Members of the Ohio House of Representatives have approved a local politician’s proposal to allow hunters to use silencers on their guns.
In a 76-15 vote Wednesday, house members voted in favor of House Bill 234. The legislation will now move to the Senate for further consideration.
Silencers, or suppressors, are used to muffle or diminish the sound of a firearm. While they’re illegal for hunting in the state, suppressors are legal for Ohio residents to own.
Their popularity has skyrocketed in Ohio in the last year. The state ranks fourth in the nation for the most registered suppressors, with more than 25,000 legally owned, according to 2013 data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
State Representatives John Becker (R-Union Township) and Cheryl Grossman (R-Grove City) introduced the bill in July after they were approached by hunters who claim to have hearing damage caused by their non-suppressed firearms.
“This bill only has to do with the hearing loss to hunters,” said Becker.
So wear fucking earplugs. Or find a recreational hobby other than killing shit. But we do not need to flood the market with silencers, for obvious reasons, not to mention the fact that we’ll probably see a marked increase of hunter on hunter accidental shootings.
philpm
The NRA stupid just gets worse. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be hunting around anyone with a silencer on their rifle. Just begs for people getting shot “accidently” in the woods.
KG
is there any legitimate, non-criminal reason to have a silencer on a gun? i ask this in all honesty, because my only experience with silencers (and guns for the most part) are in movies, where they are used to kill people without being noticed.
philpm
One other thing. I bet the game wardens in Ohio are stocking up on body armor right about now.
philpm
@KG: No, there really is no legitimate reason to have a silencer, which is the main reason they were outlawed to begin with.
NonyNony
Or learn how to bow hunt. The only way to damage your ear by firing an arrow is to hold the bow at a really weird angle.
Liberty60
There’s your upside.
Sorry, my humor re: ammosexuals tends to be malevolent.
Tom Levenson
@KG: Shooting – related hearing loss is real. Gunshots are loud enough so that each one produces some risk of damage. That’s why you wear ear protection at a range, for example. You should probably wear some if you hunt too. But if you’re shooting enough as a deer hunter to put yourself a great deal of risk, UR DOIN IT RONG.
In any event — this is another case of gun nuts putting everyone else at risk. The sound of gunfire is a damn good signal to hikers and recreational wilderness types to duck and cover. I don’t hike anywhere open to hunting in season anyway — but it’s useful to have the extra warning. This just takes that away. Like John says: wear your fucking ear muffs people.
Amir Khalid
I’ve never been near a loaded firearm in my life. But my understanding was that suppressors only reduce somewhat the noise a gun makes, they can’t turn it into a nearly silent weapon. As the video at the link demonstrates, people in the vicinity would still know a gun had been fired. Would it really be so bad to legalise suppressors?
Steve from Antioch
@KG:
They lessen noise for recreational shooting.
When professional hunters are brought in to kill coyotes or deer in urban areas, they often used suppressed firearms so as not to disturb people nearby.
Why in the world would sound suppression lead to more accidental shootings?
kuvasz
As a guy who used to hunt that has to be the craziest idea in the world.
philpm
@Steve from Antioch: If you’re in the woods hunting, and the sound of the gun is muffled, it can give someone a false sense that the shot you heard was farther away than it actually is, and could mean you are putting yourself in harms way unneccesarily.
Steve in the ATL
Suppressors hurt accuracy as well
Could be good or bad, I suppose
Belafon
@Steve from Antioch: Someone shoots a gun in an urban area, even if it’s authorized, it should be broadcast.
Shakezula
Who doesn’t wear ear protection when they hunt?
Next they’ll demand the right to build permanent, enclosed stands on public lands because their feeties and handsies and nosies gets all chilly-cold when they’re waiting for a deer to come within range. In fact, why can’t they just set up one of those remote hunting arrangements so they can shoot deer from the comfort of their homes?
Seriously, fuck off, WATBs
@Tom Levenson: Yes, how many shots are they firing in a season that they’re jacking up their hearing? I suspect it is from something else, like target practice without ear protection or hell, a job where they’re exposed to loud noises.
