Gun Rights Lesson #620 – Silencers

EDITOR’S NOTE: A friend is in South Africa, hunting various exotic (for us. We hunt deer, elk, , moose, and wild boar, they hunt kudu, impala. gemsbok and warthog) game. The rifles provided by the hosting company are all suppressed, which makes them not only manageable in terms of impact on hearing, it helps the long-range hunter be more accurate (better balance, reduced flinch), and ensures cleaner and more certain harvesting. In America, suppressors (erroneously dubbed “silencers”) are severely regulated, and flat-out illegal in some states.

For no good reason.

Unfortunately, the Hearing Protection Act referenced herein did not pass, and while it was reintroduced last year, the current political landscape virtually guarantees the nonsensical restrictions on what is properly a public health measure will remain in place until there is a change in both Congress and the White House.

This is one of a series of articles on gun rights, originally published at The Roots of Liberty May 2017. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope.

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“The NRA Wants The Ban On Silencers Lifted! That’s Pure Evil!”

One sign that gun rights are going in the right direction (pun somewhat intended) is recent legislative efforts aimed at lifting the restrictions on so-called “silencers,” i.e. firearm attachments that reduce their loudness when fired. The NRA is backing the recently introduced Hearing Protection Act, which would lift the onerous restrictions on silencers emplaced by the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA). These restrictions, including strict registration, transportation and paperwork rules, fingerprinting, a background check that can take nearly a year, and a $200 tax, are as onerous as those the NFA placed on machine guns.

Naturally, there has a risen quite the brouhaha from the anti-gun precincts over this. The arguments made against lifting the silencer restrictions are emblematic of the opposition’s form and style, and illustrate, as is so often the case, that they have little compunction in propagating misinformation and lies in order to achieve their ends.

The new legislation is being framed as a public health matter by its supporters, and a public safety issue by its detractors. Supporters note, correctly, that guns are very loud, and that repeated exposure to the sound of gunfire can permanently damage hearing. This is indeed true. Take a look at the attached and linked chart, which shows the loudness (technically, sound pressure in decibels) of several classes of firearms.The top 5 entries are, in order, a big-game hunting rifle, a so-called “assault weapon,” a large-caliber handgun of the sort carried by police, a small caliber handgun, and a .22 caliber rifle of the sort typically used for hobby shooting, “plinking” and to teach young people how to shoot. The quietest of these firearms still produces 140 dB.

The NRA Wants The Ban On Silencers Lifted! That’s Pure Evil!

How loud is 140 dB? Take a look at the other attached and linked chart. As you can see, 140 dB is not considered a “safe” level even instantaneously, and can damage hearing. This is why shooters wear hearing protection when practicing. Hearing protection in the form of ear muffs and ear plugs are good for 25-35 dB of reduction, enough to make small caliber arms acceptable and large caliber arms bearable. Anyone who’s done any shooting knows all this (qualitatively if not the numbers themselves).

Detractors of the proposed restriction easing argue that the loudness of a firearm shot is important in that it warns potential victims and helps law enforcement identify and track down bad guys. As reported in the Wall Street Journal, one gun-restriction advocate has suggested, as well, that this is simply a way for manufacturers to make money, given that the gun market is “saturated.”

This argument is, to put it politely, tendentious bullshit. It relies on widespread misinformation and ignorance about silencers, misinformation and ignorance fueled by countless movies and television shows, and gets away with it by not explicitly avowing or confirming the misinformation. In other words, if someone has a misconception that advances your position, you can leverage that misconception simply by not correcting it.

The Relative Sound Pressure chart has probably tipped you off to what I’m talking about. The depiction of silencers as these screw-on gizmos that “silence” gunshots is an absurdity. Fact is, a silencer merely reduces the loudness of a gunshot only about as much as hearing protection does. Fact is, “silencer” is a misnomer, and the correct term is “suppressor**.” Fact is, a suppressed 9MM handgun remains as loud as a jackhammer. Youtube is awash in videos showing this reality – here is just one example of many. While it’s hard to appreciate how loud the suppressed shots actually are, the fact that you can hear them echo should be enough to prove that those “silent” pistol shots you’ve frequently heard in the movies are Hollywood fantasy.

You’re not going to find this commented on or admitted by the anti-gun factions, because this too-common delusion serves their ends. If you believe that silencers are the stuff of assassins, quiet homicide and secretive criminal activity, you may be less likely to sympathize with the argument that silencers will make shooting more comfortable for the law-abiding. You may be more likely to believe the public safety argument that society “needs” loud gunfire to help fight gun crime. Rest assured, the greater availability of silencers will not make a whit’s difference in the warning that people will have should a gun be fired in their vicinity. And truth be told, most people don’t know what a live gun shot sounds like. Pay attention to news reports, and see how many people comment that they mistook a shot fired for a car or truck backfire. Thanks again, Hollywood.

To digress slightly, lets consider other things that Hollywood “does wrong” in its depictions of guns and shooting, just so you understand how little fealty to truth the movie and TV biz has in this regard:

• Ever see someone with a revolver flick the cylinder open, spin it with a roulette wheel buzz, then flick it closed? Pure Hollywood. Cylinders spin silently. But, that’s boring.

