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A Republican trifecta in Washington next year will likely see action on a bill to remove firearm suppressors from National Firearms Act regulation after 82 years.
The Hearing Protection Act was introduced last October by U.S. Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., and currently has 78 bipartisan co-sponsors from 34 states. Since then, the HPA has been among the top 10 most-viewed bills on Congress.gov almost every week since it was introduced.
However, with a slim Republican majority in the Senate unable to override a near-certain veto from President Obama, the bill has been in doldrums.
Now, with the White House under new management next year, advocates for the measure feel signs are looking up and will likely return to the next Congress with a fresh mandate.
Why is this important? Safety has been increasing in nearly every aspect and product since the beginning of time, but allowing people to protect their hearing by adding silencers to their weapons has been a tough road for gun owners for a long while.
“Imagine for a second that we lived in a world where you had to pay a $200 tax to buy a pair of earplugs,” Knox Williams, president of the American Suppressor Association, the industry trade group for the devices, told Guns.com on Wednesday. “Now, imagine that even after paying that tax you still had to wait 8 months before you could bring your earplugs home with you. As silly as that sounds, it’s the world we live in with suppressors in the NFA.”
(Score: 1, Troll) by mendax on Monday November 21 2016, @06:54AM
... when I went to the gun range to go shooting the one time I did it I wore ear plugs. It seems that's the only hearing protection one needs. If there is any other use of your hand guns I suspect the last thing you'll be worrying about is your hearing! Stupid Republican NRA shite.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @09:09AM
Well thank god your SINGLE experience was enough to formulate policy.
I bet you wrote the Kama Sutra after your single sexual experience... many years ago... at bandcamp.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @10:00AM
So in what situation is putting hearing protection on your ears not sufficient?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Chrontius on Monday November 21 2016, @10:34AM
Hunting - you need to be able to hear, to be able to stalk, and most don't waste time putting on ear protection and risk losing a clean shot.
Someone kicked down the door - you can't tell the strung-out PCP user who thinks they're God to hold on while you untangle your earplugs - you really want to pop off that warning shot and see if they reconsider their immortality before they put a screwdriver in your eye socket.
Gun ranges with cement "rifle tunnels" - these tend to direct nearly half the waste energy back at the shooter, and internal combustion engines (like firearms) are only about 25% efficient, ideally. Repeated exposure to such shockwaves can have an effect comparable to a mild concussion, according to people I know who have left such ranges feeling "punch-drunk".
Gun ranges full-stop - while many were built in empty agricultural or industrial land, urban sprawl has caused many - including my favorite - to become surrounded by homes. Noise ordnances have forced many ranges out of business; my range closes around 6 pm whereas their second location is open until 9 pm. The effect is, you can't shoot after work unless you work at the gun range.
And that's just the cases I came up off the top of my head.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 21 2016, @02:15PM
Hunting
Hearing protection means you can't hear some idiot kid and his dog (I live in a hunting state and everyone knows unless you're a hunter you GTFO of the woods during gun season) and if you incorrectly get target fixation without paying attention to whats behind the target...
Another application is urban hunting, its hard to get a license for paranoia reasons and the cops grow tired of "man with gun" calls, but it happens already and expensive silencers help no one.
Mostly, anti-silencer laws should be gotten rid of because the laws are inherently stupid, not because silencers are tremendously useful.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gauauu on Monday November 21 2016, @03:39PM
Hearing protection means you can't hear some idiot kid and his dog (I live in a hunting state and everyone knows unless you're a hunter you GTFO of the woods during gun season)
This attitude drives me crazy. The woods do not exclusively belong to hunters.
I live in a hunting state also. My family owns a bit of wooded land. We post no hunting signs, because we want to be able to safely take walks in our own woods that we own. Hunters routinely ignore the signs and hunt on our land. THEY are the ones who are being unsafe by hunting on woods posted no hunting. THEY are the ones with lethal weapons. The fact that the kid inconveniences your hunting doesn't mean that he's an idiot when he legally and peacefully uses the land.
(I'm not opposed to hunters in general. Our family has hunters as well. I'm just opposed to the idea that the hunters have full reign to the woods during hunting season, and everyone else has to change their habits to suit them)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 21 2016, @09:11PM
Well that's a mix of problems, some dude wandering around property with a gun is highly likely to get shot, hunting season or no. Depends on your local laws. Also quite illegal even if they had no gun. Things get weirder with duck hunting and the DNR owns all surface of lakes so technically people can legally fire shotguns at ducks right under your bedroom window if your house is close enough to the lakeshore. Probably depends on individual state law of course.
One way to look at is is the odds of getting hit are pretty low but someone gets hit every season so taking the risk is unwise.
Also I suppose it depends on state but out DNR "defuses" the situation kinda by doing all kinds of shared access in parks, so you can fly model aircraft and drones but only certain weekends, and a theater troop takes over the park a couple times a year. So letting the hunters take over the trails for the early winter is I suppose annoying but its "normal-ish" for people to share.
(Score: 1) by gauauu on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:21PM
some dude wandering around property with a gun is highly likely to get shot, hunting season or no
While I agree with the general idea of your post, this part isn't really true. If a man with a hunting rifle came on our family land, I wouldn't view him as threatening, just as a nuisance. People aren't likely to freak out and shoot someone just because they have a hunting rifle. In rural sub-cultures, carrying a gun just isn't considered scary or threatening, it's just something people do.