Eric U.
I’m not sure how to change my behavior when I hear a gun shot, so I’m not sure that it would change anything with silencers. What would be nice is if hunters were a little more careful about what they shoot at, but I also wish I had some unicorn shit to fertilize my garden
Big ole hound
I sure hope this reduces the population of deer hunting wingnuts who shoot at anything that moves. I enjoy bird hunting and will only hunt when the bird season is separate from other game seasons. We who enjoy watching good bird dogs work and eat our prey have always seemed a saner bunch. Can’t have a silencer on a shotgun and the pellets drop to earth about 60 yards out so the chances of hitting and unintended target are greatly reduced unless you’re Dick Cheney.
SatanicPanic
@Amir Khalid: yeah, I think movies greatly exaggerate how effective they are. I don’t know if this is really that big of a deal.
KG
@Eric U.: a comedian (i forget which one but i want to say chris rock) used to have a routine about how people reaction to gun shots. white people duck, everyone else gets the fuck out, basically.
Steve from Antioch
@Shakezula: I wear protection at the range but usually not while hunting. You need to hear things when you’re hunting, especially if you are working a dog in cover.
jrg
@Amir Khalid: Guns with silencers are really not that quiet. A .45 with a silencer is still a good bit louder than a .22.
Belafon
@Steve from Antioch: I bet you’d like to hear if another hunter was shooting near you.
JMG
This ought to be called Darwin’s Law, because that’s what’ll happen out in the woods each hunting season.
Shakezula
@Steve from Antioch: My brain was stuck on deer hunting.
However, this is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone complain of hearing damage due to hunting and I call bullshit, or really shitty hunters.
srv
You people clearly have never lived out in the country during hunting season, or you actually like the sound of guns.
I’m not sure how your evolutionary tree got here if your ancestors ran around screaming at the antelope before chasing them. Or maybe you think tofurkey grows on trees.
jimmiraybob
Well, at least the bloody civil war that the NRA and the TeaBirchRepublicans are getting us prepped for will be less noisy than I’d feared.
Punchy
Is this supposed to be a negative thing?
Shakezula
@JMG: It already happens. In places where hunting is more common you can tell hunting season has started by the first news report of hunting-related mishaps. (Assuming the sound of gun fire hasn’t given you a clue.) It isn’t just guns that are an issue, going up in a tree stand while drunk can have hilarious consequences.
peach flavored shampoo
Who needs an expensive divorce lawyer in Ohio anymore? A gun + silencer + “outdoor accident” for about $500, PLUS you get to keep all yours and hers’ shit and probably get some sympathy sex with the hot neighbor to boot.
mantooth
You all do know that “silencers” don’t actually work in real life like they do in the movies, right? There is actually quite a bit of noise.
Eric U.
@srv: of all the ammosexuals, I actually am fairly supportive of hunters. On the whole, they are the kind of person that would pave over every forest if it sped up their trip to the convenience store to get cigarettes and lottery tickets. But because they are hunters, they value unspoiled land. this is a good thing, and I’ll give up the forests to them for a couple of weeks a year.
I wouldn’t mind if the guys that hunted on the mountain behind my house used silencers, it can get kinda annoying sometimes
raven
@Tom Levenson: When I went for my hearing test the doc said they now have hearing aids that automatically block the report of a weapon. In more news I got denied for hearing loss and tinitus by the VA. Just in training we had 150+ on the line firing M-14’s with no protection.
Paul in KY
@Tom Levenson: Every time I think I’ve seen the most asinine ‘proposal’ from the RW assholes & I think that the AEH (Asshole Event Horizon) has been reached, along comes another stupid/craven/deeply weird proposal.
I do a lot of hiking & when some cracker is firing a weapon, I want to hear it.
Note to self: Stay out of Ohio woods.
NotMax
@Eric U.
