Thus speaketh congresscritter Watson Coleman [Dim-NJ]. The full quote is:
“Silencers are not tools of self-defense, they are tools of murder,” said Congresswoman Watson Coleman. “They have no legal application which is why law enforcement officials around the country have been calling for their elimination. The HEAR Act will save lives and is part of the common sense approach to firearms legislation that polls show has widespread support among voters on both sides of the aisle.”
Really? Let me quote someone else. Three guesses who it is. And my regular readers probably don’t need to guess.
“Moreover, consistent with this low number of prosecution referrals, silencers are very rarely used in criminal shootings. Given the lack of criminality associated with silencers, it is reasonable to conclude that they should not be viewed as a threat to public safety necessitating NFA classification, and should be considered for reclassification under the GCA.”
Yep, the “AFT” said that back in 2017. Suppressors (the legal term is silencer, but I prefer the more accurate “suppressor”) are used very, very rarely in crime; from 1995 to 2004, there were approximately 15 cases of criminal use of a suppressor. An average of 1.5 per year.
In that study time frame, there were roughly a quarter-million suppressors registered. That would be a criminal use rate of 0.0000006%. These days, there are more than two million registered suppressors. A sane person might think that two million cases of murder-with-suppressor are something we would -ahem- “hear” about.
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