SilencerCo CEO Joshua Waldron fires a handgun with a suppressor in West Valley City, Utah Credit: Reuters/Jim Urquhart
The U.S. gun industry is trying to shake off the Hollywood hitman image of the gun silencer and rebrand it as a hearing-protection device in a campaign to roll back regulations that date to the 1930s.
Industry lobbying has led to more than a dozen states legalizing silencers for hunting since 2011. Now gun advocates are pressing Congress to repeal a Depression-era law that requires a months-long screening process for silencer buyers – far more scrutiny than gun buyers face.
Sales of silencers – or “suppressors,” as the industry prefers to call them – are booming. The number of silencers registered with the U.S. government more than doubled to 792,282 in February […]
I won’t comment on the motivations of the US gun industry, except that they’re probably motivated by profits more than hearing loss. However, I recently heard Steve Rinella, a well respected hunter/writer, ask for some opinions on this. He mentioned hunting in Scotland, and said his Scots companion was taken aback that US hunters did NOT use suppressors. It’s my understanding that they are fairly common among hunters in Europe in general.