We can all agree that gun violence is a horrible thing and that we would all like to live in a world in which people treat each other with respect and decency, much less not shooting or otherwise physically assaulting each other.
Sadly, though, we don’t live in a world like that. We live in a world in which most people are decent to their fellow human beings, but there are a few outliers who seem bent on inflicting harm on others.
Because of this, anti-gunners are grabbing on to anything they can to limit the availability and perceived danger of firearms. I say “perceived” because some of the proposals won’t make much, if any, difference to gun violence.
Take, for example, the newfound passion to ban suppressors (or, if you’re not familiar with guns, like most anti-gunners, maybe you call them silencers). Anti-gunners, who have watched too many movies, believe that suppressors make guns silent, as if the sound from a shot fired is nothing more than a breath on the wind.
But that’s just not the case.
John R. Lott says that banning silencers wouldn’t have prevented the Virginia Beach shooter from killing as many people as he did. Why? Because guns with “silencers” are nearly as loud as guns without suppressors. Lott writes,
The .45 caliber handgun used in the Virginia Beach attack creates sounds that measure at 158 decibels. The average suppressor reduces the sound by around 30 decibels. But 128 decibels is still very high – virtually the same as peak crowd noise in a stadium. If you use a suppressor in conjunction with earmuffs, you can get the sound down to about 100 decibels, which is about as loud as an average motorcycle.
The common 9mm Glock is even louder, at about 162 decibels.
But just a couple of years ago, Robyn Thomas, executive director of the Giffords Center to Prevent Gun Violence, argued against the health benefits of suppressors. “Silencers do not protect your hearing,” she said.
No one seems to be asking why the Virginia Beach killer used a suppressor. But anyone who has fired a gun at both outdoor and indoor firing ranges will understand the reason. When you are inside a building, the echoes from firing a gun make the sound even more deafening.
The shooter’s use of a suppressor had nothing to do with hiding his shots from others. Indeed, the police were able to find the killer from following the sound of his shots.
The suppressor is just one example of how far the killer went in carefully planning his attack. It can hardly be a coincidence that the attack occurred in a public building where everyone was a public employee and therefore prohibited from carrying a permitted concealed handgun. Unlike all of his law-abiding colleagues, the killer didn’t obey the ban.
By using his employee keycard to access employee-only locations, the shooter gained time to kill more people. He may have correctly guessed that the police would have trouble bypassing the locks to employee-only areas.
So, once again we have anti-gunners jumping to conclusions which have no basis in reality. The Virginia Beach shooter didn’t use a suppressor to prevent people from knowing where he was so that he could kill more people. He simply was trying to prevent being deafened from the shooting.
Yet, anti-gunners focus on irrelevant issues instead of addressing the root problem. They focus on secondary factors instead of focusing on what allows active shooters to kill more people.
In case you haven’t guessed from what Lott wrote above, the answer to reducing gun violence deaths isn’t banning suppressors. But getting rid of gun-free zones would actually give more people a fighting chance against active shooters who, in case you hadn’t noticed, tend to choose gun-free zones for their location of choice for public murder sprees.
Let’s keep pushing anti-gunners to focus on the stuff that matters instead of suppressors and other things which won’t make a difference.
The rifle pictured DOES NOT have a suppressor (silencer).
The device is a MUZZLE BREAK! It reduces muzzle climb and recoil but DOES NOT REDUCE SOUND!
ABSOLUTELY CORRECT! I was scratching my head thinking SILENCER??, MUFFLER??, SOUND REDUCER??, SUPPRESSOR??, NO – – – WAY!!
AND, this person was DEFENDING SUPPRESSORS??
Thank you for trying.
This is kind of like calling an AR 15 a “fully automatic semi-automatic” rifle. They can shoot 600 bullets in 1 second out of a high capacity clip. — – D U H H H !!!!!!!
YEP!
Anti-gun people are communists that indeed want to take away american freedom.
Yes, however, communists, socialists, atheists, Democrats, and LIBERALS are ALL alike. “ALL ARE HEATERS OF GOD (YHVH) AND LOVERS OF SATAN!”
Anti-gun people are communists that indeed want to take away american freedom.
What a joke these silencers are used to fire these cop killer bullets,and the exploding bullets. Here’s a trick question, these silencers lower the report of the rifle or pistol, maybe that’s to keep the sound down so you won’t go deaf???
Antigun folks consistently pick on, and try to ban, whatever they think is owned by, or important to, a relatively small number of people, and then try to divide the shooting community by demonizing the folks who own these things as “radical militia types,” or fringe crazies. They ate succeeding with this tactic against suppressors and bump stocks, but failed when they tried it on semiautomatic pistols and AR style rifles. The reason those failed was twofold. First, they didn’t manage to ban them quickly enough, and second, they failed to recognize how popular they were. When they tried to ban AR style rifles in 1994, the design was not yet owned by many people, so it looked like a good target. However, by the time the “Assault Weapon Ban” sunsetted in 2004, ARs were the most popular rifle in the country. This caused huge blowback against their attempted reinstatement of the ban, affected millions of shooters PERSONALLY, and torpedoed the meme that anyone who had, or wanted, an AR was a crazy fringe type person.
Just a bunch of communist looking to control the American people . The best way to educate people is threw safety and training and in education but these commie have one thing on there mind and that is disarming the American people and control nothing less. These people are not even willing to have a sensible debate.And all the licensing is nothing more than a money making tactic for the Gov they don’t care about lives it’s the bottom line in the end for these people.There purposals are so far out of line with reality.The crazy thing is most of these morons have no experience with firearms so they are not the ones I want making laws for me or the rest of law abiding citizens who choose to own firearms for self defense.This mostly come form the Democratic communist party who want there illegals in here so eventually they will be a dictator ship and they will control our lives forever you will have no more Republican gov.
I see little value in shutting down silencers.
Right now our gov. is taking baby steps on gun control, watch for the “Red Flag Gun Law”, that’ll be the straw that broke the camel’s back! Our gov. wants us like Europe with open borders and gun control and so far it’s going their way. Buy ammo while you can and God Bless America while we still have her !!
Silencers are a Hollyweird concoction, they do NOT exist.
THEY WANT TO TAKE AWAY OUR GUNS SO THEY CAN TAKE OVER THE COUNTRY!!
Amen to Craig Will’s reply !
Signed james W. Garland (a world war 2 veteran)
“Yet, anti-gunners focus on irrelevant issues instead of addressing the root problem. They focus on secondary factors instead of focusing on what allows active shooters to kill more people.”
Bottom line is they’re so ignorant of facts/truth they can’t focus on anything but drivel spewed by even more ignorant. They’ve obviously never been around someone shooting with a suppressor to know it doesn’t silence anything. There’s not a full brain, collectively, in the entire liberal mob.
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