And I know that saying something is the dumbest piece of legislation ever is really making a statement, but I think I am right:
Wyoming hunters could carry automatic weapons and guns equipped with silencers in the field under proposed legislation that would also allow archery hunters to carry firearms.
Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, is the primary sponsor of the bill. He says he’s heard from many archery hunters who want to carry firearms for defense against grizzly bears.
Case’s bill, Senate File 79, wouldn’t allow anyone to hunt with automatic or silenced weapons. But it would remove the current prohibition against possessing such weapons in the state’s game fields and forests.
As the Gun Guys note:
A bill has been proposed in Wyoming that would let hunters carry assault weapons and guns with silencers on them when they go hunting. You know, in case they happen to run into any of those stealth combat trained deer.
If you are getting attacked by a grizzly bear when bow-hunting, wouldn’t you want someone to hear your self-defense gunshots?
Zifnab
But what happens if you get swarmed by a bunch of bears all at once. Or they start taking pot shots at you from bunkers. I mean, this is war here kids. We need to give these hunters something to defend themselves with. Like hand grenades. And flame throwers.
Oh oh. Here’s the deal. Humvees with mounted 40mm machine guns. Then I’d feel safer.
Stormy70
The Rangers always told us to play dead if we saw a grizzly in Wyoming, not attempt to kill it, as we’d only wound it and piss it off beyond all reason. I did run across a black bear, but it was intent on eating the bugs out of a rotten log, and I was intent on getting the hell out of there. I love that state.
This law does sound like overkill to me. A silencer? WTF?
Tim F.
The law does nothing to address my need for a rocket launcher in case the grizzlies join together into a mega-grizzly robot. For that reason I oppose the bill and, if it comes to that, support a filibuster.
Perry Como
That site rules — in the “what a bunch of idiots way”. Terrorists with .50 cal rifles… Too bad they don’t allow comments.
Yeah, the legislation is stupid. No one needs silencers.
Stormy70 Says:
If you wanted a reason to have a .50 caliber rifle, grizzly bears is a good one. Good luck carrying that while you are bow hunting.
Paddy O'Shea
Took the wife and kids to Glacier Nat’l Park in Montana last summer. Just about as beautiful a place as you will ever find anywhere on the dirtball. Founded by Teddy Roosevelt himself, who apparently spent a lot of time there getting away from the assholes in Washington DC.
Anyway, vast herds of khaki shorts and fanny-pack clad chubby people were everywhere to be observed hiking into the mountains with cowbells strapped to their large persons. Apparently local lore has it that grizzlies do not enjoy the sound of cowbells, and if someone is walking about making that sort of clankety clank sound they’ll think better of it and go someplace else.
So the next day the O’Sheas (picture one of those obnoxious family stick figure decals you see in the back windows of minivans, except our kids would rather give the finger than smile), decided to hike one of the more popular mountain trails so that we could take in some beautiful views and breath the kind of air you never seem to find much in Los Angeles. However, my children are still fairly young, progress was slow and we didn’t get very far. About a half a mile in we sat down under a tree and picked ticks off each other while the kids threatened each other with sticks.
And then, off in the distance, there was suddenly the unmistakeable sound of clanking cowbells. Far off at first, but progressively louder as the ringers drew closer. And it wasn’t just a couple of bells, it was dozens.
As the first echelon of khaki-clad clankers came panting by I asked what the excitrement was all about. “Grizzlies!’ puffed one particularly red-faced lardbutt. “News has come down the trail, there are grizzlies just up the mountain!”
All told we figured 50 some-odd cowbell ringing citizens ran by us that day. Funniest thing. Didn’t see any grizzlies, though. All those cowbells must have done the trick.
As far as this Wyoming business goes, silencers might actually be a good thing. If the kinds of folks I suspect would feel the need for such things were actually allowed to have them, perhaps the secrecy of it all would tempt them to shoot each another. No sound, no witnesses.
Maybe that is all it would take to bring back the wild west.
Dave Ruddell
I’d love to have on of those 40 mm machine guns. Who knew you could get a Bofors in a hunting model?
The Other Steve
If I’m trying to kill me a ‘Bar, the last thing I need is a bunch of park rangers coming down and accusing me of poaching.
A silencer is a most excellent defense against that sort of unfortunate incident.
Bruce in Alta California
For safety and peace of mind, I always set up claymore mines with trip wire around my perimeter. When someone calls “Critters on the wire” I just roll over and dream of the blood, fur and guts that will be scattered over the countryside after their encounter with my counter-critter-terrorist devices.
Pooh
“It’s comin’ right for us!”
Paul Wartenberg
Silencers??? SILENCERS??? For HUNTING??? Look, you can argue Second Amendment all you want, and I agree that civilians have a right to arm themselves, but Jesus Christ where’s the common sense? Only assassins use silencers!
rilkefan
To take a contrarian tack: …
No, I’ve got nuthin.
Zifnab
Hey! Before you start getting all Nazi on silencers, let’s keep things in perspective.
Bambi never would have gotten away if his mother had been killed with a solid .22 caliber suppressor.
Fred
Not to inject a dose of facts, but here goes.
The bill does not permit HUNTING with automatic firearms or with silencers. It removes the prohibition against HAVING full-auto firearms and/or firearms with silencers in Wyoming forests. (And from a lay reading of the bill the original prohibition affected private forests, too.)
Next: owning a full-auto firearm requires a sign-off by local police, a comprehensive background investigation, lots of paperwork, and a nontrivial fee. Ditto for silencers. The people who legally own these things are not the problem.
Considering that the Wyoming State Forestry Division has responsibilities for 3.6 million acres of state land and Wyoming has about 2,500,000 sqkm (61,750,000 acres) of land, upwards of 5% of land seems to be considered “forest”.
What this bill will do is enable them to drive through a forest with such a full-auto firearm. BFD. The law still prevents them from hunting with it and there is a fleet of laws that remain unchanged that prevent them from discharging spuriously, brandishing, etc.
Finally, it is worth noting that silencers, though regulated under the same 1934 NFA law that tightly regulates full-auto weapons and barrel length, are required in some European settings. The noise reduction really helps preserve shooter’s hearing.
A tangential points: Gun Guys is a notoriously anti-gun organization.
Patrick Lasswell
First and foremost, all this law does is make it legal for you to have fully automatic and suppressed weapons with you in the field. This means that if you happen to legally own such things, you are free to keep them with you when you are hunting. Is it reasonable to go shooting with your legally owned automatic weapons in the day and then try to catch deer movement just before sundown? All this law does is remove a BS hassle for that small number of people who have legal Class III and suppressed weapons.