Realize it was sarcasm, but it triggered whichever brain cell was storing the term terra preta. A pretty close second, and may as well be magical (it self-regenerates!) as modern science has yet to figure out the nitty gritty behind its creation.
BethanyAnne
If anyone actually wants to read about silencers, and why this would be useful, this Ars Technica article from last week is great. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/learning-the-science-behind-silencers-on-the-range-with-silencerco/
Or, you know, don’t. I think the article makes good points, and that this is a reasonable request. Silencers don’t work like movies portray (surprise!). They take a shot from “can do permanent hearing damage in one shot” to “oy, loud”. I’m a vegetarian “gun grabber”, and the NRA are crazy motherfuckers, but this looks reasonable to me. If you’re going to wander in the woods trying to kill animals, this allows you to talk to any hunting partners, and take a shot without risking permanent hearing loss.
Well, pescatarian, but that still looks silly to me. I go with “meat is murder, but fish is justifiable homicide”. :)
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: The British had a silencer (used with ammo that wasn’t quite as powerful as normal), on their bran guns where the only sound you would hear would be the clicking of the fire pin.
A normal silenced weapon still sounds sorta like an air compressed something going off. Much less sound than normal, though.
Mobile RoonieRoo
My father was a hunter and he had hearing damage from hunting. He didn’t target shoot but went hunting probably 6 to 10 times a year. Hunters serve a positive purpose and are not all a bunch of gun nuts. You don’t have enough hunters and the poulation of deer suffer as they over populate an area vs the amount if food source. I’ve seen the seasons where there are starving small deer in the Hill Country when we didn’t have enough hunters. Hunter bashing just shows ignorance.
You might also want to educate yourself about how suppressors on rifles work before you freak out and jump to asinine conclusions.
catclub
@kuvasz:
Actually, the balanced budget amendment gets that honor.
Epicurus
Funny, Cole, I don’t really see a downside there.
Face
Call me stupid, but I’d like to be able to hear from a half-mile+ away the use of a killing device with the ability to 86 me from a half-mile away. Yes, silencers dont completely silence, but they muffle the sound of a gadget able to drop me dead in an instant.
I’d like to know if said gadget was being used anywhere near me so I could GTFO, and silencers assist in keeping that secret unnecessarily.
Walker
Actually, the Ars Technica article on this is really good:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/12/learning-the-science-behind-silencers-on-the-range-with-silencerco/
One of the things they point out is that it is not just hunters. Supposedly hunting dogs go deaf in 3-5 years from all the gunfire. With suppressors, the dogs never go deaf.
So this is a really good idea, unless you plan to outlaw hunting dogs.
I fail to see the downside to this. This is not the movies. You cannot silently assassinate anyone with suppressors. That is why they are called suppressors and not silencers.
Arclite
You say that like it’s a bad thing…
? Martin
This is worth watching.
But here’s the punchline:
This is the same type of transition that drones create – lowering the marginal cost of using a weapon. Previously, deploying a weapon had a low to moderate up-front capital cost and a high recurring cost. The gun was cheap, the bullet expensive. We’re replacing that with really expensive guns that cost nothing to fire. The incentives that creates are to use it as often as possible to justify that capital cost.
The controlling factor here is that the power source for the laser is non-trivial. You need something as large as a ship to contain it, but over time that will change. They’re been working on putting these in large planes to shoot down inbound missiles from altitude. It’s just a matter of time before they can marry this with a drone and strike ground targets with virtually no direct risk to US troops, no limit to the number of shots that can be fired (drones are limited to maybe 2-4 shots per flight), and no limit due to the cost per shot. Once the drone is paid for, so long as it isn’t shot down the marginal cost to fly it goes to zero, but the marginal cost to kill someone also goes to zero. So why not use it everywhere?
CONGRATULATIONS!
Doesn’t change the BATF requirement of a $250/year fee and you granting the feds the right to inspect your residence whenever the fuck they feel like it.
I’m in California and I can buy a silencer today…but the Feds will have their money and their inspections. No state lege can change that.
