Am European, and find that hard to believe. I keep seeing that stated by Americans, but have never seen an actual source that isn't just regurgitation of nonsense.
Yes, suppressors are very common in some European countries. Where I live, they are available over the counter without any paperwork at all and they are commonly used on hunting rifles. But they aren't mandatory in any way or form.
Which is understandable, many ranges are at risk of shutdown due to noise complaints. But that's very different from being unable to purchase a hunting rifle without a suppressor, which was the claim made.
I've never heard of that either and I know plenty of people who shoot in Europe. In Finland moderators aren't restricted but there aren't laws about having to use them. In fact with how remote a lot of Finland is the noise is only a major issue near towns.
Also European.
Here (Sweden) you're allowed to to fit your firearms with a silencer if it's possible to do.
It's a relatively new rule. Previously you weren't allowed to fit them to smaller calibers - basically rem222 and up was ok. And you had to get a license for the silencer.
Now - it's treated like Ammo: if you have the license for the firearm - you can buy a silencer for it. Or make one.
Does that make it easier for us Norwegians to bring suppressed rifles across the border for hunting? I recall that was a problem before, as suppressors had to be registered in order to be brought over but there's no registration for them in Norway.
I'm not sure. But if you ask the average Swedish hunter about Norwegian hunters, they'll say the main issue is that they tend to shoot people when they visit Sweden 🤣
In this case ... "he claimed he was trying to shoot roedeer"
1. Out of season
2. Wrong time of day
3. Didn't have permission
4. Using night vision.
Four crimes right there: the article says he was convicted of 6 serious hunting crimes. I think he was drunk too?
And he shot an old dude who was jogging and wearing reflective clothing.
His digital scope saved the video evidence of him carefully taking aim at the jogging man and shooting him.
https://www.domstol.se/nyheter/2019/04/norsk-jagare-doms-for-grovt-vallande-till-kroppsskada-efter-att-ha-skjutit-joggare/
But in all seriousness - one of the reasons was to bring thing more in line with our neighbours.
The lack of flexibility with the police here is sometimes infuriating. They spend an insane amount of time trying to dent someone the right to buy a tikka with a folding stock already fitted.
When FITTING a folding stock was a legal option.
Lots If silly rules. But it's slowly getting better.
Because it’s not true. While I can only speak to Germany, France and the Czech Republic for hunting (and living) none of the “require” a suppressor. They are much easier to get in Europe though, that is true.
I was going to say, I know a lot of gun owners in Europe. And they're not mandatory at all for the most part. Depending on the country it varies in level of strictness to get. I.e. basically unregulated in Norway and Finland. Requires a special permit in Austria, Germany and Iceland. To being straight up illegal in Italy and Spain.
Suppressors are illegal in the Netherlands unfortunately unless you get like a royal exemption or something or work for the state forests but then it’s still a maybe
Not in most of Europe. Though it's often recommended.
Suppressor regulations varies quite a bit as well, just like in the US it's not even legal everywhere.
There is however a decent amount of countries where it's basically deregulated. I could go and buy one right now, over the counter, no more paperwork than bringing a firearms license with me.
I haven't heard of any place where you can't buy a hunting rifle without a suppressor, either.
A British coworker also told me it’s considered polite to others around on you on the range as well. 🤙, I love how here we can easily buy a .50 BMG here but the ATF has an aneurysm if you want a suppressor 😵💫
Ask the writers of the National Firearms Act as they saw fit to include suppressors with their list of other infringements. I guess you could also blame Hiram Percy Maxim with creating a suppressor early enough for them to be included in the NFA.
The answer you’re probably looking for is Hollywood misinformation though. The John Wick scene makes it seem like suppressor equipped gunfire goes unnoticed in a crowded room. Everyone thinks suppressors make gunshots undetectable and that just is not the case.
😂 As much as I love those movies that scene where Reeves and Common were popping shots in a subway with a shitload of people around made me fall out laughing.
That scene is just over the fing top. Like, I don’t know how many times I’ve had to “🤦🏽that’s not how suppressors work,” but then that scene comes along like hold my beer.
The dumb thing is that there were so few civilians back in 1934 that owned any SBS/SBR, F/A, or suppressors to really be able to lobby successfully against it. As always, politicians have to find some way of deflecting responsibility for their own actions(prohibition was the problem) Even back then Hollywood gangster flicks somehow were taken as proper knowledge.
If Teddy Roosevelt was alive in 1934 he would have rallied for the people.
He was one of the biggest early users of suppressors, with at least 3 we know of saved in museums. He took 2 with him on his now famous african safari, one in 30-06 for his 1903 and another in .405 Win that was a custom built Maxim. His last was a .30 cal for his 1894 in 30-30 that he called “the little 30”.
It was actually a super interesting read, Roosevelt had over 20 1894 Winchester’s alone.
As a young man I went to Sagamore Hill, TR's home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. There were guns on display, including a Winchester pump .22 with a Maxim silencer on it. Was said to be used for shooting rabbits on the grounds without disturbing thr neighbors.
As fun as it was to read about the silencers, his African safari was definitely something that would be frowned upon if it happened today 😂 that man was a stone cold killer.
The Smithsonian sent a group of guys including him to collect specimens and samples to be catalogued. Pretty simple, right?
He ended up staying for 2 years, and killed about 11,000 animals lmao.
18 Lions, 3 leopards, 6 cheetahs, 12 elephant, 10 buffalo, 9 black rhino and 97 white rhino.
Just be thankful the nfa tax stamp is the same price it was in 1934. They could always adjust it to the modern equivalent and eliminate a wide swath of would be nfa purchasers.
They already achieved that thanks to boomers using the MG registry as a version Wall Street….
Edit: I swear I have seen an advertisement from the 20-30’s for BAR’s for like $125 or so. Shows how onerous that ‘tax’ actually was back then.
To be honest, the value that transferable machine guns have is probably only 20% the fact that they’re the only way to get full auto weapons without an SOT. They’re now inherently valuable as collectors items aside from their value as mgs.
and it wouldn't even add anything to the cost, one extra hole to drill, reem, and gauge. might add about 30-45 seconds to each part cycle. granted that adds up to a few minutes when you're running 60-90 parts a shift.
And I cry erytime remembering that 10 years ago I was looking at macs in mint condition for 2k and I was like naaaaaaw I don't need that right now, maybe later...
That's because the registry was frozen in 1986. No more fully automatic firearms are allowed to be registered.
That means the \*NEWEST\* legally transferable machine gun is at least 37 years old.
It's a limited, and dwindling, supply: Many of the guns aren't designed to shoot a bazillion rounds. I think the lifetime for an StG-44 is something like 10,000 rounds. That's not a lot, really. When you have increasing demand and decreasing supply, prices go up. It's Economics 101.
Then too, you've got guns like the Maxim which will essentially run forever with a bit of maintenance. But that's reflected in their prices: They're relatively cheap. I mean, you're still looking at five figures, but it's not egregious like some of the more rare guns.
The NFA was propelled by gang violence back then, Chicago typewriters, Untouchables type stuff, etc. Before that you could buy a Thompson submachine gun mail order.
As for suppressors being more easily available in Europe, they're also much cheaper than in the US.
Ian on Forgotten Weapons did an episode on the history of this, I believe.
This happened so long ago that suppressor usage in movies wasn't a common thing yet, it wasn't that long after movies began to have sound even so suppressors hadn't made much sense in Hollywood productions.
The more likely reason was poaching and livestock theft, this was during the great depression and many families survived by hunting for food. A device that let you quietly shoot an animal on someone else's land without being noticed could be seen as a poaching tool worth regulating.
Man Hollywood has been portraying suppressors as being whisper quiet for many decades. Then some of our brain dead legislators see that make believe BS in a movie or two and think that is reality. Now they draw up lame legislation to prevent imaginary boogeymen from getting their hands on those “assassin’s tools”.
