23:08:27Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Out of curiosity, who here arguing about gun noise thinks that silencers would actually make the guns make a quiet ‘thwip’ and be undetectable at a distance? > > I mean, I’m a bleeding heart liberal who’d be totally down with all guns being banned (via magic, presumably), but even I know that a silencer wouldn’t have made any automatic weapon hard to hear or locate. This isn’t the movies, people. Those things are **loud** , and silencers aren’t silent. I think the principle is the louder the sound it makes the easier to find it. This works in the movies and in life too, if you like. A silencer is for the comfort and use of the gunman, and not the police or the victim. In what way does it give service to the gunman? If the silencer doesn’t mitigate noise what does it do? It may be that silencers are moot in the las vegas example. But the principle is the same. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/342 "2017-10-05T23:11:34Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > You’re proceeding as if as long as you don’t admit your’re wrong and concede nothing, that means the debate is still unsettled. > > Red is not blue. 2+2 does not equal 5. Silencers do not disguise or impede the recognition of automatic fire. What do they do? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2017, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/343 "2017-10-05T23:27:12Z")
> [@drad\_dog](#): > > I think the principle is the louder the sound it makes the easier to find it. This works in the movies and in life too, if you like. > > A silencer is for the comfort and use of the gunman, and not the police or the victim. In what way does it give service to the gunman? If the silencer doesn’t mitigate noise what does it do? > > It may be that silencers are moot in the las vegas example. But the principle is the same. A silencer does mitigate noise (at the cost of bullet velocity and range, as I understand it). It does not make the gun quiet. I think that there’s a level of noise that “loud enough” for the purpose of making it easy to find the source, beyond which additional noise is superfluous. That said, I’m super-okay with keeping silencers illegal, because I don’t particularly care about gun-toter’s ability to fire a gun comfortably without separate ear protection. But that’s all I think silencers really do - allow gun-toters to roleplay as assassins rather than as disc jockeys. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2017, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/344 "2017-10-05T23:46:13Z")
> [@drad\_dog](#): > > I think the principle is the louder the sound it makes the easier to find it. This works in the movies and in life too, if you like. No. That is not a principle. That’s not how it works at all. It actually works the opposite way for loud noises, you know, Like gun shots. Thunder sounds 5 miles away, and I hear it clearly. It is not painful, and I can tell which direction it comes from. Thunder sounds 100 yards away, and it sounds like a bomb has gone off. It sounds like it has no direction or like it is coming from everywhere at once. It’s painful and the loudness actually decreases your ability to understand direction. Similarly, if I say clearly and audibly from two feet away “I am right here,” that will not be improved upon if I scream it at the top of my lungs. We are already at the level at which you get maximum utility. > [@](#): > > If the silencer doesn’t mitigate noise what does it do? It does indeed mitigate sound. It is good that you are asking questions. However not all sound mitigation impedes one’s ability to distinguish it or ascertain it’s direction. Silencers fall into this category. Your ability to hear and distinguish works like this: you can hear sounds from volume x all the way up to volume y. Beyond volume y your eardrums are already maxed out and you are not getting any more information, and your eardrums are being damaged. It works the same way for the frequencies of the sounds you can detect. There is an upper limit and a lower limit that you can detect. The sound waves that damage your hearing are at a frequency and intensity that dissipates quickly with range. In proximity they seem omnidirectional. They are not conveying info to your ears, they are overloading them. The silencer acts on these. The waves that travel long distance audibly conveying directional information are not affected. This is why, when I go trapshooting, I can use ear safety plugs and save my hearing while shooting. At the same time, I can still talk to the guy next to me in a normal conversational voice and he to me and we hear each other exactly as well as we do without the earplugs. The fact that there is no difference to normal sounds at normal volumes means I sometimes forget to take them out. The earplugs have blocked the high intensity high volume short range sound waves that would damage my hearing, and let the others through. A silencer does the same thing. > [@](#): > > It may be that silencers are moot in the las vegas example. But the principle is universal. You have to know the principle in order to apply it. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [October 5, 2017, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/345 "2017-10-05T23:53:44Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > It does indeed mitigate sound. OK thanks. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/346 "2017-10-06T00:20:30Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > No. That is not a principle. That’s not how it works at all. It actually works the opposite way for loud noises, you know, Like gun shots. Thunder sounds 5 miles away, and I hear it clearly. It is not painful, and I can tell which direction it comes from. Thunder sounds 100 yards away, and it sounds like a bomb has gone off. It sounds like it has no direction or like it is coming from everywhere at once. It’s painful and the loudness actually decreases your ability to understand direction. > > Similarly, if I say clearly and audibly from two feet away “I am right here,” that will not be improved upon if I scream it at the top of my lungs. We are already at the level at which you get maximum utility. > > It does indeed mitigate sound. It is good that you are asking questions. However not all sound mitigation impedes one’s ability to distinguish it or ascertain it’s direction. Silencers fall into this category. > Your ability to hear and distinguish works like this: you can hear sounds from volume x all the way up to volume y. Beyond volume y your eardrums are already maxed out and you are not getting any more information, and your eardrums are being damaged. It works the same way for the frequencies of the sounds you can detect. There is an upper limit and a lower limit that you can detect. > > The sound waves that damage your hearing are at a frequency and intensity that dissipates quickly with range. In proximity they seem omnidirectional. They are not conveying info to your ears, they are overloading them. The silencer acts on these. The waves that travel long distance audibly conveying directional information are not affected. > > This is why, when I go trapshooting, I can use ear safety plugs and save my hearing while shooting. At the same time, I can still talk to the guy next to me in a normal conversational voice and he to me and we hear each other exactly as well as we do without the earplugs. The fact that there is no difference to normal sounds at normal volumes means I sometimes forget to take them out. The earplugs have blocked the high intensity high volume short range sound waves that would damage my hearing, and let the others through. > > A silencer does the same thing. > > You have to know the principle in order to apply it. Are you saying everyone’s auditory perception of a shooting event is the same, from anywhere on the scene? No one hears anything differently? And it reflects your experience of thunder and a fugue state, somehow? This is in the service of saying that “silencers didn’t change anything” I assume. How do you know how these events sounded in the various contexts where it was important: police cars arriving on the street, the rooms adjacent, the hall, the lobby, the stage and audience etc? How do you know how the change in auditory stimuli would have affected anyone there that day? It sounds like you have you never walked away from a sound source and heard it change. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/347 "2017-10-06T01:38:59Z")
Suppressed versus unsupressed. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/DuS9XnY-IRA/maxresdefault.jpg "AR 15 Shooting Suppressed vs Un-Suppressed (A 2 VETS ARMS CO RIFLE) \*updated\*") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuS9XnY-IRA) ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/348 "2017-10-06T01:46:04Z")
M16 fully suppressed starting around 7:15 [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/NM8xvE5B4yk/maxresdefault.jpg "M16 Full Auto Suppressed") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM8xvE5B4yk) Listen to the echo. Unmistakable for miles as gunfire. Impossible to imagine the “rescuers” not being able to recognize the direction and nature of the sound. ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 2:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/349 "2017-10-06T02:24:59Z")
Gee I wonder if sound & echos and stuff differ when shooting outside and standing 2 feet away versus standing several hundred feet away when the shots are coming from inside a hotel room 32 floors up. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/350 "2017-10-06T02:31:16Z")
> [@XT](#): > > I’m tired of people telling me I’m wrong I figured. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/351 "2017-10-06T02:34:36Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > a) Gun deaths are not going down, gun deaths are [rising](https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/gun-auto-fatalities.jpg). > > b) And why do cigarettes have to be ‘first’ - what, we’re incapable of working on two things at a time? Besides, as already shown, we’re making progress on smoking. > We’re not making progress on gun deaths. > > From the article: > Still waiting for those CDC studies. Higher than 2011, but MUCH lower than 1993. Cigs are far and away the bigger killers with no constitutional protections. If you cant ban smoking, you can’t do guns. What CDC studies do you want?😕😕 ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/352 "2017-10-06T04:46:04Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Higher than 2011, but MUCH lower than 1993. > Cigs are far and away the bigger killers with no constitutional protections. If you cant ban smoking, you can’t do guns. Focusing on one year is kinda silly. Gun deaths have been generally rising overall since 2000 - and that’s despite changes elsewhere that, all things equal, would be expected to reduce gun deaths. For example, advances in medicine and healthcare, improved communication networks, better first response calls, etc. > [@DrDeth](#): > > If you cant ban smoking, you can’t do guns. Well, it’s a good thing we’ve banned smoking in many places. We’re not totally on the way to reducing deaths from cigarettes to zero, but massive progress has been made. Smoking and second-hand-smoke exposure way down, remember? Smoking bans, public awareness - I mean, seriously - this is grade-school kid stuff. We’re making progress on smoking. We’ll get there. Are you so simple-minded that you can’t think about working on two issues at the same time? > [@DrDeth](#): > > What CDC studies do you want?😕😕 The ones Congress won’t fund due to pressure from the NRA. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/353 "2017-10-06T06:36:22Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > Are you so simple-minded that you can’t think about working on two issues at the same time? Once you start with the insults, you stop with the debate. ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/354 "2017-10-06T06:58:39Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Once you start with the insults, you stop with the debate. You: Gun deaths are down versus some random year 25 years ago! Me: True, but they’re also risen steadily over the last 15 years or so, even though based on a range of other factors they should be steadily going down, just like smoking, drunk driving deaths etc are going down. Maybe we should address this. You: But…but…smoking! More people die from smoking! Me: Yes, but smoking deaths are already going down. We’ve been working for a while on that. Gun deaths are not going down, and we’ve done jack-shit. Other countries clearly have solutions that work that _can_ get gun deaths down significantly. Maybe we should look at doing something. You: YOU CAN’T FIX GUNS UNTIL CIGARETTE DEATHS ARE ZERO That, in a nutshell, summarizes your ‘debate’. When come back, please bring a semblance of an argument or point. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/355 "2017-10-06T07:03:20Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > You: Gun deaths are down versus some random year 25 years ago! > > Me: True, but they’re also risen steadily over the last 15 years or so, even though based on a range of other factors they should be steadily going down, just like smoking, drunk driving deaths etc are going down. Maybe we should address this. > > You: But…but…smoking! More people die from smoking! > > Me: Yes, but smoking deaths are already going down. We’ve been working for a while on that. Gun deaths are not going down, and we’ve done jack-shit. Other countries clearly have solutions that work that _can_ get gun deaths down significantly. Maybe we should look at doing something. > > You: YOU CAN’T FIX GUNS UNTIL CIGARETTE DEATHS ARE ZERO > That, in a nutshell, summarizes your ‘debate’. > > When come back, please bring a semblance of an argument or point. Once you start with the insults, you stop with the debate. What was that that **Jonathan Chance** said a while ago? _Everyone, this is going to be a touchy issue for a while. Keep it civil and polite._ ---
**Author:** ![DragonAsh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/db5fbb/32.png) [@DragonAsh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DragonAsh)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/356 "2017-10-06T13:50:37Z")
Are you going to actually address the points I’ve been making and/or explain why you seem to think we can’t address gun deaths unless we eradicate cigarettes? ---
**Author:** ![Bone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bone/32/407_2.png) [@Bone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bone)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/357 "2017-10-06T14:54:45Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > Are you so simple-minded that you can’t think about working on two issues at the same time? You’ve already received two warnings in this thread. I’m curious if you are going for the trifecta. Dial it back. If you can’t, the Pit is right around the corner. [/moderating] ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/358 "2017-10-06T16:30:12Z")
> [@Scylla](#): > > Suppressed versus unsupressed. > > [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DuS9XnY-IRA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DuS9XnY-IRA) If this is the answer to my question to you, that’s just a fail. There’s 58 people dead. Sometimes a ballistics discussion is about reality and sometimes it’s just obfuscation. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/359 "2017-10-06T16:53:18Z")
> [@DragonAsh](#): > > Gee I wonder if sound & echos and stuff differ when shooting outside and standing 2 feet away versus standing several hundred feet away when the shots are coming from inside a hotel room 32 floors up. The first fairly large scale US military use of sound suppressors on rifles (firing supersonic bullets) was on some M16’s in Vietnam. The advertised idea was very specifically not to make fire inaudible but to deceive listeners downrange as the to location of the shooter. In two ways. Take for example the original Army Human Engineering Laboratory M4 suppressor. That was a quite serious suppressor, long by today’s standards and it affected the gas operating system of the M16 enough to require a special modified bolt carrier to be fitted to use it, then the gun wouldn’t work properly just removing the suppressor once fitted. Anyway, the long suppressor hid muzzle flashes (after the first shot which consumed most of the oxygen in the suppressor can), and shifted significantly more of the perceived sound of firing to down range observers to the sonic boom of the bullet. But that shock wave propagates at an angle to the direction of fire, and observers tend to perceive the location of a sound as perpendicular to the sound wave. So observers down range to the left of the line of fire (from shooter’s perspective) tend to look to his right to locate him if going by the sonic boom, and vice versa on the other side. The Sionics MAW-A1 more often seen in photo’s of Vietnam was another big long suppressor. The pendulum swung somewhat back away from that concept later. Modern military suppressors for M16 family guns aren’t as long, more of a compromise with practicality. But anyway the point is that in politicized gun debates, the pro-suppressor side tends to make out the argument of the anti-suppressor side as naive, that the anti-S’s think it makes the gun just go ‘click’ like in the movies, which perhaps some still do. However they themselves tend to focus on the effect if you’re the shooter, or standing next to him. Which is practical from a responsible recreational shooter’s POV, but doesn’t mean the effect is the same down range. I don’t know exactly how much harder a given model of suppressor would have made it to locate the shooter (again flash suppression function, in the dark, plus deceptive effect if observers rely more on sonic boom to locate the shooter). I doubt anybody else arguing here knows that exact effect either. But I don’t believe it’s obvious it would negligible. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2017, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873/360 "2017-10-06T18:11:01Z")
> [@drad\_dog](#): > > If this is the answer to my question to you, that’s just a fail. There’s 58 people dead. Sometimes a ballistics discussion is about reality and sometimes it’s just obfuscation. How many of those died because of a suppressor on a rifle? Who has ever died because of a suppressor on a rifle who would have lived otherwise? You think there dangerous and the ban should continue. Where are your facts? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873.md?page=17) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gun-control-wouldnt-have-stopped-what-happened-in-vegas-should-we-do-it-anyway/797873.md?page=19)