This is truly a nothingburger.
Corner Stone
Anyone else watching the Brennan CIA presser?
Amir Khalid
@Paul in KY:
I’m all for healthy firearms myself.
Punchy
As with anything gun related, just find/hire 1000+ young black males to purchase 1000+ silencers in one weekend (clue in a reporter at the local news station), laugh at the ensuing White Wrinkley Freakout, and then smile as the bill is quietly reversed.
? Martin
Well, I was shot at once while crossing a field near (but not in) a hunting area when I was a teenager. I saw the bullet strike the ground sloping upward about 20 feet in front of me. I barely heard the gun fire. I have no idea if it was accidental or deliberate. I was just crossing a little gully that had some residual snow and standing water in it and hit the deck and just lay there in the snow for a good 15 minutes before I dared stick my head up and then I hauled ass to the side of the field I was walking toward with a shopping center just beyond the next row of trees.
I’m glad I heard as much of the shot that I did. Not sure I would have recognized the bullet strike on the ground for what it was.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Still in disbelief that he flat out redefined the CIA as a branch of the military.
patrick II
If you fire ammunition that travels at supersonic speed, there will be a sonic boom regardless of whether you are using a suppressor. Essentially, all ammunition normally used in hunting rifles is supersonic. There is also subsonic ammunition, but since the bullitt is going much slower, it is much less accurate and seldom used for hunting. . A subsonic round combined with a suppressor is actually pretty quiet, but I don’t think that combination will actually be used for hunting, since using earplugs would an easier option. Here is a video demonstration.
When I see laws like this passed I think it is using hunting as a cover for the real intention of right wing gun nuts that support these politicians — winning the secret war the government is going to wage on its white citizens. Or, more accurately, when the government expands the war from its black citizens to include its white citizens because Obama.
peach flavored shampoo
Along with “smart” computers, wasn’t this pretty much the backstory described in the first “Terminator” movie?
catclub
@Punchy:
I agree, but given the $250 federal tax to start out, that is $250k. Your money? Mine?
NotMax
@Corner Stone
That each time he glances up from his prepared text he cannot look directly at the camera but shifts his eyes from side to side is a tell.
Corner Stone
He sounds scared to death.
trollhattan
@Paul in KY:
Bingo. When, not if, I hear rifle fire out hiking I look for cover. I do not want my first clue some asshat is out shootin’ to be an overhead branch splintering. We have hunters, we have poachers, and we have people who just lurve going out and shooting at shit for no reason beyond they just like shooting at shit. And I am not surrendering the forest to them.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
Unduly nervous, definitely. Now going the ‘a few bad apples’ route.
And seems to believe using the acronym EIT somehow removes the stigma.
? Martin
@peach flavored shampoo: Yeah, pretty much. The AI eliminates a lot of the remaining cost being that of the operators. There’s some activity on that front as well – South Korea is looking to deploy fully autonomous machine guns in the DMZ. Uses software + IR + motion tracking to identify and hit targets. Swap that out for a laser and you’re sitting on something that once you pay for it, it can sit there and attack targets nearly forever with minimal maintenance and virtually no recurring cost.
Tommy
WTF. I live in a rural area. Everybody around me owns a gun. Not because they fear their house broken into, but to hunt. I personally don’t get it. Heck my parents are in my neck of the woods, house sitting and they had some plumbing issues. Called the guy that my brother said to call and his voice mail noted he was in a tree stand, with a bow, looking for a deer to kill. It would be a few days before he was back.
I say this because I don’t know a single hunter that thinks having silencers on their weapons is a good idea.
? Martin
@Corner Stone: Good. He should be.
NotMax
@Corner Stone
“CIA’s legitimacy is closely tied to its credibility and we can afford to lose neither.”
A whole lot of words to admonish people to STFU.
JPL
@NotMax: @Corner Stone: Thanks for the update. Did he really say it was a military branch?
Another Holocene Human
@philpm: I thought silencers reduced accuracy?!