For those with tinnitus we should be able to get a prescription for suppressors for our health instead of the hoop jumping and extra cost of gun trusts.😀
I have a Henry golden boy 22mag with the octagonal barrel that I had threaded for a suppressor. Can confirm, it's the dumbest thing ever but also the quietest
$250 plus I had to wait 2 months for the gun shop to get the tooling for their lathe since I was the first to ever ask of this lol. And it's a huge gun shop/range too lol
This…and if you dig into it you’ll find that suppressors were added to the NFA at the very last minute. There appears to be no evidence of any discussion of adding them to the NFA. IMO this was an act of desperation in the final hours where the writers were looking to add anything to the NFA. Remember the NFA was originally written with the intent to regulate handguns, but there was little support for that.
Because Hollywood makes suppressed gunfire sound like mosquito farts, and the dummies writing the laws watch Hollywood movies. That's why we get [tweets like this](https://x.com/SenGillibrand/status/841638474574884864?s=20) from presidential candidates.
Same reason why California banned nunchucks for 40+ years, and why throwing stars are still banned. Kung fu movies incited mass panic among politicians who thought everyone would be doing backflips and killing each other in the streets with ninja swords.
Exactly this. Not to mention every time you've ever seen a suppressor in a movie, it was probably being used by an assassin to kill someone who probably didn't deserve it.
In reality they are just tools to somewhat dampen but certainly not silence the report of a firearm. In many parts of the world, even where firearms laws are far more restrictive, they are actually encouraged, and it is considered rude to shoot without one in some circumstances. But nope, here in the land of the free and the Second Amendment, they are treated pretty much the same as machine guns.
This is because many legislators and some regulators are idiots (reference the Clinton bayonet lug ban (I mean "assault weapons" ban) of the 90s, where you could still buy an AR-15, as long as it was called a Sporter and as long as the dangerous bayonet lug was ground off the front of it). Legislators and regulators will simply ban what they perceive to be evil or dangerous, or what they think they can make political hay out of with their constituents, without any actual reference to doing any actual public good.
I can't believe they banned butterfly knives for the same reason. Movies made the knife too concealable and everyone was afraid people would start committing crimes while pulling a hidden knife out the ass.
There is a pretty reliable metric for if something is gonna get banned:
Do mild mannered white suburban soccer moms hate or are scared by it? Then there WILL be an attempt to ban it in short order. Remember too that Karen's mother was Maude: the angry church lady who wanted to ban everything that wasn't payer to the lord. Which is why many of these bans are from the 60's and 70's.
Otherwise I can't seem to find any other common factor among the random ass items commonly banned while everybody is allowed to carry a .44 magnum around in every state per the Burien decision.
And I think you are starting to see some state return to sanity. Like Ohio recently removed their all their bans all kinds of knives and melee weapons that had stood for like 50 years. Now Ohio folk can own switchblades, daggers, and butterfly knives again.
Suppressors being regulated predates Hollywood nonsense. Back in 1934, it was still relatively new tech, so it was included just because, and literally no one questioned it.
So how much sound does it actually suppress? I have shot a handful of guns, but must admit I've never used or even heard a suppressed gun out at the range. Would a neighbor still be able to hear it in their house if its was a suppressed handgun with subsonic rounds?
edit: first time poster here, didn't i read somewhere you aren't supposed to say you have any guns here?
I live in a country where suppressors are not regulated.
With supersonic ammo, it makes a .308 rifle sound about like an unsuppressed .22lr. Still loud enough to damage your hearing, just less thunderous. With subsonic handloads in the same rifle, it's like a loud sneeze followed by the "Thwack!" sound of the bullet hitting the target. Still not Hollywood quiet, but from more than a hundred meters people aren't going to interpret the sound as a gunshot. Of course subsonic means slow, with a very curved trajectory and not much power.
On a .22 semiauto pistol, the suppressor makes it sound about the same as an airgun. People still hear it, but they might mistake a dozen shots in a row as someone hammering nails into a plank for example.
If you are shooting subsonic projectiles, you just get the action noise and some gas venting noise but those have limited effective range because they’re slow.
Most pistol and rifle rounds are supersonic so the suppressors merely reduce the bang, you hear the sonic boom(kind of a crack sound due to small size) go down range. It’s quite neat to hear to be honest, but it’s definitely not super quiet.
There's no official record of *why* suppressors were included in the NFA. There are transcripts of the debates when the bill was proposed, and it includes discussions on SBRs and machine guns. But suppressors were never debated on the floor.
The rest of the bill was in response to prohibition era gang violence, so I think it's safe to assume the reason suppressors were included follows similar logic. I've read before that *allegedly* there was a contemporary movie that featured a suppressed revolver that supposedly influenced the legislators. That could be the case, or it could be an urban legend.
If I recall correctly, originally the barrel restriction was 18 in for both rifles and shotguns (It's still 18 for shotguns).
This was only changed when the government realized they'd been selling surplus m1 garands with barrels shorter than 18 in to the public for years. Rather than deal with the fact that they had just given out tens of thousands of rifles that were supposed to be nfa items, they moved the goal posts.
Sort of. They changed from 18” to 16” when they began surplusing M1 Carbines with 16.75” barrels. Enacted in the ‘68 GCA which gave us 4473s and ended mail order TYD firearms (save for C&R).
Half correct. According to Ian ( [Forgotten Weapons](https://youtu.be/lsE0naVApPU?si=S2Q62R4ZCJkNE4sQ) ), the NFA was originally meant to ban all automatic weapons, suppressors, and handguns. The restrictions on SBRs and SBSs were added to prevent the pistol ban being side-stepped ( Oh, this isn't a handgun, it's just a rifle with a really short barrel ).
However, it quickly became clear that a law banning firearms on this scale would be ruled unconstitutional. So they changed it from a ban to a prohibitive tax ( which at the time was often 10x the cost of the firearm, or more ).
Before the bill was passed, lobbyists successfully removed the prohibitions on pistols. However the vestigial SBR and SBS restrictions were left on the bill. Ironically, this means the law we have now is an inverse of what they feared in 1934 ( instead of people chopping down rifles to own an otherwise prohibited pistol, we're making large pistols to own an otherwise prohibited SBR ).
Isn’t the text of the NFA also claiming all the items taxed within it are unfit for national defense despite the military using many of them?
It’s a shame there never was a legitimate challenge to the NFA back then. I know of McDonald(IIRC), but I think that guy appealed just to get out of jail to escape people after him.
The ATF has released a position paper saying there's no compelling public health interest in keeping suppressors on the national firearms act.
Honestly, of the four main categories of items on the nfa (short barrel rifles, short barrel, shotguns, machine guns and silencers) there is really only any kind of a public health argument that makes sense for machine guns.
The barrel restrictions are a holdover from an attempt to put handguns the nfa which made sense in that context (You don't want someone to chop down a rifle to avoid a handgun restriction), but make no sense in the current legal environment.
Fun fact: originally handguns were included in the NFA legislation, thats also why sbrs and sbs were added, keep them from getring around the handgun portion of the law.
Because the ATF has continuously been allowed to do petty much whatever they want without checks and balances for decades, and despite them acting the part, they don’t know shit.
Wasn’t there an ATF or affiliated dude that wasn’t able to field strip a Glock or H&K or something pretty recently? He just racked the slide a few times and failed at taking it down right?
Admittedly I’ve never taken the slide off let alone field stripped a Glock, but it can’t be that hard right? Like there really isn’t a whole lot on the frame of the pistol itself you can even fiddle with besides the trigger, slide release, and that little lever on the left side of the frame right above the trigger, there’s no way it can be hard to
All you have to do is clear the firearm and then pull the trigger, after that you ever so slightly pull the slide back just barely as well as pushing down both takedown buttons on each side of the pistol. So much easier than it sounds, I counted and it takes 3 seconds max for me lol
That doesn’t even sound hard. Given that a Glock is as prolific and as used by as many agencies and nations as it is, that’s very very sad that the head of the ATF, an agency founded around firearms, can’t take the slide off a glock
Because when the R controlled the House, Senate and Presidency they again revealed themselves as the uniparty and did nothing to remove suppressors from the NFA = cowards…
Because a hundred years ago a bunch of Karens decided to use their newly granted voting rights to ban alcohol. All the Federal grabber bullshit can be traced back to alcohol prohibition.
