Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Anti-gunners often like to present themselves to people as something of experts on firearms. In truth, they’re experts in telling people how bad guns are, regardless of anything approaching facts. In truth, they often get actual facts about firearms hilariously wrong. These so-called “experts” don’t really know anything at all about guns as a whole.
A prime example comes to us via Mark Olivia, writing at our sister site, Townhall.
Gun control has a problem with the truth. They can’t shoot straight.
Brady: United Against Gun Violence is the latest example of just making it up as they go and thinking no one will notice. Officials there sent out a plea for money claiming the Trump administration’s rollback of a 2002 State Department ban on suppressor exports is putting U.S. service members’ lives at risk. The fundraiser email read as follows:
“The harm is clear: This repeal will increase the risk that U.S. service members will be shot or killed with American-made guns and accessories.
“This repeal is immoral. It’s unpatriotic. It’s lethal.”
It’s also complete BS. Brady should learn to conduct a basic fact check. Even checking Wikipedia would suffice.
Suppressors are just a muffler for a gun. They’re not the Hollywood depiction of the “pffft” puff sound glamorized by the silver screen. Suppressors reduce the noise of gunfire to around 140 decibels, the threshold where instant and permanent hearing loss occurs. It’s still about as loud as a jackhammer.
Further, it’s beyond ridiculous to think that America’s enemies are unable to get their hands on suppressors without them being available for purchase at our local gun stores.
First, the Taliban and ISIS have plenty of sources for guns that have nothing to do with the American firearms market. That means they can get their paws on suppressors easily enough. Hell, they can probably manufacture their own within the territory they control. It’s freaking 19th-century technology, after all. (Yeah, I know, suppressors of today are different than those first ones, but the point remains that it’s not rocket science.)
They don’t need them to be on the American market for them to be on the end of their weapons.
More than that, though, I think Brady knows this. They’re simply hoping their donors are too stupid to know. The bad part is, they’re probably right. The average anti-gunner is absolutely clueless on firearms. They legitimately think terrorists in foreign nations obtain their firearms primarily through the civilian gun market here in the United States and that if we start selling suppressors, we’ll end up with every terrorist in the world using them.
Well, that’s not a real threat.
The real threat is in groups like Brady continuing to attack our essential liberties because they can’t fathom that law-abiding Americans not only can own these items without murdering millions, but do so on a regular basis. They can’t imagine that a safety device would be used for non-nefarious purposes.
You see, that’s the point Brady misses. Suppressors aren’t magic. They don’t eliminate the sound of a gunshot. Even if they could, the crack of the round breaking the sound barrier could still be heard. Suppressors only make it so people don’t get hearing damage when they pull the trigger. That’s it.
But Brady can’t fundraise off that, so they make it out like it it’s a clear threat to our troops. Meanwhile, those same troops look at claims like this and laugh. At least, those with any experience with suppressors do.
Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. He's also the host of Unloaded TV on YouTube. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/07/28/bradys-fearmongering-suppressors/