Tommy
@trollhattan: I had not thought that. I am a huge hiker/camper as well. When I am out and I hear a gun I drop down. Make myself as small as possible. It is very rare that it happens, but my gosh if you hike and camp as much as I do, you know what I speak of.
NotMax
@JPL
Not directly, but when he said the “first boots on the ground” in Afghanistan were CIA, as was the first casualty, the meaning couldn’t have been more clear.
Another Holocene Human
Plenty of products under hunter ear protection:
https://www.google.com/search?q=hunter+ear+protection&oq=hunter+ear+protection&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i60l5.3251j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8#q=hunter+ear+protection&tbm=shop
Didn’t take much googling to find out that silencers are now being sold as magical
wine agersrifle accuracy* enhancers:http://www.accurateshooter.com/gear-reviews/suppressors-what-you-need-to-know/
Even the shill selling this stuff says it doesn’t reduce sound enough not to need ear protection, lol.
*-you know, the opposite of what silencers are famous for, that’s why silencers are used over and over again in gun homicides at close range
Another Holocene Human
Okay FYWP I guess that’ll learn me to drop naked Google links into a post instead of wrapping them in html.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@NotMax: DISA objects. Probably pretty vehemently.
trollhattan
@Mobile RoonieRoo:
Whilst not knowing where “Hill Country” might be, western deer populations are declining. Hunting numbers are not.
D58826
@Steve in the ATL: From the point of view of the deer, probably good
Kryptik, A Man Without a Country
Tangentially related, Pew Research has found that since Newtown, support for more and more gun rights has spiked:
So…yeah. NRA keeps winning and winning, and fucking winning, and the only response the public seems to have to this much gun crazy is “MOOORE!! We want more, to save us from the rising tide of crazy superthugs and illegals!!!”
Fuck’s sake.
scav
What I’m enjoying is the safety of actively consenting to the activity hunters ears must be protected by governmental adjustment of laws, while the actual physical safety (including very lives) of bystanders must in no way be abridged in any way by the modification of laws. The tree of liberty is such a picky eater.
SatanicPanic
OT but I liked this Bloomberg Interactive thingamajig on decreasing gas consumption in the USA. Good for us!
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Kryptik, A Man Without a Country: This is the same electorate that purity pony progressives are insisting can and will put the next FDR and compliant Congress into office, if only it’s handled properly.
Square that circle.
kc
Speaking of dumb laws, there’s a bill pending in Florida that would force innocent schoolchildren to watch a Dinesh D’Souza flick (apologies if Betty has already posted about this)
Steve from Antioch
@Another Holocene Human:
Got some links to where silencers have been used over and over again in gun homicides in America?
mattH
@srv: well, considering that 99% of my ancestors never saw, let alone handled a gun, I think your point is foolish. If you are hearing that much noise every year it makes me all the more glad I stopped hunting decades ago…
catclub
@NotMax: Legacy of Ashes was not mis-titled.
Paul in KY
@CONGRATULATIONS!: You also need a threaded barrel for the weapon.
Paul in KY
@Amir Khalid: Should have been bren guns.. I haz edit probs.
mattH
@Walker: In my neck of the woods it’s illegal to hunt deer with dogs, and as it’s been mentioned, you can’t silence a shotgun
scav
@scav: Verbs. They just won’t keep up when sentences get reworked. Oh well, those bystanders were liable to be shot anyway without protection of law, so any additional wounds due to exploding verb-choice may just be icing. First and second amendmented.
Larv
@Walker:
I’m curious about how this would actually work in practice. Hunting with dogs is generally bird hunting (or rabbits, but the same principles apply), which is almost always done with shotguns. Not only are shotguns more difficult to silence, but it’s not like deer hunting where you’re lining up a shot at a more or less stationary or slow-moving target. Bird hunting is more dynamic, and you’re usually trying to take the bird on the wing. That’s why you have dogs, either to flush the birds into the sky and/or retrieve them from whatever awkward place they may have dropped out of the sky. The last thing I would want when making that kind of shot is a heavy chunk of metal at the end of my gun barrel. A good birding shotgun is a finely balanced instrument designed to be shot at a moving target, and a silencer would thoroughly fuck that balance.