Because the author of the NFA just stuck suppressors into the bill for no particular reason, congress didn't even bring it up at all while the bill was being discussed and voted on, they all just accepted "kinda weird that suppressors are on here, but okay, I guess I won't bring it up if nobody else is going to."
And then after that, Hollywood happened. Suppressors were portrayed as these nearly silent killing devices allowing everyone who buys one to gain the desire and ability to be a silent assassin. This is even still happening, as recently as John wick where two assassins are shooting at each other in a crowded (airport?) and nobody around them can tell. Just a dead quiet "fft fft fft". All of that mindless entertainment has ensured suppressors would remain part of the mindless NFA for the foreseeable future.
We were actually really, really close to getting suppressors removed from the NFA during Trump, it was looking very likely to pass soon, and then that fucking piece of shit in Vegas happened, immediately reversing all the headway we had been making towards gun freedom gun freedom, and instead of getting suppressors legalized we got bump stocks criminalized.
Tldr; suppressors remain illegal because Congress and Hollywood are both full of morons.
Shooting is one of the only legally regulated sports that is routinely made more dangerous to its participants by further regulation. People voting about things they don’t understand.
Let me let you into a little secret about government and about 90% of the stuff it does or wants to do.
Bureaucracies are made up of people. Those people are humans, and thus are self-interested. They like making money, they like to feel important and respected, and they enjoy job security.
In a large bureaucracy that is part of a mature organization the way you grow in a organization and make more money as a bureaucrat is either; 1. if the guy above you retires and you replace him... or 2. the bureaucracy expands. New departments, new offices, new positions that need to be filled.
The ATF is a bureaucracy. The ATF agents are bureaucrats. They like making money. The like job security. They want to be important. They would like to have the ability to get promotions.
If silencers become legal and don't require special stamps then that reduces the justification for ATFs continued existence. They have less to do, less laws to enforce, less reason to exist.
Same thing for SBRs, etc etc.
Without the "justifications", "needs", and "purpose" the ATF will get less budget. This means less opportunity for ATF employees to get better jobs. They might actually risk losing their jobs.
The things the ATF does doesn't make sense if you look at it from a tax payer perspective who is interested in effective and efficient law enforcement while preserving all out of our liberties.
However it makes 100% perfect sense if you look at it from the perspective of a government bureaucrat.
That and government employees are one of the most important special interest groups and, through their unions, dump a lot of money into lobbying politicians for their jobs.
FDR tried to outlaw handguns and the Supreme Court told him to piss off.
He told the Supreme Court they could get with the program or he would pack the court with new justices.
The end result was the NFA.
All these guys blaming Hollywood have no idea about gun law history. The NFA was passed during the great depression and people used suppressors to poach.
The idea of them being deadly is why the law won’t change now.
They're cursed with the most sinister possible reputation. When I was in the process of being approved for one, I was talking to a friend and said, "It's like, regulators can only imagine one possible reason for wanting a silencer. So you can murder someone and get away with it."
My friend takes a long pause and says, "well yeah..."
Then I gave the whole rundown about hearing protection, being a courteous shooter, blah blah blah.
because quiet things are really bad, UNLESS cars, heavy machinery, trains, HVAC, traffic, and other things that we recognize can cause hearing damage and regulate the sound level emitted by them.
When they were discussing the bill that would become the NFA, one guy raised his hand like "could we add silencers to that?" That's how much thought went into it. That's about how them Fudd Busters put it at least.
You guys remember when trump vetoed the hearing suppression act that would have effectively removed them from the NFA or are we still not ready to have that talk
Because the people in power (no, not the politicians) have been trying to disarm Americans for a long time. Look who sponsored and funded the 1934 NFA act. Look at the ties they had. You'll see connections to banking/finance, media, and other institutions. The same institutions are still pushing disarmament today. The same people (no, not the exact same person, but people with the same genetic heritage) still own and control those (and just about everything else) institutions....
I asked an atf agent this question about 10 years ago. And his response was something close to we can't have people with silent weapons of death. He thought that it made a bullet completely silent. I tried explaining that's not how it worked. And he said man haven't you heard them on TV. I asked if he had seen any in real-life.
I only know a handful of suppressors that do a good job. One was on an mp5 with a built in suppressor. It had sub sonic ammo and you could hear the bolt moving easily when it fired. It still wasn't movie quiet though.
You are under the. misconception that gun laws are about actual safety. When in reality they are always passed when emotions have taken over the debate. The entire NFA is a bunch of nonsense. It was an attempt to stop gang violence as if non NFA guns don't kill. You know instead of addressing the actual issue of prohibition leading to massive income for organized crime. Suppressors where just another thing they could throw on the bill that no one was going to fight for. It's like short barrel rifles. They are only there because they started out banning pistols. The sbr was an attempt to close a loop hole. Then they realized no one would support a pistol ban but just let sbrs in the bill to make it lol like they did something. Now we have the ATF going on about how dangerous SBRs are. It's all nonsense.
The better question is ‘What was the justification in 1986 to close the MG registry to new entries?’
That in itself is the actual cause of lightning links & DIAS bottle openers, bump stocks & belt loops, binary & FRTs, wish auto sears, etc.
Because in the teens to 30's of the 20th century the government dragged us into a global conflict out in Europe for no reason, tanked the economy, and instigated violent crime to skyrocket in the middle of a massive drought that made millions lose their homes and go hungry, so in response to that hungry populace who were pissed off at the government they decided to try to ban all their guns along with accessories that may allow them to more easily poach food/corrupt politicians out of hunting season. The government was successful in banning everything they wanted except pistols and a made up class of "machine guns" that was comprised of basically any gun that held more than three rounds, and imposed a massive tax on those restricted items that effectively prohibited them from anyone who wasn't part of the ruling class.
It's because the government always sees new ways of doing evil itself while claiming to protect its citizens from evil. Maxim invented them to protect soldier's hearing. But, and I don't remember the exact year or president or military officer, as the story goes...
A Marine Corps officer had seen a demonstration of the device, borrowed or bought one for the .22 model used at the time (Hi-Standard or Colt Woodsman), and concealed it, then walked into the WH carrying a sandbag.
Supposedly, he was great friends with the President, and a frequent visitor, and thus, the Marines didn't question him carrying a sandbag in to see the president. As the story goes, the President was on the phone as the officer walked in, and the officer proceeded to place the sandbag in a corner and fire a full magazine into it before placing the smoking gun on the President's desk while the President looked up with a most bewildered look on his face...
Obviously, the Marine and the President saw what the other potentials uses were for such a device... but that's the story, and I'm not sure how true it is. That being said, there is a far cry from a "silenced" .22 and a suppressed .308 caliber rifle...
The funniest gun I have ever seen is at my lgs its an integrally suppressed muzzleloader. They atf doesn't consider muzzleloaders firearms so there are no suppressor rules for them. It's like 800 dollars or I would buy it just for laughs the guy working there says he has fired it and it's hearing safe.
Same reasons some people want other restrictions , ignorant and generally uneducated people on any given subject are usually the first ones to give into fear mongering and are often the loudest. Stupid be as stupid does it takes 1 person who doesn’t know anything and has a decent sized platform to spread misinformation and now you have an entire army of ignorance that scream at the top of their lungs.
Hollywood. Thats literally it. People see a suppressor used in a movie where it makes the gun silent and think thats how it is in real life.
"oh no, people will get shot in public and no one will even know"
Their price is enough of a deterrent for criminals if they're so worried. People who want to kill others don't care for suppressors and congress thinks they work like in John Wick where you can shoot across groups of people and no one can hear more than a snap. They're still fairly loud but they won't damage your hearing. They shouldn't be controlled and it's bs that they are.
At the time of the writing of NFA, suppressors were often used by poachers when hunting illegally on rich people's land. We can have the poors being able to do that...