It looks like none of you have ever read the statistics on what real silencers do. A really good silencer might be able to suppress 30 dB from a 160 dB hunting round. That still leaves a noise level just below pain threshold, nothing like the Hollywood legend of whisper quiet contract killers. The biggest uses for silenced weapons are to avoid annoying neighbors when practicing and to allow tactical teams to better communicate during firefights.
As for fully automatic weapons, the only reason to use those during hunting would be to kill the animals more quickly by hitting them more than once. I really doubt that serious hunters are interested in having a follow-up round capability, mostly because the variability of the second round impact location. All the serious hunters I know are more interested in reliably putting the first round in the heart-lung area and contolling any subsequent fire to prevent wastage caused by hitting the bile duct.
I’m sorry, did anybody want to talk seriously about hunting and shooting, or did you all just want to portray all hunters as two dimensional cartoons?
6Gun
Ah, I see the presumption of guilt folks are commenting tonite. It’s not about any logic you guys care to see: It’s about the logic of keeping govt out of the private sector, something you apparently cannot or will not.
By your logic, smoking should be illeg- oh, nevermind…
Krista
Pooh – LOL. Good ol’ Uncle Jimbo.
Hm…let’s see. I’m heading into the woods for a hike.
GPS? Check.
Compass? Check.
Water? Check.
First-aid kit? Check.
Spare socks? Check.
.22 with silencer? Check.
What’s wrong with this picture?
(And if you can’t put a silencer on a .22, fine. I know less than shit about guns.)
Mike Escobedo
As anyone thought about putting silencers on the multitude of snowmobiles going though the Tetons and Yellowstone? I guess it must be cruel hunting tactics to shoot a bear with a loud rifle when their ears already hurt each day from these snowmobiles! Stupid me.
KC
John, you just don’t get it do you?! Silencers are needed for a simple reason: if you shoot one dangerous grizzly without a silencer, his homies will be there to back him up in minutes, yo. It’s all about stealth when it comes to man-bear encounters.
Bob In Pacifica
And hand grenades for fishermen!
Krista
Patrick – it’s not the hunters that we have a problem with, so you need not be so defensive. I have family that hunts, and that’s totally fine with me.
Okay. So explain something to me, then. If you happen to legally own such things, why do you have to take them with you when you go hunting? If you can’t use them for actual hunting, then why even bother taking them with you into the field? I’m just perplexed as to under what possible circumstance it would be necessary to take an automatic weapon or a weapon with a silencer with you.
Zifnab
So I’m allowed to own this firearm, I’m allowed to bring it into the woods with me, and I’m allowed to hunt deer with the weapon slung over my shoulder with silencer attached, but I’m not allowed to fire it… unless I’m attacked by a bear.
Shit, this law practically enforces itself. And with 3.6 million acres of state land to police, I’m sure the Wyoming State Forestry Division will have absolutely no problem preventing pooching and illegal firearm use.
I was totally off-base. My apologies.
Gump, Esq
That gunguys site is clearly a sham “blog” set up by the anti-gun lobby. I realize that has nothing to do with the issue at hand, but I honestly think that there should be some kind of informal agreement not to link to sites that are clearly propoganda from a lobbying group. I hope this is not a glipse of things to come from the blogosphere.
Jarrett
Bah. This is nothing. Ever see the Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch with the Mosquito Hunters? They use anti tank missiles ‘n shit.
What I really want to know is, WILL the legislature also allow fishing with depth charges?
Angry Engineer
I’m with Fred and Patrick – this has absolutely nothing to do with hunting, and everything to do with the simple possession of a legally-owned piece of property on government land. I know that if Michigan allowed Class III hardware, I’d be upset if I was precluded from legally enjoying it on land that’s maintained using my taxes.
The folks who are serious about bear defense aren’t concerned with automatic weapons or silencers, although perhaps a supressed full-auto AR15 in .50 Beuwolf would provide for a nice deterent.
Krista
I don’t know…maybe I’m weird, but I just really can’t see why anybody should have an automatic weapon. Hunting guns, I have no problem with.
It’s just a cultural difference, I guess, but I find automatic weapons (and those who own them) creepy as hell.
Patrick Lasswell
Krista,
The West is big, really darned big. If I am going across the state to go hunting and am dropping by some friends to go shooting on the same weekend, I don’t want to have to drive five or six hours each way home to put weapons back between events. All this law lets me do is have the weapons in a in my vehicle when I happen to be hunting.
What this law does is let law abiding citizens make their own choices as to what they have in their vehicles when they go hunting.
Zifnab
Maybe its just a sign of the times, but I just can’t bring myself to swallow that. Not when the NRA has pressed forward on so many hair-brained promotions before this. Not after the gun lobby has been trying to legalize assault weapons for hunters for the past forty years. It just feels all wrong.
muddy
Maybe the silenced gunshot is for the deer you couldn’t bag with the bow.
Patrick Lasswell
Zifnab,
The NRA is heavily divided between the traditional sportsmen and the 2nd Amendment supporters. The NRA has never and probably never will endorse using fully automatic weapons for hunting. The traditional sportsmen would go beserk. The 2nd Amendment supporters are trying to keep it legal for law abiding citizens to own legal firearms.
Since the only national law that restricted assault weapons was passed in 1994 and eclipsed in 2004, I find it difficult to believe that the NRA has been trying to get them legal for hunting use since 1966.
Kimmitt
I actually am totally cool with this, but here’s the problem:
1) You have a presumption of privacy in your vehicle for anything that isn’t in plain sight. Has there been a rash of ranger vehicle searches without probable cause recently?
2) The bill is most certainly not limited to the areas you discuss. If the bill stipulated that said weapons were to be carried in (and I’m not familiar with the precise terminology) an unloaded and/or disassembled state, such that they could be transported but not easily used (or in a motor vehicle, etc.) then I think you’d be very much on point. But the repeal is much larger than that.
Grotesqueticle
First of all, let me say this, sans the careful reading of previous comments that most of us do: My uncle, hunts bear every time he can get his name pulled up in the various state lotterys. He has told me, that you would be a fool, NOT to have a powerful sidearm on your hip. He is a bow-hunter (Uncle Pug, I ain’t wishing death on you, but, alls I want in your will is your bows and the stuffed lynx). Now, I shall actually read the previous comments.
