Well, the seasonings are just right, and it’s been cooking at 350 degrees for 8 minutes/pound.
I’d say this thread is ready for Great Debates.
jsexton said:
first of all, any gun powerful enough to shoot someone at 500 yards is going to have a supersonic bullet. This means that
a) if you hit them the bullet will get there before the sound of the muzzle blast or
B) if you miss them, the sonic boom will be louder than the muzzle blast.
You obviously have never taken a shot at an animal from 300 yards away. Without any supressor, they don’t get spooked by the muzzle blast at all, even when using a big load like a .308 or a 30/06.
The real reason silencers are illegal today is because people who don’t know jack about firearms see villans using them in movies and think that the are bad. Which is also the reason that many people support the gun laws that are passed.
Why are switchblades illegal? same reason: hollywood and ignorance.
Maybe we need to restate the OP to say
What are the legal benefits of a silencer to Joe and Jane American?
Let’s see….
1.) When I’m at the target range it reduces the need for ear protection.
Still seems that it would be cheaper to buy ear protection in the long haul.
2.) ummm… OK I give up what other practical application would there be?
Illegal benefits to Joe and Jane American?
1.) I can kill my spouse without anyone hearing.
2.) I can poach animals with subsonic rounds without anyone hearing.
So is it just that you want one and can’t have it or what?
Christ, does the NRA even call for the legalization of silencers? They certainly have a focus towards both hunters and the recreational shooter(in their own whacked out way).
If I am missing a practical application for silencers that is legal let me know otherwise I would have to say keep em’ illegal as they would be used more for illegal activities than anything else.
Sledman - sound supressors are not illegal (in most states anyway) just heavily regulated and taxed. The most legitimate reason for them is so recreational shooting does not bother people with noise. This is the case in UK and parts of Europe. In the US it is increasingly more and more difficult to find a place to shoot. Indoor ranges are limited to short distances and in most cases handguns only. Outdoor ranges have problems with encroaching development squeezing them out. Lawful shooters cannot just go “out in the boonies” anymore to shoot.
OK so they aren’t illegal in a number of states but as far as shooting ranges go I would have to say this is obviously a problem in larger metropolitan areas.
In no way, shape, or form is that an issue here in Wisconsin. In some cases you may have to drive a greater distance(Milwaukee) to a range but most counties have county funded ranges in addition to private club ranges.
If we are talking about subsonic rounds why would you need to shoot at a great distance when the cartridge is not designed for it. If it is used to minimize noise at the shooting range near urban areas what about the guy with his .375 H & H? What does he use to minimize the report of his rifle?
My main point is that the silencer is more prone to being used for illegal activities than legitmate activities.
Sledman, It is not whether the silencer could be used in a crime, but whether it would cause more crime. No one is going to refrain from killing his wife because he does not have a supressor handy. Nor would anyone decide to kill his wife because he did have one.
Making supressors legal is not going to encourage more people to climb bell towers and start shooting.
What could possibly be the harm of making them legal? Do you really think that crime would increase? As it stands, the criminals out there can obtain supressors if they so desire. It is the law abiding target shooter that is suffering.
Personally, I would like one on my pistol for home defense. I do not like the idea of blowing out my eardrums if I have to fire in the house.
Padeye wrote:
There is another reason, which could be even more important.
With a suppressor, the gun may be quiet enough that the shooter does not have to wear hearing protection. Doesn’t sound all that useful to you? Well, tell you what … the next time your hunting buddy is wearing earplugs, and is taking aim at the wrong thing, and you shout to him, “Don’t shoot!”, then tell me just how useless it would be if your hunting buddy didn’t have to wear the earplugs!
tracer; if you SHOUT at your buddy, he can hear you thru earplugs, I know.
next, except for varmit hunting, silencers would be detrimental, as they can only be used on low power subsonic rounds, reduce the muzzle energy, AND reduce accuracy. Reducing accuracy is not a problem if you are shooting someone in the back of the head at 6", but it will hinder hunting a lot. Now, if one is hunting rodents, etc, in ones backyard, then a silencer could have some use. So, the hunting applications are far too limited. They were sometime used for poaching deer, either over bait (illegal, mostly) or at nite(also mostly illegal). But you would injure more deer than you would kill- for a poacher this is not a concern, but it is for any sportsman.
