Not allowed though (if the blade locks in place). No fixed blades longer than 12cm either.
I understand that “Hollywood quiet” is an engineering goal, and very hard to obtain. Enough that putting a suppressor on any conventional firearm does not even pretend to approximate that effect.
The people who have the expertise and finances to buy and maintain the special weapons, special suppressors, and special ammunition required for that are not going to be affected by this particular legislation.
As an aside, my son’s senior project for High School was development of a nearly silent bolt and trigger group for use by MARSOC. It involved lots of Teflon, and pistons instead of springs.
But we are talking about legislation that would enable people to hunt or shoot suppressed, like they do in other parts of the civilized world. You would still need a background check.
The people who oppose this seem to do so for a couple of reasons. Either they think that it will enable people to become silent assasins, or the oppose it just because it is something that many gun owners approve of. Some of the comments above do convey the idea that some people feel that permanent hearing loss is a reasonable punishment for using guns.
It reminds me of the fundamentalists who oppose Gardasil because they feel cervical cancer is an appropriate punishment for having sex.
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I think most people would be pretty uncomfortable with gun fire in the frequency and places that Harleys are allowed in, which is why they have to be muffled, although the efficacy of the mufflers is debatable.
All of the arguments in favor of silencers are along the lines of entertainment value and convienence for enthusiasts. This isn’t very convincing for those of us who believe that guns are too widely available and easy to obtain. No one here in favor of them has offered any suggestions or concessions in that direction. The focus in what criminals would do is again irrelevant, gun violence is not and has never been limited to convicted criminals.
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Have you lost your hearing? Do you and the other responsible gun owners here expect permanent hearing loss as a result of owning guns?
Are you comparing a hobby that involves a deadly weapon with a human need for which the consequences of fall primarily on one gender?
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OK, that is a separate issue, but this is an accessory that does nothing to really make them any more dangerous. What is the logic behind keeping them on the NFA? Most of it seems like “what if” nonsense, similar to people who think if we made weed legal half of America would be hooked on smack within a few months.
How is it irrelevant? If you look at the cities that have more detailed crime stats, you will see that the vast majority of murderers have criminal records before hand. They have a history of criminal behavior tied to illicit activities. Clearly this should be our main focus for gun violence as it is the #1 cause of murders.
You’re right there are other types of murderers. IIRC domestic abuse is second. And then there are the people who had a clean record more or less who end up killing someone in a fight or doing a murder suicide (which is even harder to combat as there aren’t as many flags leading up to it.) But IMHO if one wants to lower crime rates, they should focus on the biggest pie slice and get to the root causes.
Yes. My dad. Well not owning, but using. Though back in the day they didn’t use hearing protection for smaller bullets like .22s. Nor can you really use ear protection back then for hunting. Like others said, it isn’t a 100% must have, but it makes things easier on the ears, as well as the body. It makes shooting much more enjoyable over time, as the muzzle blast is much tamer and quieter.
But conversely, even if it had NO real world advantages, I don’t see what the logic is in keeping them on the NFA list. There are around a millions suppressors legally owned in the US and it hasn’t been a problem.
I think the worry is that people will start quietly murdering people and getting away with it. I would encourage one to read the local news of their large city. Every week we find bodies in KC LITERALLY in the middle of the street or parking lots shot dead. If you lived where my ex GF lived you heard gun shots on summer nights. More than once I drove by a crime scene to visit. That is just a fact of life. People are getting away with murder and loud shots right now - they don’t need to suppress them.
It is a clumsy analogy, but it boils down to “I don’t want you to have this because I don’t like what you do.” Even though both things aren’t really affecting the person directly against it.
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Welcome to BoingBoing!
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What the opposition to sale of silencers has not done demonstrably well is demonstrate with hard numbers how much more dangerous they would make firearms in deaths-per-year relative to the overall firearms death rate. As pointed out, it’s very much contingent on a “what if” situation tacked onto a statistically rare phenomena (mass shootings) and in the right environment (open area)–again relative to all gun violence in the USA.
I would posit if it were possible to even do so (I tried, actually) it would be a vanishingly small number, and as such is a cause more driven by emotion than hard fact. On balance, they are mildly useful for some law-abiding gun owners. I think society will be fine, and gun owners not overly inconvenienced if they are completely banned, and the gun death rate will not budge by any measurable amount if they become completely unregulated.
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It’s not a seperate issue. It is yet another expansion of the now never ending efforts to roll back gun restrictions. [quote=“Mister44, post:109, topic:102731”]
How is it irrelevant? If you look at the cities that have more detailed crime stats, you will see that the vast majority of murderers have criminal records before hand. They have a history of criminal behavior tied to illicit activities. Clearly this should be our main focus for gun violence as it is the #1 cause of murders.
You’re right there are other types of murderers. IIRC domestic abuse is second. And then there are the people who had a clean record more or less who end up killing someone in a fight or doing a murder suicide (which is even harder to combat as there aren’t as many flags leading up to it.) But IMHO if one wants to lower crime rates, they should focus on the biggest pie slice and get to the root causes
[/quote]
Domestic abuse, suicides, and so on. I’m not looking to lower crime rates, but gun violence and deaths. Not the same thing. [quote=“Mister44, post:109, topic:102731”]
Yes. My dad. Well not owning, but using. Though back in the day they didn’t use hearing protection for smaller bullets like .22s. Nor can you really use ear protection back then for hunting. Like others said, it isn’t a 100% must have, but it makes things easier on the ears, as well as the body. It makes shooting much more enjoyable over time, as the muzzle blast is much tamer and quieter.
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As you said, things have changed and hobbyists have a variety of protections at their disposal.[quote=“Mister44, post:109, topic:102731”]
But conversely, even if it had NO real world advantages, I don’t see what the logic is in keeping them on the NFA list. There are around a millions suppressors legally owned in the US and it hasn’t been a problem.