But in the small city where I live now, if a man came on my property with a gun, I'd be immediately calling the cops. It all depends on your location and sub-culture.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday November 22 2016, @04:42PM
And even the decade. Just a couple decades ago even rural it would be "whatever" but now I think it would be assumed the guys on meth and at best merely wants to steal copper pipes and whatever to get the next fix, at worst, well its gonna be pretty bad.
And of course the difference between wearing hunter orange vs a ski mask, the difference between walks out of the woods and says hi vs sneaks up on you in the dark, etc etc
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @06:28AM
Well, if they are carrying a Bushmaster, best to pop 'em off first, and ask questions later. This is how you tell a hunter from a gun-nut survivalist ammo-sexual who probably wants to rape you and your livestock. Can't be too careful these days. Lots of Trump voters think they can roam the woods doing the open carry thing, even on private property. And the cops are only minutes away, but if you have a silencer, you don't even need to bother law enforcement.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 23 2016, @08:24AM
Fuck you cunt.
We voted Trump so bitches like you would be gotten rid of.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday November 21 2016, @05:42PM
Alternate solution: A pair of earplugs / earmuffs that are in fact speakers, hooked up to microphones on the outside of the headset. When it's quiet they relay the sounds of the environment (using software to recreate the stereo information, so you can hear where a sound is coming from) into the user's ears. However harmfully loud noises (ie gunfire) are not passed through at full volume, thus protecting the ears.
Presto! Hearing protection when you need it, ability to listen the rest of the time, no need to be fiddling about with ear-gear in the middle of your constitutionally-protected bunny slaughtering session.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @06:22PM
Already exists, dickhead
https://www.amazon.com/RangeGuard-Electronic-Hearing-Protector-RG-OTH-4/dp/B00UAM0MFG/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8 [amazon.com]
but really isn't applicable to hunting since you can't localize sounds (nor do they have a wide enough frequency response), and adding in signal processing will triple the costs.
The NR isn't sufficient for certain weapons though, and with prolonged use, you get a sensory deprivation effect.
Any other things you are wholly ignorant about that I can illuminate for you?
(Score: 1) by Chrontius on Friday November 25 2016, @11:04AM
These exist, but they're $pendy. Especially if you get into communications capable ear protection, you'll rapidly go from $50 to $1000 - only to get you the ability to effectively use walkie-talkies like you had before the earmuffs. Anonymous coward is completely correct, if also an unnecessarily abrasive asshole. My Ryobi muffs are generally considered to be "hitting above their class" but don't allow adequate proprioception, passive awareness, or 3D positional audio. They don't fit with hard hats, and they don't play nice with eye protection for chainsaw duty. They are the best on the market, but they're still the best of the worst.
Adding phone connection means it's going to suck. There's no good way to do this - phones' processors and heat sinks are optimized around anything but real-time signal-processing. You'll kill the battery, and have constant audio dropouts. Plus the driver app is likely to sell your real-time GPS coordinates to the highest bidder. Putting a dedicated ASIC into the headset is what the military does - it's also why they cost $1000.
Even double-plugged, (Surefire's impulse-noise-filtering earplugs under Ryobi smart earmuffs) the asshole next to me with the high-pressure rifle makes me flinch. It's not just about the noise, it's about getting slapped in the face with a hot sponge. (There's no real comparison for that feeling, alas - you're way too close to a violent explosion, and while it's harmless, your hindbrain doesn't want to listen when you tell it to sit down and shut up!)
(Score: 1) by modecx on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:30AM
I'd support this for gun ranges alone. In my area, so many outdoor ranges have been shut down because of urban sprawl, due solely to noise complaints, and not safety issues; we're talking ranges with full bullet containment designs. It's impossible to find an outdoor range to shoot at without driving 40 miles. Making economically feasible to have a semi-urban, outdoor, silencer-only range would be freaking awesome.
I refuse to go to indoor ranges because of ventilation, NOISE, limited distance to shoot, inflexibility on activities like drawing from a holster, moving from a shooting lane, etc. etc. I've never been to an indoor range that I really enjoyed.
(Score: 1) by Chrontius on Monday November 21 2016, @10:37AM
Some asshole in the next lane with a high-pressure rifle and a muzzle brake. These direct the explosion back and to the sides in order to reduce felt recoil, essentially acting as small rocket engines. To you, it's louder and more unpleasant. However, to the guy next to you, it's like getting hit in the face with a hot Nerf ball - and while wielding a deadly weapon, at that. It's not quite as bad as having a flashbang go off, but it tends to ruin my aim for the next five or six seconds, so I basically have to either change lanes (not always possible) or wait for the rifle guy to run out of filled magazines.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday November 21 2016, @10:09AM
But this shows the root of the problem. The guy's clearly unable to distinguish between the source and the sink.
Jokes about being unable to distinguish his bumhole and mouth go here...
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by Chrontius on Monday November 21 2016, @10:42AM
Maybe… maybe. But one thing I'm sure of:
The second thing you'll be worrying about is whether your hearing is ever coming back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2016, @11:18PM
I was unable to conduct a full firearms safety and functional training session with a interested woman due to the potential harm of noise caused by gunshots.
She was pregnant. Her unborn child could not, of course, wear earplugs.