This sounds more like a “won’t somebody please think of the
childrendogs” type of argument, meant more to generate support by appealing to peoples love of dogs than to actually protect dogs in the real world. Or is there some other sort of hunting that uses dogs that I’m not thinking of?Origuy
@Larv:
I’m not a hunter, but do they use dogs for wild boar hunting? Boar hunting is popular out here in California, but is it done in Ohio?
I do orienteering, which gets me into the woods and off the trails. Generally events are not scheduled during hunting season or in locations where hunters are active. However, poachers don’t respect the season. I’ve heard gunshots during a competition, but it’s usually from target shooters.
joel hanes
@Walker:
I fail to see the downside to this.
Really ?
Do you think that only hunters will purchase and use the silencers ?
(note that silencers degrade both range and accuracy)
Do you think that hunters will even be a big share of the market ?
The same punks who revel in guns but never hunt (and whose weapons are not suitable for hunting) will get a new thrill from having a silencer, and they’ll use them just as irresponsibly as they use the guns they already have. Cops faced with “silenced” weapons will freak out, and begin a new cycle of over-reaction.
San Jose has a microphone network that feeds a computer that triangulates to locate gunfire within the city limits. It’s a great idea, and I want it to keep working well.
joel hanes
@trollhattan:
western deer populations are declining
Good.
In many parts of the country, there are far too many deer for the existing habitat.
Larv
@Origuy:
Yeah, maybe boar hunting or other sorts of large-game hunting is a possibility. I know you can use dogs to hunt deer in some places. But in those you’re using dogs to flush or chase the game – I wouldn’t think they’d be close enough to the gun for hearing loss to be an issue. Bird hunting is the only type I can think of where the dog stays close to the hunter/gun. Most of my hunting experience is bird hunting, so it’s entirely possible I’m missing something. But it still seems more like a bid for sympathy for poor Fido than any real attempt to benefit hunting dogs.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Origuy: Yes, dogs are used in boar hunting. No, I don’t know if there is a boar season in Ohio.
I do have a little bit of good gun-related news to add. The gun range near the Goathouse Refuge has decided that the required noise abatement is too much trouble and has quietly shut down.
Jamey
Still not seein’ the downside here…
Another Holocene Human
@Steve from Antioch: Geez, seriously?
There are a bunch of people in state prison right now who killed parents or spouses with guns fitted with homemade silencers.
This dipshit got a gun from a friend and made a homemade silencer which he handed over to another friend to kill his family for his inheritance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dana_Ewell
Gregg Myers killed his dad and MIL using a homemade silencer. The crime was witnessed by a four year old boy:
http://mylifeofcrime.wordpress.com/2014/10/12/murder-in-the-family-gregg-myers-killed-his-father-jack-myers-and-his-stepmom-linda-myers-sentenced-to-lwop/
Another Holocene Human
Now, hunters don’t need silencers to commit murder. Bruce Moilanen killed his wife for the insurance money and to pursue another woman (who didn’t want him). He shot his wife in a “hunting accident” on the last day of deer season:
http://mdocweb.state.mi.us/OTIS2/otis2profile.aspx?mdocNumber=235252
Steve in the ATL
@D58826: Yes and no. No deer enjoys getting shot, but deer have no natural predators around here (automobiles don’t count as natural!) so their populations tend to grow very quickly where there is no hunting. Then you have deer dying of starvation and disease; it’s not pretty. The preferred method, per the USDA, is to thin the herd so that the deer population and food supply are in balance.