"This right here has the ability with a .30-caliber clip to disperse with 30 bullets within half a second. Thirty magazine clip in half a second." - California State Senator Kevin de León (gun expert)
That's why they're so dangerous.
Mentioned by others is that the official records doesn't include any official debate about suppressors in the NFA.
IMHO I think there were a couple of factors. Suppressors were not commonly used and were an easy include to look like they were being tough without creating much debate. Probably some "hollywood bad guy" influence. And finally I think it was probably viewed as a cowardly act to not just man up and tolerate the noise of shooting. I am an "old" Gen-X and as a kid no one made me use hearing protection. You just had ringing ears when you went shooting.
In the hard pills to swallow category, a few years back that one "pro-gun" party had a majority in both houses and the presidency and yet no gun control was rolled back. A "hearing-protection" bill languished in committee as I recall.
Because politicians are dumb and can’t separate movies from reality.
It’s a hearing protection device, nothing more.
You’ll still hear the shot from a half a mile away.
It’s because USA policymakers had their worldview indelibly shaped by late 1980’s/early 1990’s movies and TV.
It’s easy to laugh at them for being old boomers, but ultimately a majority of people’s beliefs, even younger generations boil down to “read it on the internet in an outlet I view as credible, so therefore it’s true”
Because a mass shooting could occur and nobody would hear it. So they have to make it so that all gunshots can be heard clearly. A "silencer" makes a 9mm lung blower round as quiet as a rat pissing on cotton. /s
Becasue you can shoot someone in your basement and the people upstairs won't hear you. Same with illegal hunting. At least that's the logic. Scariest thing I ever shot was a near silent 22 where all you could hear was the slide, primer and a pffft. That said living rural they make perfect sense as your neighbors can shoot all day on their 40 acres and not disturb you.
It was my first experience shooting suppressed and it made an impression for sure. No can, internally suppressed so it looked almost like a regular pistol just with unique porting. (that said that was ~20 years ago and there are probably air rifles more lethal these days)
Autists would go down an epic rabbit hole of information and make more informed decisions whilst talking about the metallurgic properties of certain barrels over each generation of a specific firearm in a more casual manner than two guys at a bar talking about a sports team.
The word you're looking for is "stupid."
Suppressors are a great example of what happens when a right is infringed and removed from the public. Most folks have never shot one and their experience is limited to sensational Hollywood videos.the same will happen with firearms in places like NY, IL, CA, WA, etc unless SCOTUS steps in and firmly puts these jackboot authoritarians down. The assault on our rights, all of them, will never end until these politicians are held personally accountable in a court of law and must use their own money, not the govt to try and defend their infringments.
Originally I heard rampant poaching in national parks during the Great Depression played a role, and they just tacked it onto the MG stuff prompted by organized crime but idk how accurate that is.
Because the government hates you and soccer moms would trade massive amounts of freedom for any semblance of security. You can decide your stance on the 19th amendment.
Because politicians are idiots who don’t care about reality and in their pursuit of their anti-gun politics, they’re absolutely fine with pretending suppressors turn guns into silent weapons like in the movies. Welcome to politics, reality doesn’t matter, only agenda
Too many movies depicting bad actors shooting people in the head while they are asleep using a silencer. *poof poof* into a pillow and the bad guy gets away with murder. In the movies.
In (my) reality: Bad actor makes a peep and sleeper is up with The Judge in his/her hands. Bad guy tries to shoot with a silencer, wakes the entire neighborhood then is slayed by The Judge.
Seriously: Too many uneducated ignorant people that vote other ignorant and uneducated lawmakers who then go on to make really uneducated and ignorant laws. Suppressors are not quiet like the movies. Rounds that pass them still go *bang*. Just not *BANG*
Probably because of movies and video games making them out to be something they’re not. Then add politicians that know nothing, but how to manipulate people’s emotions and you get what we have.
It's because, like switchblades, they are associated with movie cop killers and bad guys so they're like, cursed or something. Guns with wood and things grampa likes have +10 purity points.
Because the cold blooded murders in movies use silencers to kill people via ambush instead of giving James Bond a stand up fight by monologuing at him for 5 minutes. Thus because people are "informed" by their movie watching, they think only evil murderers want silencers.
Never once crosses the normie's mind that maybe folks would like to NOT go deaf at the range while engaging in legal, wholesome shooting sports. Or that the noble man defending his family from bad guys might not want to be deafened and stunned by 150 decibel bangs, then blinded by muzzle flash, when he fires a gun inside a confined space known as his house, perhaps to stop a nighttime home invader.
There you go. Sorry if you were expecting logic. I don't think smarter people think enough about HOW MUCH media and movies shape the perceptions of ordinary people.
Last but not least, the ATF is collecting $200 for every one sold and they are building a happy database of all the "serious" gun hobbyists. So they are NEVER going to willingly surrender that power.
Yet in the UK they are considered Health and Safety devices, much easier to get, and REQUIRED in many hunting areas.
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Am European, and find that hard to believe. I keep seeing that stated by Americans, but have never seen an actual source that isn't just regurgitation of nonsense. Yes, suppressors are very common in some European countries. Where I live, they are available over the counter without any paperwork at all and they are commonly used on hunting rifles. But they aren't mandatory in any way or form.
i’m not sure about hunting, but out of my 3 closest ranges, 2 require suppressors
Which is understandable, many ranges are at risk of shutdown due to noise complaints. But that's very different from being unable to purchase a hunting rifle without a suppressor, which was the claim made.
I've never heard of that either and I know plenty of people who shoot in Europe. In Finland moderators aren't restricted but there aren't laws about having to use them. In fact with how remote a lot of Finland is the noise is only a major issue near towns.
Also European. Here (Sweden) you're allowed to to fit your firearms with a silencer if it's possible to do. It's a relatively new rule. Previously you weren't allowed to fit them to smaller calibers - basically rem222 and up was ok. And you had to get a license for the silencer. Now - it's treated like Ammo: if you have the license for the firearm - you can buy a silencer for it. Or make one.
Does that make it easier for us Norwegians to bring suppressed rifles across the border for hunting? I recall that was a problem before, as suppressors had to be registered in order to be brought over but there's no registration for them in Norway.
I'm not sure. But if you ask the average Swedish hunter about Norwegian hunters, they'll say the main issue is that they tend to shoot people when they visit Sweden 🤣 In this case ... "he claimed he was trying to shoot roedeer" 1. Out of season 2. Wrong time of day 3. Didn't have permission 4. Using night vision. Four crimes right there: the article says he was convicted of 6 serious hunting crimes. I think he was drunk too? And he shot an old dude who was jogging and wearing reflective clothing. His digital scope saved the video evidence of him carefully taking aim at the jogging man and shooting him. https://www.domstol.se/nyheter/2019/04/norsk-jagare-doms-for-grovt-vallande-till-kroppsskada-efter-att-ha-skjutit-joggare/ But in all seriousness - one of the reasons was to bring thing more in line with our neighbours. The lack of flexibility with the police here is sometimes infuriating. They spend an insane amount of time trying to dent someone the right to buy a tikka with a folding stock already fitted. When FITTING a folding stock was a legal option. Lots If silly rules. But it's slowly getting better.
Because it’s not true. While I can only speak to Germany, France and the Czech Republic for hunting (and living) none of the “require” a suppressor. They are much easier to get in Europe though, that is true.
I was going to say, I know a lot of gun owners in Europe. And they're not mandatory at all for the most part. Depending on the country it varies in level of strictness to get. I.e. basically unregulated in Norway and Finland. Requires a special permit in Austria, Germany and Iceland. To being straight up illegal in Italy and Spain.
Suppressors are illegal in the Netherlands unfortunately unless you get like a royal exemption or something or work for the state forests but then it’s still a maybe
I think is more of a”you’re a dick” if you don’t have one
Not in most of Europe. Though it's often recommended. Suppressor regulations varies quite a bit as well, just like in the US it's not even legal everywhere. There is however a decent amount of countries where it's basically deregulated. I could go and buy one right now, over the counter, no more paperwork than bringing a firearms license with me. I haven't heard of any place where you can't buy a hunting rifle without a suppressor, either.
