SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 22 2016, @03:05AM
Assuming the units on those numbers are dB, it sounds as if you'd still want ear defenders for anything other than very occasional use if you didn't want to damage your ears.
You may not realize it, however, you've inadvertently made a powerful argument in favor of silencers being safety devices. Even with the best hearing protection available (muffs over ear plugs), firearms are still damaging to hearing.
Dangerous levels are defined as any exposure over 85dB, since noise induced hearing loss is cumulative. Let's say the average gun shot is a 9mm Luger, at 159dB. Keep in mind that carbines, magnum rifles, any gun with a muzzle break tend to be quite a bit louder. The highest rated commonly available ear muffs (Pro Ears Ultra 33) dampen sound by 33dB. Plugs on their own dampen 25dB. Together they dampen approx 35dB. So, our 'average' gunshot is now effectively 124dB, using the best passive protection! If you regularly visit an indoor range for an hour with ten lanes of people constantly putting a measly 100 rounds each down range, you're still at risk for hearing loss, as if you were working in a noisy environment all day, and you used the best protection available.
Now, imagine the risk faced by the range officers who have to be in that sound all day, every day. But that's not the worst of it. Supposing we totally eliminated sound from entering the ear canal, the jaw bone / skull still conducts sound to the inner ear. So, clearly, being able to take a big whack of sound from the source is a lot more effective than trying to dampen the sound after the fact. If a suppressed, subsonic 9mm is 130dB, we're much closer to the safe zone with just plugs, and solidly in the safe zone with muffs.
You've also dispelled the idea that silencers are stealth assassins devices. A suppressed 9mm is 130dB. It's still pretty damn loud. The difference is, even though it's still damaging loud, it's no longer disorientingly loud, supposing one had to use the firearm indoors without hearing protection, as in a home defense scenario.