Tim F. I bow before your prescience. “The law does nothing to address my need for a rocket launcher in case the grizzlies join together into a mega-grizzly robot. For that reason I oppose the bill and, if it comes to that, support a filibuster.” It will – God willing – come to that.
Fred, “A tangential points: Gun Guys is a notoriously anti-gun organization.”
Thanks for pointing that out. Sarcastic domain names are so often hard to sort out, here on the internets.
“The bill does not permit HUNTING with automatic firearms or with silencers. It removes the prohibition against HAVING full-auto firearms and/or firearms with silencers in Wyoming forests. (And from a lay reading of the bill the original prohibition affected private forests, too.)”
Ahhh, so one can go hunting with automatic firearms that might or might not come equipped with silencers. Not to parse words, overmuch, but how is it possible to “not permit” while “removing the prohibition against”?
Just curious.
Zifnab, What the hell do you have against pooching, anyway?
Krista, I can assure you, as one who slept with his M60 for four years, automatic weapons can give one very real, comforting sense of security.
I would have thought everyone would have figgered it out already, clearly John was being sarcastic, linking to this, there is NO subset where automatic weapons and silencers overlap (well, at least not beyond four or five rounds, at any rate).
Back to the serious drinking.
Hans Rupprecht
Personally I think my reconditioned 88mm FLAK, circa WWII, should do the trick. If I don’t get the deer at 2 mile stand off with my cross bow; I use my 88mm and make deer hamburgers in case he gets too close.
Them antlers are pretty dangerous you know.
Pooh
Good points from the pro gun people here. Thanks for the thoughts. Just a question, why does one need to own automatic weapons? I’ll grant you that they’re cool and all. (I’m being serious) But it seems like you can make a pretty strong ‘safety’ argument against general legality. But what do I know?
The Disenfranchised Voter
I have yet to see a valid defense for the need of silencers in the field.
The best we’ve gotten is “my ear drums might get hurt a little” or “the neighbors (who obviously can’t live very close anyway) might get angry”.
Excuse me?
I think we can all agree that the silencer issue is the reason why this bill qualifies as the dumbest legislation ever.
I’m completely for the right to bear arms. If I want to be able to own a machine gun, I should. But with that said, I fail to see why a hunter would view a silencer as necessary while hunting. Unless they are “hunting” for the most elusive prey that is.
So please, supporters of this law explain to me the reason why these should be allowed to use silencers on auto–that they technically can’t even use–while hunting.
The Disenfranchised Voter
*these hunters
*auto’s
Confederate Yankee
Krista this might come as a shock to you, but the Second Amednment is about neither muskets nor ducks, it is about arming Americans for war. Quite frankly, fully automatic, military-grade weapons are far more in the spirit of why the Amendment was added than are hunting weapons not suited for combat.
As a hunter, I cannot see any legitimate reason to hunt with a fully-automatic weapon, but as the owner of a fully-automatic weapon, I should not be barred from shooting it on certain lands where it would otherwise be legal the rest of the year, just because a certain game animal is in season.
Suppressors (not actually silencers) should be encourged, as far as I am concerned. Other than in the movies, suppressors, especially on rifles, do not make a gun silent, but they can reduce the decibel level of a shot to a degree where shooting a hunting firearm does not lead to hearing loss. They would also be nice in shooting ranges, where muffs are needed, but it is also important to be able to hear the range officer. For those of us who have lived in the country during hunting season, it could make life quite a bit more bearable.
Grotesqueticle
Pooh,
One doesn’t need to own any weapon. Automatic weapons simply allow one to put more lead downfield in a shorter amount of time. This can be a good thing.
Grotesqueticle
P.S. Pooh,
I own precisely zeo guns. If that matters to you.
Grotesqueticle
*ahem* I meant to say, “Zero”.
Bruce in Alta California
Not to change the subject but perhaps bear hunting should only be legalized when hunting with a knife. It would definately bring more sport to this sporting event.
I once saw my uncle’s dogs tree a bear until we came huffing and puffing up the hill where my uncle took careful aim up into the tree . . . needless to say, I didn’t think it was much of a sport.
Fledermaus
JC,
It’s not so much the deer that you have to worry about, but rather the squirrels. They are up to no good.
Wickedpinto
when it comes to the nation I’m all about republican, when it comes to the individual fighting for their own rights against the incursions of the nation, I’m all about there.
But this? is just plain retarded. 100% complete and total retarded!
Wickedpinto
let me correct. The FIRST was republican, the SECOND was libertarian, and ultimately? this legislation means anarchy, which I do not support.
JWeidner
LOL. Mecha-Grizzly.
ppGaz
First of all, I’m a gun owner. Second, I am a liberal Democrat who supports responsible controls on the sale of weapons and amunition. Third, I am a contributor to ACLU, and proud of it.
Fourth, stop the government assholes from doing warrantless wiretaps, and I don’t give a flying fig about silencers in Wyoming. Stop the relentless assault on civil liberties represented by the bonehead so-called “Patriot” Act, too, and I still don’t give a fig about silencers in Wyoming. Stop hammering liberty in order to buy a little false sense of “security” at the hands of the lying, scheming fear-mongering potatoheads, and put a silencer on every weapon in Wyoming, for all I care.
Pb
Yes, government is finally doing something about the #1 domestic threat we face–*bears*! I’m sure Steven Colbert will be ecstatic.
rachel
A couple of people have mentioned “pooching.” What is that, hunting with dogs?
stickler
Let’s get back to the basics here. People who bow-hunt — for BEARS — want to have large-caliber sidearms.
Come on. If you’re
stupidbold enough to be hunting for bears using a bow and arrow, I think you ought to be man enough to really give the bear a fighting chance. No sidearms!Otherwise, wait until the gun season opens and do it like a 21st century man.
Or — call me old-fashioned here — leave the damned bears alone. They’re usually too gamey to eat, so shooting them is purely for ego enhancement and sexy carpets in front of the fireplace.
CaseyL
I adore bears. I’m not daft enough to go up to one and try scritching behind its ears, but I can’t imagine wanting to hunt them, ever.
I was in Montana’s Glacier Nat’l Park back in ’99, when all of Montana was on fire and there was a Bear Watch in effect, because they were running away from the fire and concentrating in areas humans were in. I picked up a copy of Bear Aware, the drollest book ever written about what to do if you encounter a bear.
So much good stuff in that book!
