The Stupid Suppressor Debate

I don’t get this notion that the suppressor made any difference in the latest lunatic mass shooting incident. Any of you who have been near a gun being fired without any hearing protection know it is loud enough to be disorienting. It could be positively debilitating to someone unused to something that loud. A suppressed firearm is just loud. If you gave me a choice as to whether to face down a mass shooter with or without a suppressed firearm, I’d take “with” any day of the week.

Why would I complain if a mass shooter thought enough to spare my hearing while I prepared to return fire? Awfully considerate of him.

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. Suppressors in the News
  2. Minnesota Governor Threatening Veto on Suppressor Bill
  3. Good Guy With a Gun

29 thoughts on “The Stupid Suppressor Debate”

  1. It’s just another calculated political hit job. The left wants them gone because making guns less scary/loud makes more people enjoy shooting. Of course there is the timing with a SCOTUS case. Vegas worked so they’re doing it again.

  2. What Bill C said.

    I’ve seen the media pulling out all the histrionic stops. “Assassin’s tool.” The shooter enjoyed “the anonymity of silence.” “People didn’t know they were being shot at.”

    All B.S. Every bit. The targeted victims knew. Immediately. From what I understand, it was in the 9-1-1 tapes. Because in this climate of media-driven fear, people panic at the sound of cars backfiring, and assume pneumatic hammers are machine guns unless they can see the jackhammer. ANY sudden loud noise can cause a reaction; the public’s synapses are primed to react to mass-shooting events that the media tells them are increasingly common.

    And because, as has been said — repeatedly — an unsuppressed .45 firing is nearly 160 decibels, loud enough to disorient and cause instant hearing damage. A suppressed .45 is “only” about 130 db.

    That’s about as quiet as an air raid siren. Or, I’m told, an F-14 taking off with full afterburner.

    Not loud enough to cause immediate hearing damage (long and/or repeated exposure still will), but still f@#$ing LOUD.

    But facts go against The Narrative[TM], so I expect the histrionic barrage against suppressors to continue until “Something is Done!!”

    1. “People are going crazy because they heard a car backfire.”

      Which is crazy, because I was in the shooting sports hall at GAOS when someone ND’d there a few years back, and I didn’t see or hear anyone panicking. I wasn’t even sure if I’d heard gunfire, or if if it was just someone knocking something heavy over (e.g. a display/gunsafe/etc.).

      For anyone wondering about loud noises:

      Once is a car backfiring.

      Twice is a question.

      Three or more is gunplay.

  3. Get with the program! Repeat after me: “A silencer is just an accessory. It’s just a toy. You don’t need a silencer. Silencers are not covered under the 2nd Amendment.” Yes, you can find that language in gun forums and in the comment section on some gun blogs. So, bend over and take it, just like the bump stock ban.

    Why are we even talking about this? Right! President Donald J. Trump belongs to the uneducated masses and wants to ban them, just like he banned those bump stocks. The guy who said: “The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end. … I will never, ever infringe on the right of the people to keep and bear arms. … Never ever.”

    While companies, like SilencerCo, immediately responded to the nonsense in the media with facts, the ASA is rather inefficient and the NRA sees a fund raising opportunity. Once again, we are on the defensive and opportunists from all sides are running the show.

    The irony is that President Trump made his statements in an interview with Pierce Morgan in the UK, where silencers are totally legal and not regulated. In fact, they are so easy to get in the UK that in 2017 a Tennessee man bought 6 in Sheffield and took them back to the US: https://www.alloutdoor.com/2017/03/15/silencers-easy-get-uk-american-tourist-brings-home-goes-prison/.

    PS: Don’t get me started on silencers vs. suppressors.

    1. Trump also said that the reason for Semiautomatic Firearms is,…..’Entertainment’…..We’re one more Shooting Incident away from Prince Jared and Princess Ivanka telling President Trump to do to Gunowners what former California Republican Governor, George Dukemejian, did in 1989 by signing that bastardous, Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act.

      You can not have so many “foot in mouth moments” until your base turns on you, and there are a lot fewer ‘Fudds’ than thought.

      Did the VA Beach Shooter even have NFA Tax Stamps for Supressors?,….Because the media is certainly covering up the answers to that question.

      I’m pretty fucking tired of feeling like we’re on the defensive.

        1. He seemed to come off more like a buffoon to me. Were you watching the same interview?

          I am not a never trumper and voted for the guy probably a bit more enthusiastically than some here, but lowering the bricks on gun owners would pull me far enough into the impeachment territory as I could get frankly. It’s not like Trump is any less competible when it comes to constitutional rights than were his pedecessors. But that’s all it takes for the shoes/balls to drop in this country pretty much. Drop the flag and let AMASH do the heavy lifting.

          2. He comes across as not being terribly informed on gun issues or gun owners, which is irritating, especially given NRA’s support for him, but not completely ridiculous. After all, guns are just one issue of many.

            However, the NRA does have his ear, as does Don Jr. who has openly advocated for suppressors in the past, so I’m more willing to take a wait and see attitude with this one.

            Also, remember, the NRA supported the ban on bump stocks, so it’s no surprise Trump endorsed it. They’ve been much more favorable towards suppressors, so I suspect that someone at the NRA has already been in touch with the administration.

            1. The problem is not whether the NRA supports silencers or not, but whether the NRA will cave under pressure. SlideFire used to have a booth at SHOT Show and at the NRA Annual Meeting, yet they got thrown under the bus by the NRA leadership without hesitation when pressure was applied.