[/quote]
Again, this does not address my point above, this is a convience, which is comes across as cavalier and callous to those who want to see fewer gun deaths.
Yes. People are killing, having accidents, and dying at alarming rates. Talking about how much fun and how much nicer it is to use a silencer in light of this is absurd.
You and I could argue back and forth, but IMO the right to bodily autonomy is trivialized when it’s compared to a hobby that kills, especially in light of what’s happened to reproductive rights in the last thirty years, as gun laws have continued to loosen, and the fact that those expansions on gun rights and constrictions to women’s rights are cominng from the same people.
All of us are affected by mass shootings, domestic violence, and agression with guns. My choice to keep my family small on the other hand, only has a positive outcome for you.
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It is another cavalier expansion for fun and ease that ignores the issue of gun violence. That’s the heart of it.
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So an argument driven by emotion and not facts.
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The facts are that people are dying, guns are widely available, and instead of giving an ear to those concerns, people want me to care about how much easier to use and more fun guns could be. I can’t take people who call me emotional for pointing this out seriously.
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Let me clarify. I am not calling you emotional. I am calling your argument an appeal to emotion.
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It’s an appeal to seeing any gun supporter offer any solution to mitigating gun deaths, instead of insisting that everyone make things easier for them. But, sure, wanting that is an emotional argument.
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I clarified; your argument is an appeal to emotion. I am not calling you emotional.
I’m not a gun supporter per se (I own none, but was raised with them around the house), but I do have some ideas on reducing gun violence through additional regulation and other steps. If you’d like to have a conversation about this, I would invite you to submit a new thread which doesn’t relate specifically to silencers. As I said, silencers (the main topic of this thread) are a poor area to make gains in gun safety, which I said in the very first post of this thread.
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I’ve not made any arguments, nor am I interested in making a new thread. I explained why some people don’t care about silencers and are not interested in easier access to them, which you deemed an emotional argument, as opposed to emotional argument of silencers are fun and easy. Like it or not, it’s a further loosening of gun laws, and you can’t seperate that from the larger issue.
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I suspect a fear at play here is that it will be more difficult for people to pick out gunfire in/near their neighborhood vs. fire crackers if suppressors/silencers are legal. The police kinda really do want you to call in “suspected shots fired” if you live in a community where the PD strives for community policing instead of broken windows.
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Your argument seems to be that we should police our tone when talking about firearm accessories. (At least, that’s all I can derive that’s actionable). The reasoning for it seems to be, it’s in bad taste or something in light of the very real problem of gun violence. In between the lines seems to be that we should not further deregulate silencers for similar reasons.
That’s not the brunt of the argument for their use, and trying to flip the tables is argumentatively disingenuous.
I was certainly not trying to. If you’d like to make a case for further deregulation/regulation being symbolic, well and good. Because that’s all it is likely to be given their utility.
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Suicides are a completely separate issue than gun crime. How are you going to stop a suicidal person from owning a gun? I agree it should be looked at, but the solution to keep guns out of criminals hands, and the solution to keep John Smith from killing himself are two separate issues with different solutions. Especially when say John is 41 now, and has had a gun for the past 20 years, and only now is suicidal. What law can be made to combat that?
Domestic Abuse is one of the few areas where you can get your rights stripped, including flags on NICS checks. A domestic violence conviction, even just a misdemeanor, can get your rights stripped. But it isn’t a perfect system, as this particular example of Hodgkinson, he was never convicted of abuse. This issue is affected by the larger issue that too many abusers never meet repercussions.
There is no evidence more suppressors will result in more deaths. It is an accessory that doesn’t make anything more dangerous. I haven’t heard a good argument to the contrary.
Well, compared to the 80 million users, the rates are rather low and gun crime has fallen since the mid 90s. But again, more suppressors doesn’t mean more crime or deaths.
Well I am sorry some gun rights people are also for more restrictive reproductive rights. I don’t agree with that position. Max’s analogy holds some water in that pro-Second Amendment people who are against Gardasil and other things are using shit logic, and basically against something because they don’t want people having willy-nilly sex. At the same time I see opposition to suppressors and other laws out there in a similar vein, against the whole idea of the thing, even though the specific issue (suppressors in this case) doesn’t actually have any affect on what you are actually against (gun deaths).
To be clear, people who are into shooting sports generally are not killing anyone. I guess hunters kill for food, but that is a separate issue. But the vast majority of people who are either causal owners or hobbyist or competitors hurt NOTHING with their firearms. Many of those I know will be the first ones to condemn people who use them for crime or irresponsibly.
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Ah yes, the same circular logic that ends in we can’t do anything because of criminals, your reproductive rights are synonomous with gun rights, but you should be okay with the fact that the same people who continue to constrict your rights want more for themselves and refuse to listen to you on either issue, and you should certainly be above the way they treat you and their emotional arguements and not treat them the same way.
No thanks. At this point I’ll resist out of spite. Cheers.
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i feel dirty for having read the whole thread
suppressors are like mufflers
We actually have laws REQUIRING mufflers on cars.
many sane, normal people enjoy shooting as a hobby.
many sane, normal people enjoy driving as a hobby.
Guns have been used to kill people
Cars have been used to kill people
Suppressor does not make firearms “hollywood quiet”, but makes a sanctioned shooting range a much more pleasant place
I keep a muffler on my car.
dont make the discussion into more than it needs to be from the hype
.
Congress is a big giant pool of rich old white men and politically indebted crapheads.
they will “legislate” whatever the lobbyists pay them to.
THAT, ladies and gents, is what you should be really mad about.
fix it with voting and polite open discourse, not bullying, fisticuffs or poo-flinging.
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