For those into airguns: have you seen the new 9mm airguns, using compressed air? Yowsa!
Daniel, if you are shooting someone in the back of the head, their head will absorb the muzzle blast and the distance will eliminate the sonic boom. So it is not an issue.
I think that the question is being begged here. It is not a forgone conclusion that silencers will increase crime. I defy anyone to prove that.
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- The reason I want a (legal) suppressor is just so I wouldn’t have to wear any hearing protection for when I am target shooting. Also that way, nobody else has to hear the noise either. What’s wrong with that?
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- As for criminal use, if I wanted to commit murder with a suppressed firearm I wouldn’t want a federal paper trail showing I had ownership of a suppressor. And if I was a criminal, I likely wouldn’t care if my suppressor was registered or not, but reports of criminals using suppressed firearms are pretty rare around where I live. Even rarer is suppressed firearms being recovered; I have no cite but can recall only one incident in the last couple years of a weapon with a home-made suppressor being recovered by the police. If criminals wanted silencers they’d have them, and by and large (in the US) they don’t have them.
- An in-law who is a conservation officer in the NW informed me once that he’d never seen anyone walking around the woods poaching animals using a firearm, but they find illegal trap lines just about every day. It would seem that walking around in the woods with a suppressed rifle is a pretty silly way of poaching. - MC
OK… I’ll drop the whole murder thing because if I intended to kill you I would whether I had a silencer or not. However it facilitates your getting away with it. Same as poaching. For this purpose, we are talking about the yahoos driving around with a spotlight and shooting deer.
Do all of you shoot subsonic rounds??
I don’t want to wear hearing protection???
So you have a silencer and the guy next to you on the firing line doesn’t…Fat lot of good the silencer does you.
Do we require them and tack on $500 to the cost of your weapon? A good pair of the head phone style hearing protectors are inexpensive and not that uncomfortable. I’m saying you guys want it because you can’t have it.
The shooting range is about accuracy too. Why would you want to add something that decreases your accuracy and muzzle velocity?
Now I am not trying to rile you guys up but I don’t see your point. However, I may be biased because I am a “long” gun person.
Sledman, as I understand your argument: Suppressors are not that useful, so they should be illegal." I would hate to have that rule applied to my life. I would be left with an empty house, a bowl of rice and 1 pair of clothes.
What I am saying is that there is no harm is supressors being legal and widely distributed, so why not make them legal.?
I really don’t see any danger posed by a quieter gun.
But maybe you have a point. Maybe we could avoid more murders and poaching simply by making guns louder. If a quiet gun encourages crime, shouldn’t the reverse be true?
I think that’s a great idea Mr. Zambezi. In fact we should have gun companies mandatorily attatch rattles to all guns. That way you couldn’t sneak up on someone. 
Anyway just wanted to put in my two cents. I agree with you wholehartedly and really wonder about it. If there is no good reason for something being illegal should we keep it that way, just because of custom?
Also, I didn’t know switchblades were illegal. I can certainly buy them at most stores in Chinatown.
Oh for the Christ’s sake…
I’m saying the damn suppressors pose more of a threat to be used for illegal activities than for legal activities. The value of having a suppressor is minimal considering you can buy hearing protection. CHEAP! The excuse that my gun is too loud is not a very good argument for making this accessory widely available. Quieter at the range is the only remotely legitimate use any of you has been able to come up with. But, all the ranges I have been to require hearing protection. So you having a silencer and Joe Blow next to you has a .338 Win Mag without a silencer does not change things does it? If your gun is too loud shoot .22 shorts.
If we are talking convenience only, let’s talk about the size of magazines for guns. The capacity has been greatly reduced. That sure is inconvenient when I’m target shooting and I have to stop and reload more often. Large capacity magazines were/ are a convenience but they were made illegal(to manufacture) because of the potential for their use in crimes.