If a bear is after you, you need to determine whether it’s a black bear or a grizzly, since self-defense techniques are very different (playing dead with a grizz might work, but playing dead with a black bear just means it’ll start eating you right away.) The book helpfully notes that not all black bears are black, and not all grizzlies are brown. You could be facing a sun-bleached black bear, or a darker-than-average grizz, and mistake one for the other. So what you do is calmly check the size and look to see if the bear has the characteristic grizzly-hump… while this thundering death machine is bearing down on you at upwards of 30 mph!
The book also notes that bears prefer to avoid humans, and therefore your smell might put them off (esp. if you haven’t bathed in a while). Unless you’re menstruating or having sex, because bears quite like sex smells, and will come sniffing around to see if there’s any amorous lady bears in the vicinity. So the trick is to be pretty ripe, but not sex-ripe.
There’s also info about best practices regarding food storage, preparation, and clean-up. Apparently, bears in national parks subscribe to news services which update them on the latest means humans use to protect food, so it’s not enough anymore to stash the cache in a random tree some distance from your campsite.
No, now you need to find a really tall tree really far away from your campsite, and hoist the food cache way the hell up there – or, better yet, find two really tall trees about 50 yards apart from each other, tie a dragline about 20 feet high between ’em, and hang your food cache from the dragline. Oh, and wear different clothing when you’re cooking and eating, and keep that clothing with the food. Do not hike, relax around the campfire, or sleep in clothing that might smell like food.
I livened our group’s evenings considerably by reading to them from the book. We practised Bear Drills, where we all ran out of our tents, to the van, climbed in and locked the doors. One of the members of our group was so inspired he set up trip lines all around his tent and hung pots from the triplines, so an invading bear would make a lot of noise.
That night, one of the other members of our group (NOT me!) jangled the pots. The guy leaped out of his tent, ran to the van, climbed in and locked the door… and then wondered why he was the only person in the van… and why the only noise he heard was 20 other campers all chortling in their tents.
CT
I’d like to focus specifically on the issue of whether bowhunters should be permitted to carry sidearms during bow season in Wyoming.
Personal protection against dangerous animals, bear or cougar, is one side of the debate. The game wardens oppose this because hunters can be tempted to illegally shoot target game with their pistol, stick an arrow through the hole, and claim to have shot such critter in legal fashion. Pistols are a more effective weapon than a bow, and may result in more game being killed than anticipated by game managers who dictate the length of season to produce a certain rate of harvest.
I am the survivor of a black bear attack in the woods, and fortunately I was armed at the time. The attack occurred at very close range and was over within seconds. Grizzly bear attacks are far more common than ones by black bears, and Wyoming has a population of grizzlies adequate to cause concern among people who venture into the woods. Cougar also attack people unexpectedly.
Let the bowhunter arm himself. A bow is not adequate protection against aggressive predators while walking to a tree stand. Is it worth having people be mauled and killed over an academic point about potential poaching? The game wardens are perfectly capable of determining whether game is killed by pistol or bow. The carrying of pistols won’t cause much poaching, they can handle this.
This argument is best debated within the community of hunters and wardens. Emotional anti-hunting points of view and which weapons non-hunters think appropriate isn’t particularly relevant. This is not about which weapons we ‘need’ to hunt with, it’s about personal protection from specific aggressive animal species. Rifle and pistol hunters have adequate protection from grizzlies while hunting, why not afford the bowhunters the same?
Richard Bottoms
I am sure all Sen. Case has to do is run some ads saying Cindy Sheehan is aginst shooting bears with silencers and he’ll have no problem at all gett the bill passed.
Who’d want to agree with a whack job like her.
Patrick Lasswell
Justifications for ownership of fully automatic weapons:
1. Precisely one crime has been committed with a lawfully owned fully automatic firearm since they started regulating them in 1934, and that crime was committed by a policeman. Fully automatic weapons are available to criminals through importation, conversion, and construction. Why should criminals be the only ones with fully automatic weapons when law abiding citizens are overwhelmingly safe users of this century-old technology.
2. Fully automatic weapons are a lot of fun to shoot. Expensive as hell, but still quite a kick in the pants. Why should the police and the military have all the fun?
3. The purpose of the Second Amendment is to preserve liberty, not to ensure a National Guard. Banning lawful firearms use makes citizens subjects of the government and the criminals. Just ask the British and Australians about their violent crime rates.
4. Any third-year chemistry major can cook up a weapon of mass destruction given sufficient funding and lack of ethics.
5. Any driver with a large vehicle can plow into a crowd, and this has happened a lot more than machine-gun mayhem.
6. I have handled literally hundreds of fully automatic weapons and never had a single round fired out of turn. Fully automatic weapons do not frighten me as a concept because I handle them safely.
7. The world is not safe. The world has never been safe and never will be safe. My friend who was killed by a mass murderer was knifed to death with his family. Your objections to fully automatic weapons when you take no serious effort to protect yourselves does not impress me.
Steve
Yes, yes, universal ownership of automatic weapons obviously makes for a safe and law-abiding society. Why, just look at Iraq.
Patrick Lasswell
Steve,
IEDs, the leading cause of violent deaths, are not fully automatic weapons. Last year, eight Kentucky National Guard MP’s defeated over forty insurgents armed with machine guns. Those places in Iraq that are doing well, are safer because the citizens are throwing out the thugs and have the firepower to do so.
There is no safety in vulnerability, pretending that there is does not make it so.
rachel
I know, I know, but on the other hand, the Iraqis do seem to be finding the automatic weapons useful for making the occupying armys’ lives more miserable. Soooo… Maybe the NRA has a point?
I know that if my country were ever invaded or if any domestic cabal tried to overthrow The Constitution, I’d want to have lots and lots of automatic weapons to fight them with.
gswift
Get a grip Patrick. I loves me some guns, but full autos just aren’t that accessible to criminals. The reason measures like handgun bans are ineffective is that there’s literally millions of handguns already floating around the general populace, and they’re readily available for purchase by the general public. D.C. can ban handguns all it wants, but it’s all too easy to get them from relatives, black market, or resold from people buying outside city limits. Full autos just aren’t pervasive the way semi autos are.
I happen to be a chemistry major, and while cooking up various chemical weapons isn’t necessarily that difficult, the missiles to actually deploy them are a bit harder to come by.
Yeah, full autos are fun. But so are high explosives. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’d like to them mass produced and readily available at Wal Mart.