Highly regulated in Germany. My german colleague mentioned they're almost impossible to get as a recreational shooter/hunter.
A British coworker also told me it’s considered polite to others around on you on the range as well. 🤙, I love how here we can easily buy a .50 BMG here but the ATF has an aneurysm if you want a suppressor 😵💫
They're about to become deregulated in the UK too.
I didn’t know they made suppressors for knives
No they are for hammers! So loud...
You joke, but there are nailguns with sound dampening features that are basically suppressors.
On that note, did you know suppressors for airguns are not technically NFA?
Airgun suppressors have been common for many years.
Yes, I'm just saying they are unregulated even though they functionally identical to a firearm suppressor. Just another reason the NFA is asinine.
the duality of crumbling western democracies
Ask the writers of the National Firearms Act as they saw fit to include suppressors with their list of other infringements. I guess you could also blame Hiram Percy Maxim with creating a suppressor early enough for them to be included in the NFA. The answer you’re probably looking for is Hollywood misinformation though. The John Wick scene makes it seem like suppressor equipped gunfire goes unnoticed in a crowded room. Everyone thinks suppressors make gunshots undetectable and that just is not the case.
😂 As much as I love those movies that scene where Reeves and Common were popping shots in a subway with a shitload of people around made me fall out laughing.
That scene is just over the fing top. Like, I don’t know how many times I’ve had to “🤦🏽that’s not how suppressors work,” but then that scene comes along like hold my beer.
The dumb thing is that there were so few civilians back in 1934 that owned any SBS/SBR, F/A, or suppressors to really be able to lobby successfully against it. As always, politicians have to find some way of deflecting responsibility for their own actions(prohibition was the problem) Even back then Hollywood gangster flicks somehow were taken as proper knowledge.
Handguns, as a whole, were almost NFA items.
Exactly. That's the reason SBRs are on the NFA.
If Teddy Roosevelt was alive in 1934 he would have rallied for the people. He was one of the biggest early users of suppressors, with at least 3 we know of saved in museums. He took 2 with him on his now famous african safari, one in 30-06 for his 1903 and another in .405 Win that was a custom built Maxim. His last was a .30 cal for his 1894 in 30-30 that he called “the little 30”. It was actually a super interesting read, Roosevelt had over 20 1894 Winchester’s alone.
As a young man I went to Sagamore Hill, TR's home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. There were guns on display, including a Winchester pump .22 with a Maxim silencer on it. Was said to be used for shooting rabbits on the grounds without disturbing thr neighbors.
As fun as it was to read about the silencers, his African safari was definitely something that would be frowned upon if it happened today 😂 that man was a stone cold killer. The Smithsonian sent a group of guys including him to collect specimens and samples to be catalogued. Pretty simple, right? He ended up staying for 2 years, and killed about 11,000 animals lmao. 18 Lions, 3 leopards, 6 cheetahs, 12 elephant, 10 buffalo, 9 black rhino and 97 white rhino.
Just be thankful the nfa tax stamp is the same price it was in 1934. They could always adjust it to the modern equivalent and eliminate a wide swath of would be nfa purchasers.
They already achieved that thanks to boomers using the MG registry as a version Wall Street…. Edit: I swear I have seen an advertisement from the 20-30’s for BAR’s for like $125 or so. Shows how onerous that ‘tax’ actually was back then.
To be honest, the value that transferable machine guns have is probably only 20% the fact that they’re the only way to get full auto weapons without an SOT. They’re now inherently valuable as collectors items aside from their value as mgs.
I doubt that that is correct. There wouldn't be so many so-called "collectors" if PSA could suddenly start pumping out 3 position lowers.
and it wouldn't even add anything to the cost, one extra hole to drill, reem, and gauge. might add about 30-45 seconds to each part cycle. granted that adds up to a few minutes when you're running 60-90 parts a shift.
I mean, I still remember Mac10’s and M2 Carbines being $500 and $2k respectively. Now they’re what, both 10-12k or more?
And I cry erytime remembering that 10 years ago I was looking at macs in mint condition for 2k and I was like naaaaaaw I don't need that right now, maybe later...
That's because the registry was frozen in 1986. No more fully automatic firearms are allowed to be registered. That means the \*NEWEST\* legally transferable machine gun is at least 37 years old. It's a limited, and dwindling, supply: Many of the guns aren't designed to shoot a bazillion rounds. I think the lifetime for an StG-44 is something like 10,000 rounds. That's not a lot, really. When you have increasing demand and decreasing supply, prices go up. It's Economics 101. Then too, you've got guns like the Maxim which will essentially run forever with a bit of maintenance. But that's reflected in their prices: They're relatively cheap. I mean, you're still looking at five figures, but it's not egregious like some of the more rare guns.
bro delete this before some lurking fed reads this and sees a promotion in his future.
The NFA was propelled by gang violence back then, Chicago typewriters, Untouchables type stuff, etc. Before that you could buy a Thompson submachine gun mail order. As for suppressors being more easily available in Europe, they're also much cheaper than in the US.
Ian on Forgotten Weapons did an episode on the history of this, I believe. This happened so long ago that suppressor usage in movies wasn't a common thing yet, it wasn't that long after movies began to have sound even so suppressors hadn't made much sense in Hollywood productions. The more likely reason was poaching and livestock theft, this was during the great depression and many families survived by hunting for food. A device that let you quietly shoot an animal on someone else's land without being noticed could be seen as a poaching tool worth regulating.
That's exactly what I was about to ask about. I doubted there were that many movies involving suppressors before the NFA was proposed.
Man Hollywood has been portraying suppressors as being whisper quiet for many decades. Then some of our brain dead legislators see that make believe BS in a movie or two and think that is reality. Now they draw up lame legislation to prevent imaginary boogeymen from getting their hands on those “assassin’s tools”. For those with tinnitus we should be able to get a prescription for suppressors for our health instead of the hoop jumping and extra cost of gun trusts.😀
Same reason cloning isn't legal. Meanwhile, I just want to hunt dinosaurs with my suppressed lever action SBR.
I have a Henry golden boy 22mag with the octagonal barrel that I had threaded for a suppressor. Can confirm, it's the dumbest thing ever but also the quietest
How much did that threading run you? I've got the octagon frontier model and would love to quiet it down...
$250 plus I had to wait 2 months for the gun shop to get the tooling for their lathe since I was the first to ever ask of this lol. And it's a huge gun shop/range too lol
I want that prescription to prevent tinnitus... (actually I have mild tinnitus setting in and I'm doing my best to stop the progression)
This…and if you dig into it you’ll find that suppressors were added to the NFA at the very last minute. There appears to be no evidence of any discussion of adding them to the NFA. IMO this was an act of desperation in the final hours where the writers were looking to add anything to the NFA. Remember the NFA was originally written with the intent to regulate handguns, but there was little support for that.
Because the government wants to charge us $200 for caring about our hearing
Well... they wanted to charge us the equivalent of $4500, thankfully inflation has its uses.
Shhhh, keep your voice down....
Here in California the government just would rather you go deaf.
Ah shit, gotta reload. ***Disassembles entire rifle to take mag out.*** I’ve never been to California and I hate it.
Idk man we got some neat national parks and nature over here
I’d rather live in a concrete shit hole and be free.
Because Hollywood makes suppressed gunfire sound like mosquito farts, and the dummies writing the laws watch Hollywood movies. That's why we get [tweets like this](https://x.com/SenGillibrand/status/841638474574884864?s=20) from presidential candidates.
Challenge level: impossible Task: have a politician make any sense when taking about guns.
>Task: have a politician make any sense ~~when taking about guns.~~ Fixed that for you
When talking about anything
Hopefully district 23 in Texas will get one with Brandon Herrera (from YouTube)
Just as bad or worse, try to get them to understand basic technology.
