BlankThis isn't ham radio related, except you'll see who the inventor of the gun 
silencer was, something I didn't realize.

Steve K8SP





Trump Administration May Make Silencers More Available



The federal government has strictly limited the sale of firearm silencers for as 
long as James Bond and big-screen gangsters have used them to discreetly shoot 
enemies between the eyes.  Silencers, currently subject to taxes and wait 
periods, could become a mass-market option for gun enthusiasts if the unified 
Republican government pushes for deregulation.

Now the gun industry, which for decades has complained about the restrictions, 
is pursuing new legislation to make silencers
easier to buy, and a key backer is Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter and the 
oldest son of the president-elect, who campaigned as a friend of the gun 
industry.


The legislation stalled in Congress last year. But with Republicans in charge of 
the House and Senate and the elder Trump moving into the White House, gun rights 
advocates are excited about its prospects this year. They hope to position the 
bill the same way this time not as a Second Amendment issue, but as a 
public-health effort to safeguard the eardrums of the nation's 55 million gun 
owners. They even named it the Hearing Protection Act. It would end treating 
silencers as the same category as machine guns and grenades, thus eliminating a 
$200 tax and a nine-month approval process.

"It's about safety," Trump Jr. explained in a September video interview with the 
founder of SilencerCo, a Utah silencer manufacturer. "It's a health issue, 
frankly.

Violence prevention advocates are outraged that the industry is trying to ease 
silencer restrictions by linking the issue to the eardrums of gun owners. They 
argue the legislation will make it easier for criminals and potential mass 
shooters to obtain devices to conceal attacks.

"They want the general public to think it's about hearing aids or something," 
said Kristen Rand, the legislative director of the Violence Policy Center. "It's 
both a silly and smart way to do it, I guess. But when the general public finds 
out what's really happening, there will be outrage."

The silencer industry and gun rights groups say critics are vastly overstating 
the dangers, arguing that Hollywood has created an unrealistic image of 
silencers, which they prefer to call "suppressors. They cite studies showing 
that silencers reduce the decibel level of a gunshot from a dangerous 165 to 
about 135 the sound of a jackhammer and that they are rarely used in crimes.

But gun-control activists say silencers are getting quieter, particularly in 
combination with subsonic ammunition, which is less
lethal but still damaging. They point to videos on YouTube in which silencers 
make high-powered rifles have "no more sound than a pellet gun," according to 
one demonstrator showing off a silenced semiautomatic .22LR.

Proponents say that's not a good way to judge the sound. "You're still going to 
hear the gunfire from far away," said Knox Williams, president of the American 
Suppressor Association. "These things are still incredibly loud. Even with the 
restrictions, silencers have become one of the fastest-growing segments of the 
gun industry, which pushed accessories as gun sales level off. In 2010, there 
were 285,087 registered silencers. Last year: 902,085.

Rep. Matt Salmon, an Arizona Republican who regularly shoots with silencers, 
introduced the Hearing Protection Act in the House in 2015. A companion bill in 
the Senate was championed by Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. Though the bill never 
made it to committee hearings, it generated tremendous interest, becoming the 
third-most-viewed piece of legislation on Congress' website last year. (Top was 
the Democrat-led Assault Weapons Ban of 2015.)

Salmon recently retired, and it's not clear yet who will reintroduce the 
measure. The bill had 82 co-sponsors -- all but two of them Republicans. Easing 
the restrictions could have a profound public-health impact, champions of the 
legislation say. Hunters often shoot without hearing protection so they can hear 
prey moving. Many recreational shooters don't like wearing ear covers, which can 
be heavy and hot and in gun ranges lead to many conversations ending with, "I 
can't hear you.

Silencers are also marketed as must-have attachments for high-powered rifles --  
a tactical necessity that
reduces recoil, thus improving aim. "Quiet guns are easier to shoot," the 
National Rifle Association says in its American Rifleman magazine. "Try it.



Stigma

Silencers were invented in 1908 by Hiram Percy Maxim, a graduate of MIT whose 
father invented the first fully automatic machine gun. The younger Maxim had a 
knack for reducing loud noises; he also contributed to the development of the 
automobile muffler.

"I have always loved to shoot, but I never thoroughly enjoyed it when I knew 
that the noise was annoying other people," he said late in life. "It occurred to 
me one day that there was no need for the noise. Why not do away with it and 
shoot quietly?"

Maxim solved the problem in the bathtub. He noticed that the water swirled 
silently down the drain. What if the gases produced from firing a bullet could 
swirl that way, too?

So Maxim put what he called "a whirling tube" on the end of a rifle. It 
successfully muffled the sound of the gunfire. Soon, the whirling tube was U.S. 
Patent No. 958,935, titled "Silent Firearm.

In the 1930s, to curtail gang violence, Congress passed the National Firearms 
Act, putting restrictions and special taxes on machine guns and other 
high-powered weapons.

Though they hadn't been used frequently in crimes, silencers were included 
anyway, reportedly out of concern that poachers would use them to steal food 
during the Great Depression.

"It's a very strange tale," said Stephen Halbrook, a Virginia gun rights 
attorney who recently published a law review article about the history of 
silencers.  "If you think about it, if (the Occupational Safety and Health 
Administration) had been around then, they probably would have required people 
use these things."

Though silencers are now legal in 42 states, industry officials say the onerous 
and expensive task of buying them keeps gun owners, particularly hunters, from 
their preferred method of protecting their hearing. They frequently point out 
that Britain, with some of the strictest gun laws in the world, has no 
restrictions on silencers for many types of firearms.

"There isn't this negative stigma because of Hollywood that has suppressed pun 
intended the
use of suppressors in this country," said Josh Waldron, the founder of 
SilencerCo, the Utah manufacturer.

Waldron started his company in 2008 after a career in photography, aiming to 
educate shooters about the benefits of silencers and to essentially hold buyers' 
hands through the purchasing process. He sells about 18,000 silencers a month.

"I want to create an environment where people understand the real purpose of 
these devices and that people aren't using
them for nefarious acts," he said.

Criminals and silencers

Silencer use in crimes is likely to be the focus of the legislative debate later 
this year.  Gun rights proponents and the silencer industry cite a study showing 
that in California, from 1995 to 2005, silencers appeared to be used for 
criminal purposes only 153 times in federal cases.

"Suppressed firearms are clearly not the choice of criminals," according to a 
briefing paper by the National
Shooting Sports Foundation, which is based in Newtown, Connecticut, and 
represents gun manufacturers. "The fears and concerns about suppressor ownership 
and use are unfounded and have not been seen in the over 100-year history of 
suppressors."

Gun-control advocates contend that serious crimes are being committed with 
silencers on guns. Former police officer Christopher Dorner used silencers on an 
AR-15 and a 9mm handgun during two-day rampage in Los Angeles in 2013. A serial 
killer in Vermont used a silencer in the killing of at least one of his 11 
victims. And the planner of a disrupted mass shooting targeting a Masonic temple 
in Milwaukee last year was charged with possessing a silencer, in addition to 
other weapons charges.

"They wanted these things so they could kill quietly," said Rand, of the 
Violence Policy Center. "The industry wants to make silencers less scary, but 
they can't."

Gun owners such as Trump Jr. can't understand why people like Rand don't get it. 
In the video, after he's shown shooting several guns with silencers, Trump Jr. 
says they can help with getting "little kids into the game. "It's just a great 
instrument," he says. "There's nothing bad about it at all."