I learned this in my misspent youth, when I represented a client in litigation over a deer herd thinning plan. It was kind of fun winning it three times–thanks, appellate courts!
kindness
You know that ‘Crack’ heard when a gun is shot? Much of that is the bullet traveling at supersonic speeds. It is a sonic boom of sorts. You can suppress the noise a gun makes but in addition to using a silencer these guys are talking about but you also have to use ammunition that has less powder and to do it right you have to drill holes in the barrel of your gun to allow the force to vent so the bullets come out slow.
Yea, I have one of those conversion manuals for a Ruger 10/22. I’ve never done it but I let one of my friends use it and he did it and said it worked really well.
Ripley
I thought as much.
RoonieRoo
@trollhattan: In the ’80’s in the Texas Hill Country we had a period where they jacked up the price of a deer hunting license or put in an artificial limitation (I think it was specifically the out of state license but I was teen and may not have the facts exactly right.) Anyway, due to some type of messing around with licensing we had a dramatic drop in the people coming to hunt during deer season for several years which led to a deer population explosion followed by a really weird for us winter. (Weird for us means actual snow on the ground) The combination meant we had a huge population of tiny, sickly, starving deer that were stripping the trees of all their bark and coming all the way into towns from the country. It was not pretty.
Anyway, my father was a bird hunter. He could never shoot deer because he found them too beautiful. The experience of those years showed me the role that the hunter does play in our area. The state made adjustments in the licensing, spent some years lobbying out of state hunters to come to the Texas Hill Country and it resulted in a much healthier and vibrant deer population. As a result I get a bit worked up when I see hunter bashing because I don’t think that a lot of people comprehend that many of our hunters are some of the strongest conservationists we have.
Interestingly, most of the people I know that are gun nuts are not hunters and most of the hunters I know are not gun nuts and believe in gun control. Just my experience but ymmv.
Corner Stone
@RoonieRoo: South Texas had some weird population cycles going on, as well.
But it’s hard to distinguish between hunters and gun nuts in the last 15+ years.
Hunters used to be like my next door neighbor’s grandad, or my best friend’s dad, or some of the wingnuttiest RWNJ family people you could imagine that I grew up with who all *ALL* respected the land, the animals and the people they shared it with when they were hunting. Back then they would have had the harshest of words for anyone who broke faith with normal, traditional thoughts and practices.
But nowadays? Hunters can just about be the same kind of asshole as those who cruise up to a dove hunting zone in a jacked up loud ass mudder truck playing AC/DC or that Boot In Your Ass country music idiot, and get you or your dog killed.
Robert Sneddon
Weirdly, in Britain there’s no restriction on using silencers and sound suppressors on firearms. I’ve shot silenced weapons myself and a friend hunts regularly, thinning out rabbit populations with a suppressed air rifle. The lower noise means the rabbits don’t scatter after the first shot and he can get several before they spook.
As for using them in open-field hunting in the US I don’t see the problem. If someone is hit by a bullet it happens before the sound of the shot will reach them as pretty much every modern rifle used for hunting fires ammo at more than twice the speed of sound (ca. 2400 fps in your quaint USian medieval measurement system).
Sloegin
“accidental” shootings.
Steve from Antioch
@Another Holocene Human:
Wow there’s two right there.
I would bet you a dollar that there are more people killed in the United States by lighting each year than are killed by silenced weapons.
I am agnostic about whether they should be more readily available or used during hunting, but the idea that there is going to be some spike in the murder rate because of them is just chuckleheaded.
Steve from Antioch
@kindness:
Shhh, don’t tell the bedwetters in this thread – they imagine that they are going to go out in the woods and dodge bullets by ducking when they hear the shot.
Steve from Antioch
@Larv:
I would guess that most of the harm to dogs hearing comes from dogs in duck blinds, where they are really close. There are hearing protectors you can buy for dogs: http://www.earplugstore.com/mumufordo.html
Corner Stone
@Robert Sneddon:
*WHAP*
{whispering} “Hey Steve, got any more of that jerky?…Steve?…”
Corner Stone
@Steve from Antioch:
I love it when people talk about dropping down when they hear the report.
