Honestly, of all the useful gun regulations there might be, why can’t there be one that says that, if you’re going to fire your gun for non-emergency purposes, you should use a suppressor?
I mean, I don’t expect that, if someone is trying to kill you, that you’re going to be all “time out, let me muffle the sound of my gun so that I don’t disturb my neighbors.” But if you’re in my neck of the woods and you’re just target shooting or hunting or whatever folks are doing up in the hills, why do I have to hear it?
Is there some safety issue? Because I have to believe that a bullet travels faster than the speed of sound, so any stray bullet that might hit me is going to do so before the warning noise. Plus, how sound echos around out here, it doesn’t seem like it does much more than tell you someone else is out here with a gun, which, in this part of Davidson County, you should just expect anyway.
And I’m just being selfish about me.
That can’t be good for the shooter himself’s hearing, right?
And yet, my brother leads me to understand that gun nuts would like to be able to use suppressors more widely, but that it’s not allowed.
What the fuck?
This country has some weird gun regulations.
Tiny Cat Pants 
I think I might rather hear the noise and know to stay inside. Funny regulations–yes.
Pingback: SayUncle » Winning
By and large, most recreational shooters I know would use a suppressor if given the chance to do so – ear muffs / plugs get uncomfortable over time, and only protect the hearing of the person actually wearing them. Suppressors, on the other hand, protect the hearing of everyone within earshot of the firearm.
Unfortunately, our Federal Government is less concerned about the recreational safety of Americans than it is about Making a Buck – in order to own suppressors, one must first fork over for a $200 tax stamp, in addition to the artificially inflated price of the device itself (such devices run between $250 and $2000 depending on caliber and materials involved; in other countries that amusingly regulate firearms more tightly than here but suppressors not at all, you can spend as little as $50, though Lord knows how good they are).
While “hearing protection” is definitely the way to get suppressors de-regulated, unfortunately, the original “ZOMG, stealthy snipers will be able to secretly kill people!” arguments will still rear their ugly heads and people will still emotionally react to those, despite the fact that single-use suppressors can be fabricated out of a specific coupler that any machine shop could make and an oil filter ( http://www.americanspecialtyammo.com/Class_III.html That coupler – nothing more than one set of threads in one direction and another set of threads in the other direction – is NFA-regulated and tax-stamped just like all other suppressors). And, in fairness, not all people would use them if they could – pistols are hard to sight over suppressors, some calibers are just not capable of being easily suppressed, and shotguns… well, oddly, a stupidly-long barrel can suppress those just fine, at the price of weight and length.
So, yeah, we would if we could, but most people cannot afford it. I would be quite happy for that to change, though :).