And what the hell is your point in #7? That people who don’t own a gun are incapable of making a point about full auto? Eh?
gswift
That being said, you’re dead on about silencers. People get hysterical without knowing anything about them. My other peeve with stuff like this is teflon coated rounds.
gswift
Give me a break. Maybe you’re a big Red Dawn fan, but really, you’re not helping stave off regulations with arguments like this.
rachel
Give me a break. Maybe you’re a big Red Dawn fan,…
I never saw it. Is that the one with the spaceship?
…but really, you’re not helping stave off regulations with arguments like this.
So that argument *doesn’t* work for the NRA?
gswift
It only works for other people already holding what’s a relatively fringe position. I really don’t want to see another lame assault weapons ban, but “I want full autos to fight the domestic cabal” isn’t an argument that’s going to get us anywhere with the mainstream.
Richard Bottoms
Do you have any idea how deranged that sounds? You realize Republicans are slowly becaoming complete loons don’t yo?
Richard Bottoms
Or with anyone who doesn’t have a close acquaintance with heavy medication.
Good news is Demcoarts have finally decided to stop comitting Hari Kari on this subject. You dumb motherfuckers want silencers on automatic meapons with teflon bullets, go right ahead. At least until the next school massacre.
gswift
I’m a liberal registered Democrat. I’ve never voted for a Repub in my life.
All a good silencer does, as Patrick pointed out above, is shave 35db or so.
I’m not against regulating full auto. The assault weapons ban was not about full autos. It rather arbitrarily banned certain semi autos people thought looked scary and banned mags that held more than ten rounds. Gee, what a comfort.
Teflon is a lubricant. It does not give magical powers to a bullet. It happens to be on some rounds that are armor piercing because the bullet is made of a substance like tungsten that will screw up your barrel.
The dumb motherfuckers are the ones pushing gun regulations with no knowledge of the subject. The Democrats could use their environmentalism and protection of public lands to gain votes in western states with lots of hunters, but ignorant motherfuckers insist on ruining it by loudly yelling about gun control with their heads up their asses.
SmilingPolitely
Seriously though, hunters are pussies.
vinc
My only encounters with bears (black bears) have been those super-tame ones in Yellowstone and a few other national parks. But I would have expected that firing a gun in the air a couple times would scare most anything off.
Rifle and pistol hunters have adequate protection from grizzlies while hunting, why not afford the bowhunters the same
Well, they could carry pistols, not automatics, and then they’d have the same protection.
Paul L.
Another idiot who get their history from movies/Hollywood.
Using that logic, I could say there are building being blown up by criminals and neo-nazis all the time today.
The “wild” west was kind of peaceful. Who wants to go into a town and start trouble when everyone around you is armed.
ppGaz
That’s right. Timothy McVeigh was a third-year chemistry major, wasn’t he?
Unless John and Tim want this blog to turn into a completely marginalized and useless piece of bandwidth, stop posting gun articles, because you will attract the kind of people who make the kinds of arguments I blockquoted above.
Distribution of weapons and ammunition is completely out of control in this country. Schoolkids, mental patients and criminals can get all the firepower they could ever want without worrying about detection or interference from an impotent government that can do little about it because it is strangled by a vicious and self-serving gun lobby.
Like I said upthread, I am not opposed to guns. I am opposed to the gun lobby, though. I’ll put up with Darrell, but I am not sure I can put with regular doses of the kind of crap the gun lobby puts out.
ppGaz
Come to think of it, given the way John has been acting lately, he probably DOES want to turn this thing into an NRA sandbox. Plenty of page views, and churn … and he can stick it to that “stupid, clueless, idiotic” crowd of “you people” that he hates so much.
gswift
Feel free to back this up with some stats.
Ryan Waxx
> Unless John and Tim want this blog to turn into a completely marginalized and useless piece of bandwidth, stop posting gun articles, because you will attract the kind of people who make the kinds of arguments I blockquoted above.
Cute.
Methinks, this blog is more marginalized by trash like you who squeal in indignation every time the relaxing echoes in your chamber get disrupted by someone holding a view you don’t agree with.
Lets see, you haven’t even tried to engage these arguments:
1. “Silencers” do nothing of the sort, provinding instead a modest reduction of noise.
2. Please explain why a bill allowing already-legal firearms into the woods(the bill does not affect the legality of owning those weapons, only where you can posses them) is going to turn the cities into a war zone, with snipers on every corner.
3. There are more, but you can start with the above.
Perhaps you can try debating on the merits… rather than smearing. But I rather doubt that – because it would require you to become more than what you smear the ‘gun lobby’ here as being.
neil
Heh. This is pretty extreme, but it gives me an idea… Maybe the Democrats could get an income redistribution measure passed if they called it a tax cut?
Socialism in our time!
BumperStickerist
Instead of a silencer, why don’t hunters just carry a pillow with them.
If the bear attacks, just push the pillow against the bear, put the pistol into the pillow and “BLAM” .. or in this case, ‘blam’ ..
the bear is dead and the hunter doesn’t have any ringing in their ears.
As to the question “Why fire a silenced, fully auto gun?” .. well, it’s a helluva lot of fun.
I got a chance to do this at a gun range where you could become a member and select from an array of weapons that you could rent for the duration of your stay.
One of my choices included a silenced MAC 11 .. Other choices included M16, Glock, .357 and twenty rounds on an M2-.50 with auto. Which was more than I got to shoot while serving in the Air Force.
My wife had never fired a gun before, the owner of the range, a retired Marin GSGT, ended up teaching my wife self defense with a .38. Fifty rounds in, she was hitting center mass at 30 feet. By the 100th round, she was hitting whatever she aimed at.
Her comment as we left was that the experience was a lot different than she thought it would be. Safety was the primary concern, nobody fucked around while shooting, and shooting and hitting the target was a satisfying experience.
.
ppGaz
In other words, you don’t approve of any disagreement with someone who disagrees with me. “Squeal in indignation.” That’s funny, you little prick, but it’s just your two-bit characterization.
I stated that I have no objection to the silencers. I am not interested in a technical discussion of silencers for the amusement of the gun magazine readers here, and I am also not interested in your opinion about silencers. The whole issue is a non-starter AFAIC.
Like I said, I don’t care about the silencers. I don’t have to “explain” anything or wait for someone else to do so. I made no such assertions about cities and war zones and snipers and I am under no obligation to consider those “points.”