Oh and let’s make the damn guns louder.
Do you live in a rural area. Have you ever heard a shot ring out in the middle of the night. It is quite noticeable and not too difficult to figure out what is most likely happening. The report of the rifle is one of the things that tips off locals to poaching. This in turn may(hopefully) spark a call to the Warden. As a result they can be on alert for the poacher.
The comment about making the rifles louder is rich(facetious as it may have been intended). Let’s just make them come factory installed with a muzzle brake so they are so freakin’ loud the hearing protection barely works.
I didn’t think I was that unclear about what I was trying to say but apparently I was. For that I apologize but I fail to see the silencer as a needed item for the general public based on the arguments everyone has provided to this point.
Personally, I live in the city. The sounds of shots ringing out all night keeps me up. If people are going to kill each other I wish they would be a little more considerate and use silencers.
Ok, a few comments here.
First, no matter what you hear on CNN or Nightly World Dateline Headline News, larger magazines don’t cause crime, and they don’t make crime any easier. If I intended to kill somebody I sure as hell would not be hindered by only having to carry ten rounds or fewer. In fact, if I missed on the first 2 shots, I would likely miss on the next 12 just as well, especiall since surprise is blown after that.
If I intended to murder somebody, which has already been illegal in pretty much every civilized society since the dawn of time (or the dawn of law), I guarantee you I wouldn’t pay a bit of mind to any laws telling me I can’t silence my weapon or make/buy/possess magazines larger than 10 rounds. In fact, murderers do not heed the law, BY DEFINITION. Otherwise they wouldn’t be called murderers. There is no law that will stop somebody, who already has no regard for the law, from putting a soda bottle, potato, pillow, whatever, on the barrel of his gun to muffle the report.
My point?
- Laws that dictate what you can and cannot own or use do not stop crime. 2) This is because crime tends to be committed by criminals. 3) Criminals are people who don’t obey the law. 4) See #1. The only thing that will reduce crime is to stop trying to restrict people from defending themselves. The police cannot be everywhere to protect you. The police often will not protect you. And the police ARE NOT REQUIRED to protect you.
Muzzle brakes DO NOT make a gun louder. Where in the world did you get that from?
People on both sides of this debate have made the claim that a suppressor reduces muzzle energy and accuracy. What is the reasoning behind this claim? It doesn’t shorten the barrel…it doesn’t interfere with or change the path of the bullet…Explain, please?
Legality is not based on Necessity. If it were, as Mr. Z said earlier, we all would be living in straw huts with just enough to survive. That is a bullshit argument. It’s the responsibility of the banning party (gov’t) to demonstrate to a reasonable degree that a device is dangerous or counter-productive to society at large in order to ban it. Not that of the owner/purchaser/civilian to prove that he needs it.
By outlawing certain models of certain guns, magazines over a certain capacity, certain accessories, etc, all that is being accomplished is that we are being baby-stepped to a state of total prohibition.
A guy walks up to a woman and asks her “if I offered you ten million dollars to have sex with me, would you do it?”
She answers “yes, why, do you have $10 million?”
“No. would you do it for $5?”
“Of course not, what kind of girl do you think I am?!”
“We’ve just established that. Now we’re haggling over the price.”
Well, that’s what’s happening now with guns. It’s already established that we’re willing to trade freedom for safety. Our right to keep and bear arms has already been deeply infringed. And not only have we (not I, personally; we, collectively) allowed and accepted it, but in some cases BEGGED for it. Now we’re just haggling over the price.
I forget who I’m paraphrasing, but they go after the SOB’s and use that to set a precedent. Once that’s established, we all accept certain restrictions. then more minor restrictions are added. This continues, and sooner or later there are more restrictions than freedoms, and we’re living in a police state.
Joe, that story is usually attributed to Winston Churchill.
Sled said
It is not necesary. But lack of necesity is not a good basis for banning something. Do you need a game boy? Do you need jewelry? DO you need diamonds? of course not. You just like.
