With Republicans assuming control of both the House and Senate in just a couple of months, Second Amendment advocates are hopeful that things like national right-to-carry reciprocity and the removal of suppressors from the National Firearms Act will soon be enacted into law. The Hearing Protection Act currently has 29 co-sponsors in the Senate and 69 in the House, so supporters still have some work to do in educating congresscritters on the importance of the bill.
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Even with suppressors still regulated by the NFA, though, sales have been quietly soaring in recent months. Now, Everytown for Gun Safety’s “Smoking Gun” website is sounding the alarm to anti-gun activists about the record-setting increase in suppressor ownership.
In October, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the gun industry’s trade association, reported that Americans owned 4.9 million silencers as of July 2024 according to data provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Compared to previous reporting, this updated total reflects an alarming surge in silencer sales: In the first six months of 2024 alone, Americans purchased and registered a staggering 1.4 million silencers.
The data shows that between May 2021 and July 2024, a mere three-year span, Americans accumulated nearly as many silencers as were registered in the previous 87 years — since the National Firearms Act (NFA) first mandated their registration in 1934.
The surge is only “alarming” to those convinced that suppressors are inherently dangerous items that turn the sound of a gunshot into an undetectable whisper. The reality is that even suppressed firearms make plenty of noise. The Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation says, for instance, that “even the most effective suppressors on the smallest calibers reduce the peak sound level of a gunshot to around 110-120 decibels”; about as loud as a car horn or a power saw.
Suppressors are common overseas, especially in many European countries, but they’ve been tightly regulated here in the U.S. since the creation of the National Firearms Act in 1934. Still, as Everytown complains, recent regulatory changes have made suppressors more accessible to gun owners, and their popularity is growing by leaps and bounds.
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In the past, silencer customers waited several months to have their NFA applications processed. But in December 2021, the ATF rolled out a new online “eForms” system — after successful lobbying by the NSSF — that dramatically sped up approvals. Well-known silencer retailers like the Silencer Shop have boasted that they’ve seen same-day approvals for customers.
As discussed here, silencer retailers have also streamlined the silencer-buying process. In addition to offering financing options for silencers, companies will prepare NFA applications for customers, collect their fingerprints through mailed kits or kiosks set up at gun shops, and even ship silencers directly to customers’ doors.
Everytown suggests that’s a big problem, but they don’t have any evidence to back up their claims. The gun control group says that there 153 cases between 1995-2005 where “evidence suggests a silencer was used for a criminal purpose,” but they fail to mention that includes unlawful possession of a silencer where no other crime was committed.
That gives an average of about 15 reported cases each year, and assuming this represents close to half of all prosecutions, one can assume 30-40 total cases per year. This is out of 75-80,000 federal criminal prosecutions each year. Overall numbers certainly suggest that silencers are a very minor law enforcement problem.
… If we include sale of weapons in the victimless category (along with possession of illegal weapons, drug trafficking, and mere non-violent possession of weapons by a felon), then more than 80 percent of federal silencer charges are for non-violent, victimless crimes. If we consider all those convicted of RICO, CCE, extortion, robbery and conspiracy as “professional” criminals, these still represent less than 20 percent of defendants prosecuted.
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The anti-gunners at Everytown are terrified about the prospect of silencers being taken off the NFA, but there’s simply no legitimate reason to be concerned. Suppressors are used in a handful of crimes every year, but they’re helping to save the hearing of millions of Americans. The rise in suppressor ownership is a very good thing, and deregulating their sale and possession is long overdue.