Shove it up your ass. I’ve stated my views on the topic in a clear and unambiguous fashion. If you disagree with them, feel free to explain your disagreement.
Ryan Waxx
Well, I invited you to actually comment on the topic, instead of ‘your views’, which apparently do not involve the proposed law AT ALL, but instead whine about wiretapping, whine about people expressing (ON TOPIC) views you don’t like, and whine about the eeeeeeeevil gun lobby in general, not as relates to the law being discussed.
Maybe in wally world, it’s possible to ‘engage in debate’ with someone whose primary argument is ‘who let these NRA people in the thread?’. But back here in the real world, you have to put forth intelligent arguments to expect intelligent replies.
(braces for the schoolyard ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ response)
Paul L.
Here you go.
Violence in the Cattle Towns
Old West violence mostly myth
The Other Steve
I see that the NRA kooks have made their way over to this blog.
You know, it’s an odd thing. I’m not much of a fan of gun control, and most of my family are gun collectors and hunters. My uncle used to hunt bear with a bow back in the day. I agree with the real hunters in the article, that the sport ought to be sporting.
I can’t stand the NRA. Rather than promote respectful use and handling of guns, they promote some sort of mythical cowboy culture, where guns are a sex symbol rather than a tool.
Ryan Waxx
I must have missed the cowboy swimsuit issue of the NRA magazine, with the penis-shaped rifle giveaways.
Doesn’t the left have anything better than ignorant demonization to bring to this thread?
gswift
Well, I’m looking at that chart. Dodge for example. From Googling around it appears at the end of 1979 the population of Dodge was about 1000. But it was undergoing high growth, etc., but still. 5 murders in 1878, 2 in 1879, etc.
But for simplicity let’s look at the math for even 2 murders in a town of 2000 people. That’s 100 per 100,000 people.
So, how does that compare to modern day murder rates?
The Other Steve
Oh come now. Most people in the west didn’t even own a gun, except for hunting. They were tools. The colt .45 revolvers and Winchester Model 73 rifle you see in the movies were rare and too expensive for the settler to carry.
This myth that everybody was walking around with sidearms strapped to their waist, encouraging a “polite” society is a bunch of bullshit the NRA has been spewing in recent years to try to get concealed carry laws passed.
But you have to wonder. These laws they’re trying to repeat aren’t from the 1960s. They’re from the late 1800s. It’s all part of the evolution of the west. From anarchy to law… as more people settled, they introduced the laws and hired sheriffs to enforce them. That’s the evolution of a society.
Don’t believe all the bullshit the NRA tells you.
Pb
Ryan Waxx,
Heh.
At least I know my left from my right.
The Other Steve
Look at the liddle baby. When confronted with a conflicting argument he lashes out and calls names instead of dealing with the issues.
Paul Wartenberg
You forgot beer for the bear… and pizza… and the shoulder-mounted surface-to-air missile pack to take out any eagles trying to poach your kills… and…
SmilingPolitely
Wait, so does that mean the Peaceful West wasn’t as peaceful as the NRA led me to believe, gswift?
The Other Steve
They voted for it, before voting against it.
It’s interesting to watch the evolution of the NRA, from a group that basically promoted the Wild West myth to one today now trying to argue against it.
There overall goal is the same, to promote the sale of firearms. When the myth and the cowboys and indians game play helped their cause of selling more guns, they promoted it. Then when people became leary of those activities, they are arguing that having a whole lot of guns around really isn’t so bad, in fact it’s good.
Their goal is not to educate on the proper respect and use of firearms. Rather they act as the lobbying wing of gun makers, and their goal is to simply sell as many guns as they can. So their arguments change over time.
It’s just sad to watch people fall for their bullshit.
ppGaz
That may be the absolutely dumbest sentence I have ever read on the blog.
The only thing you will ever get from me are my views. What you are looking for is someone to state your views, or someone to stand as a strawman so that you can expound upon your views.
Good luck.
Did I say that the gun lobby is evil? Show me the quote, please. I said vicious, and self-serving.
Don’t agree? Show me the money. If the gun lobby is not self serving, why can any high school kid, mental patient, or criminal get guns and ammo so easily?
Whatever excuse or explanation you come up with, accompany it with examples of how NRA and other pro-gun lobbying groups have organized, raised money and otherwise supported vigorous laws and efforts to remedy the situation. Why do they always appear to be on the wrong side of the issues wrt safety and inappropriate access? Are they really fighting the good fight, but nobody knows it? Then why is their public relations posture so bad that their public face is so misunderstood? If they are fighting the good fight, then why are they so inept? Why can any high school kid get a gun? Why can any mental patient or criminal get a gun?
If Americans really deserve to keep their guns, then why don’t they pay more attention to the complete loss of control over the distribution of weapons and ammunition? If they really care about maintaining this right in context with other peoples’ right not to have to take a bullet for them, why don’t they work their asses off to prevent the abusive and negligent distribution?
If you don’t care as much or more about my safety as you do about your gun rights, then I am not going to give a shit about your gun rights, because my safety comes first.
And just so you know, I am the final arbiter of whether my safety is being properly looked after, not you.
Leonidas
Do you know anything about hunting, John Cole? Something tells me you don’t. Because if you did, you’d know how bears react to the sound of gun fire. It makes them go crazy, not surprisingly. And they can hear it from quite a distance. If you’re attacked by a grizzly bear, the last thing you want to do is make a lot of noise.
SmilingPolitely
Speak of the devil. Here’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times:
Dan in Michigan
Let me explain. My Dad lives in Wyoming and I spend a lot of time there. The bowhunters are not hunting bears. The problem is there are fucking bears everywhere you go now. If you are fishing, hunting, or just walking around you have to deal with bears, lions, and wolves. You need a big pistol or rifle anytime you go off the beaten track. Many of the grizzlies are “bad bears” i.e. removed from yellowstone because they have lost their fear of humans. People wear bells not to scare the bears but to alert them of your approach so as not to startle the bears. The day you come face to face with a pissed off grizzly will be the day you’ll appreciate guns.
SmilingPolitely
Link to article
Paddy O'Shea
I say we give Paul L a gun with a silencer, a bottle of Jack, and a DVD copy of the recently shot classic film (made by a small independent movie company) that starred his wife and a fellow named Yardarm.
CaseyL
I suppose I’m impressed: a gun-related post appears here at Balloon-Juice, and suddenly we get a whole new set of commenters, sent here by some gun site.