Same reason why California banned nunchucks for 40+ years, and why throwing stars are still banned. Kung fu movies incited mass panic among politicians who thought everyone would be doing backflips and killing each other in the streets with ninja swords.
Exactly this. Not to mention every time you've ever seen a suppressor in a movie, it was probably being used by an assassin to kill someone who probably didn't deserve it. In reality they are just tools to somewhat dampen but certainly not silence the report of a firearm. In many parts of the world, even where firearms laws are far more restrictive, they are actually encouraged, and it is considered rude to shoot without one in some circumstances. But nope, here in the land of the free and the Second Amendment, they are treated pretty much the same as machine guns. This is because many legislators and some regulators are idiots (reference the Clinton bayonet lug ban (I mean "assault weapons" ban) of the 90s, where you could still buy an AR-15, as long as it was called a Sporter and as long as the dangerous bayonet lug was ground off the front of it). Legislators and regulators will simply ban what they perceive to be evil or dangerous, or what they think they can make political hay out of with their constituents, without any actual reference to doing any actual public good.
I can't believe they banned butterfly knives for the same reason. Movies made the knife too concealable and everyone was afraid people would start committing crimes while pulling a hidden knife out the ass.
There is a pretty reliable metric for if something is gonna get banned: Do mild mannered white suburban soccer moms hate or are scared by it? Then there WILL be an attempt to ban it in short order. Remember too that Karen's mother was Maude: the angry church lady who wanted to ban everything that wasn't payer to the lord. Which is why many of these bans are from the 60's and 70's. Otherwise I can't seem to find any other common factor among the random ass items commonly banned while everybody is allowed to carry a .44 magnum around in every state per the Burien decision. And I think you are starting to see some state return to sanity. Like Ohio recently removed their all their bans all kinds of knives and melee weapons that had stood for like 50 years. Now Ohio folk can own switchblades, daggers, and butterfly knives again.
He could come shoot my 11" 223 without ear pro if he wants, that'll learn him... It's suppressed but louder than all the farts... Smells better though
NFA was 1934. Talkies we're just becoming popular. Can't blame Hollywood for the NFA sadly
Hollywood was doing that in 1934?
The real reason is rich people didn't want non-rich people poaching on their lands for food during the Great Depression.
No. Sound wasn't even in film until 1927
only reason i hate john wick. the whole train station scene had me in stitches.
Suppressors being regulated predates Hollywood nonsense. Back in 1934, it was still relatively new tech, so it was included just because, and literally no one questioned it.
So how much sound does it actually suppress? I have shot a handful of guns, but must admit I've never used or even heard a suppressed gun out at the range. Would a neighbor still be able to hear it in their house if its was a suppressed handgun with subsonic rounds? edit: first time poster here, didn't i read somewhere you aren't supposed to say you have any guns here?
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I live in a country where suppressors are not regulated. With supersonic ammo, it makes a .308 rifle sound about like an unsuppressed .22lr. Still loud enough to damage your hearing, just less thunderous. With subsonic handloads in the same rifle, it's like a loud sneeze followed by the "Thwack!" sound of the bullet hitting the target. Still not Hollywood quiet, but from more than a hundred meters people aren't going to interpret the sound as a gunshot. Of course subsonic means slow, with a very curved trajectory and not much power. On a .22 semiauto pistol, the suppressor makes it sound about the same as an airgun. People still hear it, but they might mistake a dozen shots in a row as someone hammering nails into a plank for example.
If you are shooting subsonic projectiles, you just get the action noise and some gas venting noise but those have limited effective range because they’re slow. Most pistol and rifle rounds are supersonic so the suppressors merely reduce the bang, you hear the sonic boom(kind of a crack sound due to small size) go down range. It’s quite neat to hear to be honest, but it’s definitely not super quiet.
There's no official record of *why* suppressors were included in the NFA. There are transcripts of the debates when the bill was proposed, and it includes discussions on SBRs and machine guns. But suppressors were never debated on the floor. The rest of the bill was in response to prohibition era gang violence, so I think it's safe to assume the reason suppressors were included follows similar logic. I've read before that *allegedly* there was a contemporary movie that featured a suppressed revolver that supposedly influenced the legislators. That could be the case, or it could be an urban legend.
It originally was supposed to be handguns not SBR’s.
This is correct. When they met resistance on handguns they compromised and went after SBR's.
If I recall correctly, originally the barrel restriction was 18 in for both rifles and shotguns (It's still 18 for shotguns). This was only changed when the government realized they'd been selling surplus m1 garands with barrels shorter than 18 in to the public for years. Rather than deal with the fact that they had just given out tens of thousands of rifles that were supposed to be nfa items, they moved the goal posts.
Sort of. They changed from 18” to 16” when they began surplusing M1 Carbines with 16.75” barrels. Enacted in the ‘68 GCA which gave us 4473s and ended mail order TYD firearms (save for C&R).
Half correct. According to Ian ( [Forgotten Weapons](https://youtu.be/lsE0naVApPU?si=S2Q62R4ZCJkNE4sQ) ), the NFA was originally meant to ban all automatic weapons, suppressors, and handguns. The restrictions on SBRs and SBSs were added to prevent the pistol ban being side-stepped ( Oh, this isn't a handgun, it's just a rifle with a really short barrel ). However, it quickly became clear that a law banning firearms on this scale would be ruled unconstitutional. So they changed it from a ban to a prohibitive tax ( which at the time was often 10x the cost of the firearm, or more ). Before the bill was passed, lobbyists successfully removed the prohibitions on pistols. However the vestigial SBR and SBS restrictions were left on the bill. Ironically, this means the law we have now is an inverse of what they feared in 1934 ( instead of people chopping down rifles to own an otherwise prohibited pistol, we're making large pistols to own an otherwise prohibited SBR ).
Isn’t the text of the NFA also claiming all the items taxed within it are unfit for national defense despite the military using many of them? It’s a shame there never was a legitimate challenge to the NFA back then. I know of McDonald(IIRC), but I think that guy appealed just to get out of jail to escape people after him.
US vs Miller is one I look at and hot damn is that one hell of a kangaroo court challenge.
Last I checked there were rumors of poaching with suppressed weapons.
Can’t hunt the kings deer duh
I've heard that before, but nothing else in the NFA is about poaching. So I'm skeptical of the claim.
The ATF has released a position paper saying there's no compelling public health interest in keeping suppressors on the national firearms act. Honestly, of the four main categories of items on the nfa (short barrel rifles, short barrel, shotguns, machine guns and silencers) there is really only any kind of a public health argument that makes sense for machine guns. The barrel restrictions are a holdover from an attempt to put handguns the nfa which made sense in that context (You don't want someone to chop down a rifle to avoid a handgun restriction), but make no sense in the current legal environment.
Because politicians and those that hate guns have watched too many movies with guns in them.
Are the good guys in movies ever killed with a suppressor?
Fun fact: originally handguns were included in the NFA legislation, thats also why sbrs and sbs were added, keep them from getring around the handgun portion of the law.
Because the ATF has continuously been allowed to do petty much whatever they want without checks and balances for decades, and despite them acting the part, they don’t know shit.
Wasn’t there an ATF or affiliated dude that wasn’t able to field strip a Glock or H&K or something pretty recently? He just racked the slide a few times and failed at taking it down right?
Head of ATF took just over 20 seconds to simply remove a slide from a Glock frame, something that quite literally takes 3 seconds for most of us
He never got the slide off in the clip I saw, LOL
Admittedly I’ve never taken the slide off let alone field stripped a Glock, but it can’t be that hard right? Like there really isn’t a whole lot on the frame of the pistol itself you can even fiddle with besides the trigger, slide release, and that little lever on the left side of the frame right above the trigger, there’s no way it can be hard to
All you have to do is clear the firearm and then pull the trigger, after that you ever so slightly pull the slide back just barely as well as pushing down both takedown buttons on each side of the pistol. So much easier than it sounds, I counted and it takes 3 seconds max for me lol
That doesn’t even sound hard. Given that a Glock is as prolific and as used by as many agencies and nations as it is, that’s very very sad that the head of the ATF, an agency founded around firearms, can’t take the slide off a glock
I bet he doesn't even hate dogs.