              Luckily, the anti-gun forces have not seized the opportunity yet by calling for a federal silencer ban and working with Congress on it. This still may happen! President Trump made his remarks and will have a hard time walking them back. The NRA’s support for silencers was made by an ILA spokesperson and not by Wayne LaPierre or Chris Cox. The NRA does have the option of walking their support statement back by calling for “additional regulations”.

      2. Luckily his son is a HUGE supporter of suppressors. Hopefully he can set his dad straight.

      3. Unfortunately -or not depending on your point of view- the VBPD confirmed that the shooter’s suppressor was legally acquired by him.

        I had serious questions myself about this as the VB Police Chief had only mentioned the use of a suppressor once during all the press conferences. Not even the ATF SAIC mentioned it.

        Carl Bussjaeger of The Zelman Partisans blog contacted a reporter of the Virginia Pilot who had sought and got the confirmation from a VBPD spokeswoman.

        What’s interesting to me is that the the PD and the ATF weren’t making a big deal about this. Event the Police Chief has said that there was no gun control law that would have stopped this.

          1. Direct me to the pic, please. Seriously

            Even then, anyone who can legally possess one can file a form 1 and make their own.

  4. The Case for Suppressors;

    1) Better neighbor relations with nearby shooting ranges
    2) Lowered hearing loss risk (e.g. hunters, home defense)
    3) Less recoil & flash to distract people learning to shoot
    4) Not “Hollywood” quiet – so no advantage to mass k*llers
    5) Readily available in other gun controlled countries
    6) Millions of suppressors are in common use
    7) Regulated items not readily available to criminals
    8) Well paid manufacturing jobs for American workers

  5. Trump was full of shit on guns?

    Gosh, if only there was some way we the NRA could have known!

    1. The choice was between a slavering gun hater and an ignorant Fudd. There was no other choice. The NRA chose the Fudd. We are damn lucky the Fudd made it in. If not, Heller V. DC would be scheduled to be reversed shortly. And that’s a fact.

      1. He was worth it for SCOTUS alone, even if he’s a complete squish on gun rights. I doubt Malia and Sasha were ever going to set their father straight on gun control; at least with Trump, we know two of his kids can tell him he’s off base.

        Ultimately, it’s the GOP’s job to keep him straight on guns. And it’s OUR job to do the same with the GOP.

        1. This.

          Some of what Trump has said and done, specifically in regard to bumfire stocks and firearm mufflers, is completely unacceptable.

          That still doesn’t mean that Hillary would have been better, it just means that we need to be doing a better job of letting him know where we stand, and then keeping him accountable.

  6. The antis are desperate for a “major” win, in order to (they believe) give them momentum for their next step after that.

    Suppressors are that step, at least at the moment, before they pivot back to “Assault Weapons”, and then back to handguns.

    It doesn’t matter to them whether these devices increase the “deadliness” of these attacks or not. Hell, they don’t care how many die (beyond having a sufficient number die to make it politically useful for them). They only care about gaining back the momentum after decades of stagnation at the Federal level, and a major shift against them at the state level in most places.

    They’re still trying the lawfare approach, but that’s not likely to get them anywhere, and the smart ones among them know it. So all they can do is try to refresh their stale blood-dancing formula by selecting a new bogeyman, which has become suppressors.

    They have to figure out ways to spend the Bloomberg money to get moving. Of course, the smart among them also know that they currently face a serious risk of having their state initiatives not only overturned by SCOTUS, but ruled out by the Court at the Federal level, leaving them with less room to maneuver.

    For this alone, Trump was worth it. If we can get good cases around their key talking points (AWBs, Gun show “loophole”, suppressors, Red Flag laws, etc.) and get them smacked down, then they’re facing into an abyss of having a ton of money, but nothing much to spend it on. Of course, they may switch to a purely cultural advertising fight then, which brings its own challenges for us, but also opportunities, too.

  7. A few blog posts ago, I was asked what type of unprofessional comments Todd Rathner made on his Todd Rathner for NRA Board of Directors Facebook page, before if got permanently taken offline. If you want to see an example of unprofessional behavior by yet another NRA Director, please go to Willes Lee NRA Board of Directors at https://www.facebook.com/WillesLeeNRA.

    This shit storm started with Willes Lee making the following comment (sorry for the long link):

    Link

    Then came this:

    Link

  8. Part of the problem is that Hollywood makes it seem like suppressors will turn gunshots into whispers, which gives lawmakers and voters an inaccurate idea of what supressors can do.

  9. I’ve always wondered about the hypocrisy of antis on this. Your gun control advocates look at here in the UK as an example of what they call “sensible” gun control, yet over here, using a suppressor is simply good manners – there’s no NFA equivalent here for them.

    It seems they don’t want to take the good with the bad.

    One thing I thought of if a ban goes through.

    I’ve read some places that suppressors are one of the cheapest NFA items to get, and loads of people have them.

    If they are in common use, doesn’t DC Vs Heller say they can’t ban them? IIRC, that said some restrictions are fine, but outright bans are not allowed.

    Wouldn’t that be an opening to take out the Hughes Amendment as well?

    1. They don’t worry about in the UK because there effectively isn’t a pro gun culture there. Gun ownership there is less than 1% and they don’t pursue getting more. If we had suppressors unregulated here then the anti gun movement would be wiped out because we would be able to go from 30-40% of the population being gun owners to probably 60% and/or at least increase the percentage of enthusiasts from 5-10% current levels to 30-40%, reducing the phenomenon of keeping stuff in the closet and safe except for one or two weeks a year and/ o “it was grandpa’s, I don’t have shells for it.” Suppressors plus enjoyable guns (AR’s, 10/22’s, Ruger Marks, G17’s, etc) make it almost completely irresistible fun versus boring loud bolt action stuff that beats up your shoulder, ears, and wallet.

Comments are closed.