Silencers should only be illegal if they increase crime. They do not. their usefullness is entirely irrelevant.
They are illegal because people equate them with crime due to hollywood’s mis-portrayal. The same with big clips. Less than 1% of all gun violence involves a so-called assault rifle. IT is making legal decisions that infringe on constitutional rights based on emotions. Not a good policy
Great Post Joe. Reminds me of a copy of a radio exerpt that was being circulated at a gun show I was recently attending.
On this radio show, some uber-liberal host was grilling the living daylights out of an Army or Marine (I can’t remember which) General who allowed the local Scouts (Boy and Girl) to use military ranges for shooting instruction.
The host was likening these Scouts to criminals because they knew how to use firearms; the General replied with a couple of questions:
1. He asked the host (a female) if she was a woman, and she responded “Yes”.
2. He then asked her if she had ever had sex outside of/before marriage, and she again responded “Yes”.
The General then asked her if that made her a Whore.
SledMan: I’ve always been a pistolero until I recently discovered the fun and challenge of long guns, so from a purely practical point of view, I can see your argument over the limited utility of silencers for rifles. There is some use for them, but in very limited applications.
Personally, I would rather not alter or mar any of my pistols to accept a silencer device; but if I ever go Rebel to fight the evil Illuminati New-World-Order Gub’ment, than my Ruger Mini-14 is definitely going to get a silencer device (as well as some other currently highly illegal modifications), and you can damned well bet that I’m not going to be too worried over magazine capacity bans, folding stock bans, bayonet lug bans, synthetic stock bans, flash suppressor baqns, mandatory storage and trigger locks, or any other folderol gun-control laws being disguised as “Safety Measures For The Public Good”.
But that’s all supposition and make-believe. Right?
But I can’t put it any better than Joe_Cool already has;
laws are for the law-abiding, no tthe criminals.
If the politicos were truly serious about putting an end to the criminal mis-use of firearms and accessories, they would not have banned them, but instead would have further criminalized their use in the commission of a crime. Put additional time on their sentence if a criminal uses them in a crime.
But no; that will not do. They instead lump all gun owners into the criminal category by criminalizing mere possession of certain types of firearms and accessories.
Not because their ultimate goal is the reduction of crime, but because their ultimate goal is the elimination of the private possession of firearms. Period.
One type of gun or accessory at a time.
ExTank
Okay, back from doing my laundry (even us “Gun Nuts” like clean underwear!).
Silencers “silence” by using baffled chambers and possibly micro-ports to allow gasses to expand and escape behind the bullet before it leaves the (extended) muzzle. This translates into less gas behind the bullet, therefore a lower muzzle velocity. It does nothing to effect accuracy, unless you’re equating range with accuracy.
Weapon accuracy is effected by several factors: the chamber, the forcing cone, the precision of the barrel, the rifling, the length of the barrel, the cast of the bullet, and the type of powder (propellant) in use.
As the silencer device is on the end of the barrel, beyond the rifling, it will have no effect on the accuracy of the weapon (assuming that it is mounted correctly, of course)
For example: your rifle shoots 1" groups at 100 yards. You then add a silencer device, and you are now shooting 6" groups at 100 yards. You believe that the silencer has destroyed your accuracy, but it hasn’t; it has merely reduced the effective range of the weapon. If you move your target back to anywhere from 50 to 75 yards, you will probably find your rifle back to shooting 1" groups. But you have a quieter weapon.
Muzzle brakes are used to reduce recoil, by using backwards slanted gas ports; this has the effect of pushing the weapon slightly forward even as the recoil from the propellant gasses push it backwards. The two aren’t totally synchronous (they cant be, or your bullet wouldn’t go anywhere!), but near enough so that there is some benefit.
For example: my Winchester Model 70 Classic, chambered for 7mm Rem. Mag., factory fitted with the Browning B.O.S.S. (ported version), has signifigantly less recoil than those w/o the B.O.S.S., but with considerably louder muzzle blast and muzzle flash.