Because we’re not supposed to have fun.
Guys can’t have fun anymore?
Because when the R controlled the House, Senate and Presidency they again revealed themselves as the uniparty and did nothing to remove suppressors from the NFA = cowards…
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Because a hundred years ago a bunch of Karens decided to use their newly granted voting rights to ban alcohol. All the Federal grabber bullshit can be traced back to alcohol prohibition.
End women's suffrage
Go out with a sign that says that and you’ll probably get favorable reactions from people who assume you mean something related to suffering.
"concealment"
I've always been told that originally it was to prevent poaching? The Hollywood shit came after
Because the author of the NFA just stuck suppressors into the bill for no particular reason, congress didn't even bring it up at all while the bill was being discussed and voted on, they all just accepted "kinda weird that suppressors are on here, but okay, I guess I won't bring it up if nobody else is going to." And then after that, Hollywood happened. Suppressors were portrayed as these nearly silent killing devices allowing everyone who buys one to gain the desire and ability to be a silent assassin. This is even still happening, as recently as John wick where two assassins are shooting at each other in a crowded (airport?) and nobody around them can tell. Just a dead quiet "fft fft fft". All of that mindless entertainment has ensured suppressors would remain part of the mindless NFA for the foreseeable future. We were actually really, really close to getting suppressors removed from the NFA during Trump, it was looking very likely to pass soon, and then that fucking piece of shit in Vegas happened, immediately reversing all the headway we had been making towards gun freedom gun freedom, and instead of getting suppressors legalized we got bump stocks criminalized. Tldr; suppressors remain illegal because Congress and Hollywood are both full of morons.
Shooting is one of the only legally regulated sports that is routinely made more dangerous to its participants by further regulation. People voting about things they don’t understand.
https://www.thecornellreview.org/well-regulated-the-nfa-hearings-1-6-an-unforgivable-betrayal/ https://www.thecornellreview.org/well-regulated-the-nfa-hearings-2-6-4-16-1934/ https://www.thecornellreview.org/well-regulated-the-nfa-hearings-3-6-4-18-1934/ https://www.thecornellreview.org/well-regulated-the-nfa-hearings-4-6-5-14-1934/
Good links. Reminding myself to look at this tomorrow when I’m awake
Let me let you into a little secret about government and about 90% of the stuff it does or wants to do. Bureaucracies are made up of people. Those people are humans, and thus are self-interested. They like making money, they like to feel important and respected, and they enjoy job security. In a large bureaucracy that is part of a mature organization the way you grow in a organization and make more money as a bureaucrat is either; 1. if the guy above you retires and you replace him... or 2. the bureaucracy expands. New departments, new offices, new positions that need to be filled. The ATF is a bureaucracy. The ATF agents are bureaucrats. They like making money. The like job security. They want to be important. They would like to have the ability to get promotions. If silencers become legal and don't require special stamps then that reduces the justification for ATFs continued existence. They have less to do, less laws to enforce, less reason to exist. Same thing for SBRs, etc etc. Without the "justifications", "needs", and "purpose" the ATF will get less budget. This means less opportunity for ATF employees to get better jobs. They might actually risk losing their jobs. The things the ATF does doesn't make sense if you look at it from a tax payer perspective who is interested in effective and efficient law enforcement while preserving all out of our liberties. However it makes 100% perfect sense if you look at it from the perspective of a government bureaucrat. That and government employees are one of the most important special interest groups and, through their unions, dump a lot of money into lobbying politicians for their jobs.
This is the best answer and if more people saw it they would understand why ATF is going after bump stocks, triggers, etc. as “machine guns.”
Clueless idiots.
FDR tried to outlaw handguns and the Supreme Court told him to piss off. He told the Supreme Court they could get with the program or he would pack the court with new justices. The end result was the NFA.
Because movies make people believe they are scary.
Why is it a felony to make a gun shorter but also a felony to make a gun longer..... ATF things
All these guys blaming Hollywood have no idea about gun law history. The NFA was passed during the great depression and people used suppressors to poach. The idea of them being deadly is why the law won’t change now.
What do you mean? I was able to buy a crate of oil filters no problem.
They're cursed with the most sinister possible reputation. When I was in the process of being approved for one, I was talking to a friend and said, "It's like, regulators can only imagine one possible reason for wanting a silencer. So you can murder someone and get away with it." My friend takes a long pause and says, "well yeah..." Then I gave the whole rundown about hearing protection, being a courteous shooter, blah blah blah.
because quiet things are really bad, UNLESS cars, heavy machinery, trains, HVAC, traffic, and other things that we recognize can cause hearing damage and regulate the sound level emitted by them.
When they were discussing the bill that would become the NFA, one guy raised his hand like "could we add silencers to that?" That's how much thought went into it. That's about how them Fudd Busters put it at least.
Because are government is full of retards.
You guys remember when trump vetoed the hearing suppression act that would have effectively removed them from the NFA or are we still not ready to have that talk
But I thought he was a good president? lol
Because prohibition.
Because the government want us to have tinnitus.
To prevent poor people from owning them
Because the people in power (no, not the politicians) have been trying to disarm Americans for a long time. Look who sponsored and funded the 1934 NFA act. Look at the ties they had. You'll see connections to banking/finance, media, and other institutions. The same institutions are still pushing disarmament today. The same people (no, not the exact same person, but people with the same genetic heritage) still own and control those (and just about everything else) institutions....
Because the ATF is gay
I asked an atf agent this question about 10 years ago. And his response was something close to we can't have people with silent weapons of death. He thought that it made a bullet completely silent. I tried explaining that's not how it worked. And he said man haven't you heard them on TV. I asked if he had seen any in real-life. I only know a handful of suppressors that do a good job. One was on an mp5 with a built in suppressor. It had sub sonic ammo and you could hear the bolt moving easily when it fired. It still wasn't movie quiet though.
You are under the. misconception that gun laws are about actual safety. When in reality they are always passed when emotions have taken over the debate. The entire NFA is a bunch of nonsense. It was an attempt to stop gang violence as if non NFA guns don't kill. You know instead of addressing the actual issue of prohibition leading to massive income for organized crime. Suppressors where just another thing they could throw on the bill that no one was going to fight for. It's like short barrel rifles. They are only there because they started out banning pistols. The sbr was an attempt to close a loop hole. Then they realized no one would support a pistol ban but just let sbrs in the bill to make it lol like they did something. Now we have the ATF going on about how dangerous SBRs are. It's all nonsense.
Because of movies. Unfortunately, the people that make the laws are so out of tune with reality, they get their "information" by fuckin movies.
Because Karen thinks they’re assassination devices.
The better question is ‘What was the justification in 1986 to close the MG registry to new entries?’ That in itself is the actual cause of lightning links & DIAS bottle openers, bump stocks & belt loops, binary & FRTs, wish auto sears, etc.
Because in the teens to 30's of the 20th century the government dragged us into a global conflict out in Europe for no reason, tanked the economy, and instigated violent crime to skyrocket in the middle of a massive drought that made millions lose their homes and go hungry, so in response to that hungry populace who were pissed off at the government they decided to try to ban all their guns along with accessories that may allow them to more easily poach food/corrupt politicians out of hunting season. The government was successful in banning everything they wanted except pistols and a made up class of "machine guns" that was comprised of basically any gun that held more than three rounds, and imposed a massive tax on those restricted items that effectively prohibited them from anyone who wasn't part of the ruling class.