Larv
@Steve from Antioch:
Good point about duck hunting. Not something I have much experience with, so maybe I’m wrong, but it still seems to me that a heavy chunk of metal at the end of your barrel would be an impediment to aiming and accuracy. I’m pretty ambivalent about whether or not allowing suppressors for hunting is in general is a good idea, but the dog-protection angle just seems dubious to me.
jimmiraybob
@Steve from Antioch:
“Shhh, don’t tell the bedwetters in this thread – they imagine that they are going to go out in the woods and dodge bullets by ducking when they hear the shot.”
Three times I’ve been on the trail, twice with friends, when the sound of shot/bullets ripping through the underbrush made more sense when I/we heard the actual gun shot. Instead of ducking we were able to yell loud enough to alert the nearby gun enthusiasts that they were on the verge of killing or maiming fellow humans (by shooting in a multi-use area that included hikers and/or campers). Plug that into your high level logic device.
Steve from Antioch
@Larv:
I have enough trouble hitting ducks as it is – no way in the world I would try to add a silencer on the end of 28 or 30 inch barrel.
trollhattan
@jimmiraybob:
Same here. That one, clean shot by a deerhunter who has verified his target with 100% confidence is not what’s being discussed here. There’s never “just one shot” unless you’re already dead.
Walker
@mattH:
Actually, not true. The Ars Technica article demonstrates suppressors for shotguns.
Walker
@joel hanes:
Do you think that only hunters will purchase and use the silencers ?
I see no downside because suppressors are useless except for making gunshots not need ear protection. They are not quiet.
There are no such things as silencers. This is not the movies.
Avery Greynold
I must have misunderstood something. I’m all for the federal government taking action to prevent hearing loss from gunfire. Of course, that means that revolvers become illegal because silencers don’t work on them. And each and every gun must be permanently fitted with federally approved ($$$) silencers or else turned in.
mattH
@Walker: The article sounds of bullshit at times.
I’d love to see the total shot amount, but I feel pretty safe saying that with 71/2 shot, we aren’t talking more than 1oz to 1&1/4 oz and it’s not a terribly loud round to start with. Ooo, then look, pic #4 even shows the box, Winchester Game Load, 1oz shot. About the only 12ga shell that sound quieter are trap loads with less powder (1100ish fps) or less shot (3/4 oz) or both.
I find it interesting he quotes NIOSH ratings for shotguns, but never gives us the actual unsuppresed rating for the shell used, yet is more than happy to give #s for the suppressed shots for both a 6″ and 12″ suppressors to one tenth of a dB, so we know for a fact they were testing on range. Not terribly scientific (or even useful) if he’s not establishing controls/baseline data. Or, he’s just spouting off data provided to him by the SilencerCo rep.
Pic #4 again gives a ton of info, Remington 870 Tactical, meaning 18&1/2″ barrel, so the longer suppressor adds another 12″, making it very unwieldy as a home protection weapon (just try swinging that 31″ suppressed barrel in a narrow hallway).
I could go on, but a lot of the article seems like amateur hour, on the one hand professing limited experience with guns, but the only info he seemed to relate probably all came from the business representative he was shooting with. I don’t think this even rises to the level of a Field and Stream article. “Learning the science behind silencers” my ass.
beejeez
@Corner Stone: Hur hur. So funny when people who don’t live for hunting are worried about getting shot.
brantl
What hunter hunts enough to sustain hearing damage, to any appreciable degree? Game limits won’t let you shoot enough to sustain hearing damage, unless you hunt the tame game places, like Cheney.
brantl
@srv: I have lived in the country most of my adult life, and don’t want an inaccurate idea of where a gun is going off. Especially if it’s going off a lot.
Paul in KY
@Walker: The hitman in No Country for Old Men had one on his weapon.
Of course, Hollywood movie, etc. etc.
Larv
@mattH:
Yeah, that was less an article about the science of silencers and more an extended ad for that manufacturer. There wasn’t much journalistic objectivity to be found.