I am of the peasant non-NFA race. Do you still have to pay a tax stamp on a Form 1 homebuilder suppressor? I’d love one. I’d love even more if not having one was considered the breach of etiquette it is in other countries.
Yeah, you were probably excited about the Second Amendment Coalition too, huh?
Huh, so often in the “what’s wrong with movies” threads you almost always get one guy reminding everyone that silencers don’t really silence guns. So is this the most silent silencer that ever silenced or have internet nerds been lying to me?
Yeah, then we could have even more easily committed murders by people who are impossible to trace because they were able to just walk into a gun shop and buy one without any tracking whatsoever.
Sound is measured in decibels, which is a logarithmic scale. They make the difference between standing next to a jet taking off and standing next to a vuvuzela. The sound is just much shorter but no less damaging. Both are above the recommended dB for risk of hearing loss.
See post above yours. They are sold over the counter in many countries without any tracking whatsoever.
If you read the posts above closely, OP addresses this. They are using special sub-sonic ammo; when they’re using normal supersonic ammo, they note that the gun is almost as loud as a non-silenced gun.
“Silencers” can be very effective at muffling the initial boom from the exploding powder that propels the bullet, but most modern ammo is supersonic, and the sonic boom from the bullet is usually almost as loud as the initial report. If you use special subsonic ammo, you can get pretty close to absolute silence. As far back as WWII, the De Lisle carbine reportedly was completely silent other than the mechanical working of the action.
So, is a silencer’s main purpose to spare the shooter’s ears? In the movies it’s always so the bad guy can silently kill someone but I assume that’s not why the OP got one 
What the main purpose is can be debated but ---------- they really aren’t silencers so much as noise suppressors. You can still hear something but it isn’t readily identifiable as a gunshot. And going by friends who have them its as much because they are legal and the person can afford one as much as benefit to future hearing. But the noise issue really does come into play more than you would think. A crowded indoor range and even with plugs and headphones your ears get a little sore after a while.
But since I own my own cannons ------- its hard to find fault with any reason they want to give. 
I have no personal experience, but I’m going to guess that pillows don’t make very good silencers.
You have to make sure to cover the entire face. It’s the ensuing struggling that’s the real challenge.
Is this special subsonic amo expensive?
The big attraction of the 22lr was you could afford to do some plinking. As a kid, I remember paying 50 cents for a box (50 rounds). I am sure they have gone up since. But if the subsonic are a lot more expensive, it would take some fun out of it.
Yeah, but you have to whisper “shh shh it will be over soon” to be effective, so it’s not silent
Doesn’t appear to be that much more expensive, if it’s more expensive at all. See, Rimfire Ammo | Ammunition Sales as an example. Lots of .22 short and .22 LR subsonic offerings, for less than 8 cents a shot.
FWIW, 45 ACP is quite subsonic in heavier bullets, like 230 grains. A lot of 9mm 147 grain stuff is subsonic too.
Quietest firearm I’ve heard of (pun not intended), was the Welrod .22 pistol, and it was supposed to still be in the 70-ish db range. DeLisle in the 85 db range. A lot of confusion about the subject, not least of which is that testing standards and practices are a lot different now versus then, for measuring radiated sound from a firearm muzzle. See, e.g., Why don't modern guns come close to the 85 dB - DeLisle? -
EDIT, thinking of what kopek wrote, they’re more like mufflers on a car than anything else. You still hear cars go by, but the sound is nothing like a car with a faulty or nonexistent muffler. ‘Gun mufflers’: I like it.
Yes.
I keep seeing this claim from Americans, but I have yet to be told silencers are good manners by anyone outside of the USA.
No. Turns out the 2AC was put in place so people would not notice that Trump thinks silencers are bad, red flag laws require due process after the guns are taken and that his 1st gun grab (bump stocks) was not actually a gun grab because bump stocks are accessories and not machine guns as defined by the NFA of 1934.
There is plenty of modern ammo is that normally subsonic like 45 ACP/Auto Rim/GAP, 45 Colt, 50GI, 22lr std vel, 38 Special/Long Colt, 380 Auto, 44 Russian/Special, 22 short, 32 acp, 300 Whisper/BLK.
The irresponsible claims about the “silent” De Lisle are based on old noise measuring equipment that measures far too low. The De Lisle has been shot with modern meters/mics with the proper <20 micro-second response time and shown to be 130 decibels or so which is very good for anything that is 45 caliber.
The 45 caliber bullet from a suppressed rifle makes a humming sound as it moves through the air; much louder than a subsonic 22lr.
More than that. A gun muffler spares the ears of everyone near by; not just the shooter’s ear. Shooting with a silencer and ear plugs is nice. When I’m shooting subsonic ammo in a suppressed rifle, I don’t even need the ear plugs unless the person next to me is shooting without a silencer.
Pillows as silencers suck, unless you don’t mind missing the target as the sights are covered up. 
It all depends upon what you buy. CCI standard velocity ammo is subsonic and costs a bit more than their cheap Blazer ammo, but it is easily twice as accurate in a rifle. I only use Blazer in my pistols, the rifles only get the good stuff.
Subsonic ammo for something that is normally supersonic (.308. 5.56, 9mm) can be 2-3 times more expensive. But many shooters reload their brass; loading it to subsonic velocities is easy and cheaper than buying it from the store.
They tend to catch fire and make messes. You also get a ton of residue on your hand.
Hey ------ I was curious and on a farm so what the heck.
I wear hearing protection. I think my neighbors would love it if I could easily buy suppressors. I’d like to have one for 9mm and one for .22LR. Two suppressors would be 400 bucks in tax for the two plus the cost of the suppressors themselves which is higher than I would have thought. 1000 to 1200 total at least. It’s not the cost that holds me back, it’s the unknown length of time to run the NFA background check (11 months last I checked) and the uncertainty of legality in the future. I liken suppressors to mufflers on a motorcycle. It doesn’t silence them but makes them way less annoying. If anyone is curious how much suppressors quiet firearms in real life, check YouTube.
A couple mass shootings ago, can’t remember where, there was reporting that the shooter used a suppressor. Does anyone know if that turned out to be the case and if it was ever determined whether it was legally obtained or black market or home-brewed?
Nevermind, answered my own question.
Make no mistake, I did not vote for him. I doubt he knows any more about guns than about anything else.