I’m a liberal, feminist, yellow-dog Democrat. I’m also a gun owner. I have no particular love for guns and no particular fear of them. I certainly don’t regard them as fetish objects, without which my sexuality or freedom are threatened.
The claim that “gun ownership is a defense against tyranny” has got to be one of the most laughable obvious lies ever. Tyranny isn’t something you can shoot at. Tyranny is secret police enforcing secret policies, indefinite detention with no recourse, and electronic surveillance of your every move and conversation. Tyranny is a government that sets itself above the law, ignores the law, ignores orders to obey the law, and undermines the institutions that enforce the law – and gets away with it all.
“Gun ownership is a defense against tyranny” is the kind of lie that could only be peddled by people who look on cheering as Bush and the GOP piss on the Constitution, who think “freedom of expression” applies only to those opinions they agree with, who consider criticism of or opposition to Bush treasonous, who have signed on wholeheartedly to the “Fear Today, Fear Tomorrow, Fear Forever” Bush/GOP agitprop – by people, in other words, for whom “liberty” is defined solely and entirely by whether or not they can own as many firearms, of any description or firepower, as they wish.
Zifnab
See, I am all against full automatic weapons. From where I stand, giving everyone in the nation a firearm is not the way to properly defend out society. It’s the path to anarchy. The assault weapons ban was a kowtow to the NRA by Democrats and the gun industry, while at the same time serving as a rallying point for those two groups to throw up a shitstorm about.
I’ve got a problem with handguns, but it’s a problem I can deal with. When it comes to sniper rifles, full-auto weapons, grenade launchers, land mines, flame throwers, and anti-tank missles I really do have a problem. Back in the 1700s when the latest military hardware consisted of water-resistant gunpowder cases, the line between “farmer” and “soldier” was a bit gray. But even the founding fathers probably didn’t envision the 2nd Amendment extending to warships or 50lb cannons.
I don’t want my neighbor packing an M-16 assault rifle for the same reasons that I don’t want him armed with mustard gas or a thermonuclear device. I don’t care how “easy they are to make”, passing any of these out behind the counter at Walmart is a recipe for anarchy.
CL
This law is nothing more than Wyoming’s way of scaring away “Blue Staters”.
“Oooh, those vicious Wyoming rednecks have legalized automatic weapons and silencers….lets build our obnoxious McMansion in Colorado instead.”
Nice try, but for every blue stater they scare away, a Texan will be there to take their place.
Zifnab
That’s was an interesting read, SmilingPolitely.
capelza
Oh Jesus H Christ….silencers???? Auto weapons?
Dudes and dudettes who are supporting this….if you are so worried about the animals you are hunting with your bow actually turning on you and endangering YOUR life, then maybe you shouldn’t be out there. Though, yes, that silencer will be handy getting rid of that pesky friend who has been boning your wife.
This is said as a gun (many) and bow owning woman in a family of hunters, including on Kodiak island…you know the place where the bears laugh at their lower 48 cousins and think when they see a small car loded with people watching them “Yum, crunchy on the outside, but soft in the middle”.
2nd amendment, yada, yada, yada…why does everyone always leave out the “well regulated Militia” bit when they are using the 2nd as an excuse to own any god damn weapon they take a fancy to.
And seriously, hunting, especially with deer and elk…a fully auto weapon would make hamburger on the hoof. It’s ridiculous. Someone above called these folks pussies…I agree. Not to mention, it ain’t very sporting.
StupidityRules
Rachel argued:
You really think some automatic weapons will stop the leftist cabals? Think again.
The only thing that will save us from Howard Dean and Cindy Sheehan are tactical nukes.
Now for some reason the goverment is refusing the citizens what obviously should be their God given right according to the second amendment.
Patrick Lasswell
CaseyL,
“The claim that “gun ownership is a defense against tyranny” has got to be one of the most laughable obvious lies ever. Tyranny isn’t something you can shoot at. Tyranny is secret police enforcing secret policies, indefinite detention with no recourse, and electronic surveillance of your every move and conversation. Tyranny is a government that sets itself above the law, ignores the law, ignores orders to obey the law, and undermines the institutions that enforce the law – and gets away with it all.”
Adams and Jefferson were kooks who never saw tyranny? I beg your pardon, but you are wrong. The peasants of Europe who had no arms were subjects of tyranny, and both Adams and Jefferson saw it with their own eyes when they were there.
Tyranny is not detaining the self-sworn enemies of your nation caught red-handed on the field of battle without trial. You left out the part where the people being held are acting to create a theocracy. If this were a tyranny, we would have gone to the detainees home villages, killed all the men and enslaved the women and children. That’s what the detainees would do to us.
Why do our foriegn enemies get extended our rights while they are trying so hard to destroy them?
Patrick Lasswell
One note for clarification. I came here from seeing John’s post on Pajamas Media, not some gun site. I expect most of the factual arguments brought here were from PJ Media.
Dave_Violence
I would think that automatice weapons would the the firearm of choice when hunting bears – in a gay bar.
I was bit surprised that Ballon Juice would link to a Gun Guys’ post. Gun Guys is a front for the folks who promote gun bans and such. I’m also surprised that some of those who posted comments on this didn’t realize that plenty of us semi-regular posters are NRA members.
I’ll inject this: the police are very good at catching law-abiding citizens doing nothing. If guns are banned, it would be very easy for the cops to snatch them all up from those who followed the various and sundry laws regarding gun ownership, like registering them in the first place. Cops are not very good at catching criminals and the justice system is even worse at removing crminals from the general populace, thus criminals are going to pay as much attention to any new gun laws as they do to laws against mugging old ladies and such.
etc. Those who opposed the 2nd amendment, especially those who don’t understand that “well-regulated” means to shoot straight, those who forget the independent clause “the right of the people to keep and bear arms” there’s no hope for you as Americans.
capelza
Dave Violence…former NRA member here (my husband, the rural Oregon boy, door gunner in Vietnam, never saw a rifle he didn’t like kind of guy quit the organisation when he realised they had become a walking advertisement for the weapons industry, we’re stritly RMEF now) ..just a question:
Did I miss the part of the 2nd that states “well regulated” means knowing how to shoot straight? Seems if that was the case the words would have been “well TRAINED”.
I’m still waiting to hear where the NRA stands on the Cory Mayes case, too, btw.
CaseyL
Jeez, I had a response all ready to go to Patrick Lasswell, when I reread his post and realized it was too OOT and incoherent and nonfactual to be real.