• Ever see someone pointing a pistol at someone else, then after some dialogue, rack the slide and move in closer to reinforce the threat? If you don’t see a bullet fly out of the pistol when he racked the slide, the gun was unloaded and therefore of no threat to the “pointee.”

• Ever see someone with a shotgun run around with it for a while, THEN rack the slide to reinforce its menace? Same as with the pistol – he was wielding an unloaded weapon.

• Ever see a dropped gun start spraying bullets everywhere? I recall, just off the top of my head, this happening in True Lies and in Airheads. Nope, sorry, doesn’t work that way. In fact, the Gun Control Act of 1968 required manufacturers to drop test their new models. Beyond that, there are those pesky things called lawsuits.

• Ever see the good guy blow up the bad guy’s car by shooting the gas tank? Again, pure BS. Shooting a gas tank merely puts holes in it. For that matter, bullets don’t make sparks when they hit things.

• Ever see someone fly backwards when hit by a shotgun blast? Sorry to disappoint, that’s stuntman trickery. Newton’s Third Law makes it pretty clear that the shooter would endure the same backward force. Similarly, a charging opponent being stopped in his tracks by a shot from the good guy? See Newton’s First Law.

• Ever see the good guys talking to each other after extended shootouts in enclosed spaces? Not a chance, they’ll all be deaf for a while (if not permanently).

• Ever see a good guy sprayed with bullets from an AK-47 (again – fully automatic rifles are Hollywood props), only to survive by ripping his shirt open and showing one of those soft vests underneath? More BS. Vests are good for handgun fire, but the body armor that’s used against military weapons is heavier, bulkier, more rigid, and cannot be hidden under a shirt.

• Ever see someone shoot a gun in an airplane, and cause a giant gaping hole to open up via “explosive decompression?” Just doesn’t happen that way.

• Ever see someone shoot down a bunch of bad guys with a single shotgun blast? More hooey. At “Hollywood shotgun” distances, the spread of a shotgun blast is only a few inches.

• Ever see good guys using their car doors as protection in a gun fight? Reality check. The only bulletproof part of a car is the engine block.

• Ever see someone shoot a door lock open with a handgun? Doable, but not remotely reliable. Shotguns are a better choice, but even with them, there’s technique involved. As for padlocks and handguns? Good luck hitting them just right.

• Ever see the bad guy unscrew his pistol silencer after killing a few people? Good luck with that. They work by converting the sound energy of the gases that propel bullets into heat. So, they get hot.

• Ever notice how many bad guys have machine guns? How they can spray, rapid-fire, endless streams of bullets? First, fully-automatic firearms are completely illegal in some states, and tightly regulated at the federal level in the states where they are not illegal. Second, sale or possession of new fully-automatic firearms manufactured after 1986 by or to civilians is illegal. Third, the semi-automatic “assault weapons” that civilians can buy cannot be converted to fully-automatic unless one has access to enough knowledge and machine equipment to make one from scratch to begin with. Fourth, the number of crimes committed with fully-automatic firearms since the 1934 NFA went into effect can be counted on one hand.

And, you probably know the endless-ammunition trope. While shooters with pistols (especially the good guys) are often shown reloading, bad guys with automatic rifles seem to have infinitely full magazines (reality? A full-automatic rifle will clear its magazine in under 5 seconds. And, no, criminals don’t have or use them).

What’s the lesson here? Don’t rely on movies or television for accurate information on guns, and DON’T for a moment believe that silencers “silence” anything.

What do silencers/suppressors actually do? They work like the muffler of a car. They reduce the sound a rifle or pistol makes to more manageable, less dangerous levels. In doing so, they also reduce the “concussive” feel and reduce recoil. Thus, they make shooting easier on the ears and more comfortable for the body, and they improve accuracy. Now, it’s not hard to imagine how some people will consider improved accuracy a Bad Thing, because they only ever envision bad guys using guns against good guys. But, remember, millions of Americans own firearms for the purposes of self and home defense. And, since every bullet fired will keep going until it stops, hitting your target is a Good Thing.

In short, silencers make shooting less damaging to the ears and more comfortable to do. As someone with tinnitus from too many loud concerts, believe me when I tell you that hearing damage is not a trivial matter. And, greater comfort means people are more likely to shoot more, thus improving their skills and accuracy. And, it might even draw more people into the shooting sports. Of course, that last bit is a point of horror to the gun-grabbers, but they’re on the wrong side of liberty anyway.

Gun rights lesson #620: Lifting the de facto ban on silencers has no down side. Anyone who tells you otherwise has been watching too many movies. You should never trust Hollywood to tell you the truth about guns.

** While “suppressor” is the correct term to use, I’ve chosen to mostly stick with the colloquial “silencer,” because I expect that anyone who knows to call them “suppressors” doesn’t need this Gun Rights Lesson to begin with. Furthermore, the original inventor, from what I’ve read, himself called them silencers. There are name games worth fighting, and there are some that will serve to distract from the core issue. This one, IMO, is the latter.