We live in a lunatic asylum at times here in the USA. A bill has just been introduced into Congress that effectively reduces the time it takes to be approved to purchase a firearms suppressor from seven to nine months to less that ninety days. The benefits to gun owners would be to reduce shooters’ hearing loss, dampen recoil, and lower game-spooking noise according to the bill. The bill states tax raised by the additional sales of suppressors will go to the ATF’s NFA division to expedite the processing of suppressor applications. The remaining 85 percent would be deposited in the P-R Fund to support wildlife conservation, law enforcement, and hunter recruitment with residual funds going to support maintenance and development of shooting ranges.

Doesn’t that sound reasonable? Yes, in a lunatic asylum.

Let me just say this about two mass shootings that have happened.

First, in the recent New England shooting where eighteen were killed the shooter attempted to get a suppressor for his AR-15 style rifle just weeks before the shooting. One of his targeted locations was a bowling alley, where four killed were attending a corn-hole party for the deaf. I worked for one year in a bowling alley during college, back in what we called the racks, back behind the bowling machines. We had to wear earmuffs because of the noise and a light would turn on to notify us of an issue needing to be addressed. I can only imagine what would have happened had the shooter obtained a firearms noise suppressor. It would not only have been the deaf who would have been at a disadvantage that night, it would have been ANYONE in that bowling alley because with the noise of the machines, the rolling of the balls in the lanes, and the impact noise of balls hitting pins, many people would never have known a shooter was in the building until far too late.

The second was the mass shooting at the Virginia university a few years ago. In that shooting the shooter shot and killed twelve individuals with a .45 caliber handgun equipped with a silencer. Survivors thought they were hearing a nailing gun, not a firearm. Survivors stated they did not know what was going on. The shooting occurred in the same building where the campus police were housed, yet the campus police said they did not know when the first shots were fired.

Suppressors (silencers) give shooters an advantage. Whether hunters, criminals, or mass killers. Police departments universally are against the open sale and availability of suppressors. Ethical hunting considers the meaning of “fair chase”. There is a very long history of how “fair chase” developed but it’s meaning is simple – hunters should not be given an improper advantage over a free ranging game animal. Suppressors would provide hunters, and the worst of the hunters, an unfair advantage over game animals. Would we want to provide a mass shooter an “unfair advantage”?

Why then make it easier to obtain suppressors? It has nothing to do with the second amendment, it has nothing to do with hunter’s hearing, it has nothing to do with supporting conservation, or supporting well maintained shooting ranges. It has only one thing to do with – the sales and profits of the firearms industry. Plain and simple.

We live in an insane asylum today in this country when it comes to the firearms industry and politics. A deadly mix……and damn any thought of public (and our police) safety.