(I will admit to feeling a bit of awed pride during the 3-5 seconds of respectful silence on the firing line after letting one go with the Winnie.)
Flash Suppressors work by venting the flash out of the shooter’s line of sight. Unsupressed muzzle flash expands equally in all directions, and can obscure the shooter’s line-of-sight (by momentarily blinding the shooter and/or obscuring the target) for subsequent shots. The flash supressor has carefully angled ports to direct the muzzle flash along a different axis that the shooter’s line-of-sight. It does little, if anything, to actually reduce or eliminate muzzle flash!
This is critical on military weapons; and fairly useful on hunting arms, when the first shot may be a miss; a factor that the “Assault Weapons Ban”, with their “Flash Suppressor” criteria, have completely (maybe arbitrarily?) ignored. Kind of selective ot my way of thinking. But far be it for Gun Control legislators to actually consult someone who knows anything about guns before penning their laws.
Not all weapon types are optimal for silencing. Revolvers are not good for silencers as their is a gap (albeit a very small one) between the revolver cylinder and the barrel. Gasses can and do escpe from this gap.
Semi-auto weapons have the sound of the action cycling to contend with as well.
The “supersonic” factor also comes into play; any subsonic bullet is going to have a very diminished range (while still being acceptably accurate within that range).
A true silenced “assassin” gun would be a small caliber (.22 short or .25) semi-auto pistol, firing sub-sonic ammunition, with a modified slide-lock mechanism to keep the action from automatically cycling with each round fired, and about a 6" to 10" baffled and ported suppressor. It would be a single shot, manually actioned weapon, somewhat concealable (especially in winter, when people wear heavier, bulkier clothing) but highly impractical, especially if you missed the first shot, because the range is going to be so short that the target is still going to be alerted to the shooter’s presence, if only by the passage of the bullet, or the sound of it impacting on something (a wall, a car, another person).
The shooter would then have to manually unlock the slide mechanism, cycle the action, relock the slide mechanism, bring the weapon back to bear on the target, aim and fire.
Manually actioned rifles (bolt-, lever- and pump-actions) may be silenced as well, but nowhere near as effectively as my theoretical “assassin gun” pistol above.
This is something I (and other firearms enthusiast on the MB) continually get very annoyed at: those who know little, if anything, about guns getting up on a soapbox and ranting about the evils of guns.
Rant about the evils of violence, the evils that mankind inflicts upon their fellow man, the evils of criminals using firearms to inflict misery and suffering upon others, even the evils of ignorant people accidentally hurting or killing others, and you will get little, if any, argument from us “Gun Nuts”.
Approach us civilly about measures that everyone can take to help reduce violence, or reduce criminal misuse of firearms, and we will engage in a civil, respectfull debate.
But ranting and raving in ignorance about the evil “Gun Lobby” and villifiying all gun owners and gun use as barbaric, male-phallus substitute, penis-envy, or “Bang Stick” worship will only get you ignored and/or vehemently opposed by the estimated 150 million+ law-abiding, peaceful, gun owning American Citizens.
ExTank
Guys, I am anti-gun control. But the Op asked if silencers have any real use, in say, hunting. They don’t. I really do not give a rats ass if they are illegal or legal, they just have few practical applications, outside of crime. Just because there are few “legit” uses, that does not mean they should be banned.
And tank, silencers do cut back on accuracy. Some of the guys from work & I had a silenced Walther .380 (9mmkurtz). At a mere 25’ (too short for a reducion in MV to play a part), without the silencer= groups 3-4", with the silencer=groups 6-8". And, a reduction in MV does not increase your group size*, it only drops your group down the target a few inches- the group size will remain the same. Note that target pistols/rounds are made with low velocity ammo, not high velocity ammo. Even when silencer were legal, deer hunters and the like did not use them, as they did not want any reduction in MV or accuracy. Nor are they used where they are legal, nowadays (except for hunting rodents, in close).
*unless you are getting out near to maximum range, which is something like 500yds for a deer rifle- few can hit a deer at that range, anyway.