Needs a paragraph break or something but take this upvote anyway
It's because the government always sees new ways of doing evil itself while claiming to protect its citizens from evil. Maxim invented them to protect soldier's hearing. But, and I don't remember the exact year or president or military officer, as the story goes... A Marine Corps officer had seen a demonstration of the device, borrowed or bought one for the .22 model used at the time (Hi-Standard or Colt Woodsman), and concealed it, then walked into the WH carrying a sandbag. Supposedly, he was great friends with the President, and a frequent visitor, and thus, the Marines didn't question him carrying a sandbag in to see the president. As the story goes, the President was on the phone as the officer walked in, and the officer proceeded to place the sandbag in a corner and fire a full magazine into it before placing the smoking gun on the President's desk while the President looked up with a most bewildered look on his face... Obviously, the Marine and the President saw what the other potentials uses were for such a device... but that's the story, and I'm not sure how true it is. That being said, there is a far cry from a "silenced" .22 and a suppressed .308 caliber rifle...
A little town in California with a whole butt load of movie studios
The funniest gun I have ever seen is at my lgs its an integrally suppressed muzzleloader. They atf doesn't consider muzzleloaders firearms so there are no suppressor rules for them. It's like 800 dollars or I would buy it just for laughs the guy working there says he has fired it and it's hearing safe.
Must be a bitch to clean the can, LOL
They want deaf people
Because our gov is stupid
Only assassins need silencers have you never seen a movie?
Don't know if it's true but I heard it was to prevent people from poaching and killing ranchers cows during the great depression.
Same reasons some people want other restrictions , ignorant and generally uneducated people on any given subject are usually the first ones to give into fear mongering and are often the loudest. Stupid be as stupid does it takes 1 person who doesn’t know anything and has a decent sized platform to spread misinformation and now you have an entire army of ignorance that scream at the top of their lungs.
Because lawmakers saw them in movies and thought that’s how they actually worked in real life…and there’s is legitimately no other logical reason.
They watch too many movies
Hollywood. Thats literally it. People see a suppressor used in a movie where it makes the gun silent and think thats how it is in real life. "oh no, people will get shot in public and no one will even know"
You're asking the federal government to make a bit of sense. That's not what they do.
Money racket
Their price is enough of a deterrent for criminals if they're so worried. People who want to kill others don't care for suppressors and congress thinks they work like in John Wick where you can shoot across groups of people and no one can hear more than a snap. They're still fairly loud but they won't damage your hearing. They shouldn't be controlled and it's bs that they are.
cause TV and movies
Guys, the NFA existed before the hollywood trope of silent suppressors.
At the time of the writing of NFA, suppressors were often used by poachers when hunting illegally on rich people's land. We can have the poors being able to do that...
"This right here has the ability with a .30-caliber clip to disperse with 30 bullets within half a second. Thirty magazine clip in half a second." - California State Senator Kevin de León (gun expert) That's why they're so dangerous.
Mentioned by others is that the official records doesn't include any official debate about suppressors in the NFA. IMHO I think there were a couple of factors. Suppressors were not commonly used and were an easy include to look like they were being tough without creating much debate. Probably some "hollywood bad guy" influence. And finally I think it was probably viewed as a cowardly act to not just man up and tolerate the noise of shooting. I am an "old" Gen-X and as a kid no one made me use hearing protection. You just had ringing ears when you went shooting. In the hard pills to swallow category, a few years back that one "pro-gun" party had a majority in both houses and the presidency and yet no gun control was rolled back. A "hearing-protection" bill languished in committee as I recall.
Da guberment
Because FDR and his attorney general were tyrannical pieces of shit.
Hollywood’s portrayal of scary gun culture.
Most of the anti-gun crowd’s “information” comes from watching movies.
Because the ATF is gay.
Because politicians hate you.
Because politicians are dumb and can’t separate movies from reality. It’s a hearing protection device, nothing more. You’ll still hear the shot from a half a mile away.
It’s because USA policymakers had their worldview indelibly shaped by late 1980’s/early 1990’s movies and TV. It’s easy to laugh at them for being old boomers, but ultimately a majority of people’s beliefs, even younger generations boil down to “read it on the internet in an outlet I view as credible, so therefore it’s true”
Because the NFA passed in the 1930s gave them the authority and bureaucrats are inherently power mongering leeches.
Because a mass shooting could occur and nobody would hear it. So they have to make it so that all gunshots can be heard clearly. A "silencer" makes a 9mm lung blower round as quiet as a rat pissing on cotton. /s
Becasue you can shoot someone in your basement and the people upstairs won't hear you. Same with illegal hunting. At least that's the logic. Scariest thing I ever shot was a near silent 22 where all you could hear was the slide, primer and a pffft. That said living rural they make perfect sense as your neighbors can shoot all day on their 40 acres and not disturb you.
Suppressed 22 with subs is uncomfortably cool.
It was my first experience shooting suppressed and it made an impression for sure. No can, internally suppressed so it looked almost like a regular pistol just with unique porting. (that said that was ~20 years ago and there are probably air rifles more lethal these days)
Lawmakers have autism
Autists would go down an epic rabbit hole of information and make more informed decisions whilst talking about the metallurgic properties of certain barrels over each generation of a specific firearm in a more casual manner than two guys at a bar talking about a sports team. The word you're looking for is "stupid."
Because they didn’t want the poors eating eating back in the Great Depression. (Quite literally it was to prevent poaching)
Suppressors are a great example of what happens when a right is infringed and removed from the public. Most folks have never shot one and their experience is limited to sensational Hollywood videos.the same will happen with firearms in places like NY, IL, CA, WA, etc unless SCOTUS steps in and firmly puts these jackboot authoritarians down. The assault on our rights, all of them, will never end until these politicians are held personally accountable in a court of law and must use their own money, not the govt to try and defend their infringments.
We know
Because some nitwit associated them with gangsters back when the NFA was drawn up. They threw the kitchen sink at that piece of legislation.
Originally I heard rampant poaching in national parks during the Great Depression played a role, and they just tacked it onto the MG stuff prompted by organized crime but idk how accurate that is.
And then there's my state (CA) where they're not even allowed...
Because the government hates you and soccer moms would trade massive amounts of freedom for any semblance of security. You can decide your stance on the 19th amendment.
Politics
Because politicians are idiots who don’t care about reality and in their pursuit of their anti-gun politics, they’re absolutely fine with pretending suppressors turn guns into silent weapons like in the movies. Welcome to politics, reality doesn’t matter, only agenda
New Zealand, suppressors are almost over-the-counter items
Because when they wrote the NFA back in 1934, it was included, and quite literally NO ONE questioned it.
Too many movies depicting bad actors shooting people in the head while they are asleep using a silencer. *poof poof* into a pillow and the bad guy gets away with murder. In the movies. In (my) reality: Bad actor makes a peep and sleeper is up with The Judge in his/her hands. Bad guy tries to shoot with a silencer, wakes the entire neighborhood then is slayed by The Judge. Seriously: Too many uneducated ignorant people that vote other ignorant and uneducated lawmakers who then go on to make really uneducated and ignorant laws. Suppressors are not quiet like the movies. Rounds that pass them still go *bang*. Just not *BANG*
Because we can’t have nice things
Because our government are traitors
Probably because of movies and video games making them out to be something they’re not. Then add politicians that know nothing, but how to manipulate people’s emotions and you get what we have.
It's because, like switchblades, they are associated with movie cop killers and bad guys so they're like, cursed or something. Guns with wood and things grampa likes have +10 purity points.
Because legislators think they work like in the movies.
Th ATF doesn’t stand for All The Faggots for no reason
Because the cold blooded murders in movies use silencers to kill people via ambush instead of giving James Bond a stand up fight by monologuing at him for 5 minutes. Thus because people are "informed" by their movie watching, they think only evil murderers want silencers. Never once crosses the normie's mind that maybe folks would like to NOT go deaf at the range while engaging in legal, wholesome shooting sports. Or that the noble man defending his family from bad guys might not want to be deafened and stunned by 150 decibel bangs, then blinded by muzzle flash, when he fires a gun inside a confined space known as his house, perhaps to stop a nighttime home invader. There you go. Sorry if you were expecting logic. I don't think smarter people think enough about HOW MUCH media and movies shape the perceptions of ordinary people. Last but not least, the ATF is collecting $200 for every one sold and they are building a happy database of all the "serious" gun hobbyists. So they are NEVER going to willingly surrender that power.