DougJ, you have simply got to stop spoofing us alla da time.
Patrick Lasswell
CaseyL,
Here’s the thing: you think you are winning an argument, but what you are doing is losing your next election. The electorate is genuinely concerned about terrorists on US soil and really don’t care about the rights of foriegn nationals actively organizing destructive acts. Go ahead and tie yourself to the mast of righteous indignation, you’re still going to hit the rocks.
ppGaz
“Tie yourself to the mast” reference: Three points.
capelza
Patrick Lasswell, the electorate is more concerned with who is going to be on American Idol or whether whether Terri Hatcher’s nipples showed at the last awards ceremony or if Jared Leto really has been banging Lindsay Lohan (don’t ask why I even know these things…it was traumatic).
They are not concerned about hunters in Wyoming being able to put silencers on their auto weapons while they are BOW hunting. And they certainly do not associate said ideas with protecting themselves from foreign terrorists. Even this electorate can tell the difference. And they certainly don’t look to WY bow hunters as the last line of defense against “tyranny”. Actually most don’t even know where WY is.
ppGaz
Oh, NOW you tell me.
CaseyL
I’m running for office? Really? I don’t remember even filing to run for office!
Is that what the argument is about? Either we give up our civil liberties or we have no defense against terrorist attacks?
Wow. Guess we need some new national mottos, since that “Land of the Free, Home of the Brave” doesn’t really apply anymore, does it?
How about:
“It’s better to live on your knees than die on your feet. Belly-crawling works good, too.”
“Another frightened lickspittle freedomhater for Bush.”
“George Bush and the GOP: Succeeding where the Axis, the Communists, and the terrorists failed.”
Patrick Lasswell
CaseyL,
If you were seriously concerned about your freedoms under the current administration:
A. You wouldn’t be posting this, you would be kissing their asses and covering yours.
B. You would be in another country.
C. You would be organizing serious resistance and a lot more interested in the facts of firearm usage, instead of your own hyperbole.
Why exactly am I giving up my civil liberties when active foriegn agents arranging my destruction are imprisioned? Why are you supporting their organizing of attacks and opposing my acquisition of tools to oppose them? What does protecting Islamist theocrats have to do with preserving civil liberties? Do you really want them to succeed?
Pooh
Shorter NRA types:
Oooga-boooga-boooga. I think we’re seeing the evolution of the Chewbaca defense into the bogeyman defense…
Jon H
So why would there be a need for this law, STATEWIDE, in Wyoming, when grizzlies aren’t exactly common in most of the state?
Jon H
I must say, though, that silencers would probably make Wyoming the #1 most popular location for Al Qaeda training in the US.
capelza
Because I can’t help myself, this just in…VP Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter down in Texas.
So many ironies left unnoted, I hope the fellow will recover completely.
rilkefan
Just heard Cheney shot a fellow hunter. Oops.
Not with a “silenced automatic”, just a shotgun.
The Other Steve
That would be a first.
Gary Farber
My few words on the Veep blasting away.
Gary Farber
Added a few addenda, if anyone cares.
Krista
I guess it must just be a difference in perspective and experience.
Precisely. I can totally understand having guns for hunting. I can even understand wanting a handgun, if one had been previously attacked, or if you had a friend or relative who had been attacked. But I really just cannot grasp the concept of enjoying shooting automatic weapons — something that was designed for the sole purpose of killing other human beings.
I’ve shot guns (took a safety course). It didn’t bother me, but I derived no pleasure or satisfaction from it. I have no desire to ever touch an automatic weapon.
gswift
And this is pretty much where I sit as well. Except for that sniper rifle thing. Sniper rifle is just a rifle capable of precision shots at long distances. It’s not that difficult to make a basic hunting rifle like a Remington 700 and make it accurate out to 600 yards or farther.
The Disenfranchised Voter
Ok well that sure was a fucking waste of my time. I figured someone would come up with a better justification for silencers on auto’s in the field but noone did. The best I got was it hurt my ear drums! Well fucking wear muffs or have plugs in your ears. Or instead, since you should only be using the auto in the case of an emergency, don’t be a fucking pussy and just take the sound if an emergency happens.
The time that really pisses me off about a good number of the pro-2nd amendment people is that they care so much about the second, but don’t give two fucks about the other 9, specifically the first and especially right now, the 4th. How can you be only pro-second amendment while not giving a shit about the rest of the bill of rights?
I’m pro-Bill of Rights. I value each and everyone of the amendments, and yes that includes the second. Why some others are only pro-2nd amendment is beyond me.
The Disenfranchised Voter
*The time=The thing
gswift
Ok well that sure was a fucking waste of my time. I figured someone would come up with a better justification for silencers on auto’s in the field but noone did.
As a gun fan, that’s my peeve with this type of nonsense. If you’re bowhunting deer, or like me sometimes are flyfishing a remote area with grizzlies, etc. the gun you’ll be carrying is a large caliber pistol like a .44, .45, .454, .50, etc.
If the guy thinks people should be allowed to carry silencers and/or full auto in the forests, fine. Propose the bill and have the debate. But acting like it’s some kind of hunter protection issue is stupid. It’s obviously a poorly thought out stunt, and just provides an opportunity to paint gun enthusiasts as nutjobs.
Kimmitt
Because we’re better than them. That’s the whole fricking point.
No Problem
what’s all the fuss about having silencers. you’re all so caught up in what you see in the movies that you forget that silencers are a SAFETY MECHANISM. HEARING PROTECTION FOR THE SHOOTER. if your real concern is criminal use of silencers then you forget that criminals CAN and WILL break the law to obtain them anyway(which isn’t that hard). some want to make guns illegal all together…would you rather be shot or stabbed and sliced?
Making a semi-auto rifle into full-auto isn’t that hard. I’ve seen a pit bull go down after 6 shots from a .45. most states only allow you to have a 5 bullet clip when hunting. now imagine a grizzly running at you a 25mph. Could YOU keep your cool enough to plant one between his eyes before you get mauled to death…… idiots. do the usa a favor and move to england.
Silence..erz
I agree with the above statement.
Most people don’t understand that silencers do not make the gun completely silent, albeit the name.
A rifle equipped with a silencer may produce noises at around 130db, which is enough to possible cause hearing damage, but a lot better than 160db.
Please, make the crime illegal, so that the criminals are punished, not the innocent law abiding citizens who are courteous to themselves as well as those who are around them. Think of it like putting mufflers on cars.