Time to change silencer laws?

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dlb435

New member
In 1934 the NFA was passed. One of the sections delt with silencers. This was because poachers were using silencers to get game without being heard by the game warden. It was the depression and people were hungry.
Well, it's 2010 and we don't have a big problem with poachers. Also, modern electronics make it very easy for game wardens to pick up the sound of a rifle even if a silencer is used.
Most other countries now either encourage or require the use of a silencer to both protect the shooters hearing and to reduce the noise to people who live near by. Our own noise and health laws would seem to require the use of silencers on all modern weapons.
Do you think that there is any chance that common sense would prevail and the law be changed?
What whould you think about a silencer required law? (that would make a pistol about 6" longer and not so easy to carry concealed)
I'm sure that there would be exceptions for military and police. What about exceptions for everyone else?
Should all old firearms be grandfathered or would they all have to be fitted with silencers?
Keep in mind that hi-tech silencers cost almost $1000.00 each and simple versions still cost about $300.00. I'm sure cost would come down this mass production but it would add significantly to the cost of firearms.
 
It's long past time...

Technically, they "suppress", not silence. Though, the official original name was apparently "firearm silencer".... I still like "muffler" better. I want a muffler for my gun.

Technically, they're already "legal" you just have to bribe... er.... pay the ATF to be allowed to own one....

There's still very much a problem with poachers...

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=430235

However, you don't make a product illegal because someone will use it illegally. That's akin to making condoms illegal because people will use them with prostitutes.

So, yes, they should be legal and, no it's not going to happen anytime soon.
 
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I sure hope so. I dread having to let off any amount of shots with my .45 inside my small apartment. I doubt the courts would see either merit or humor in my suing of the bad guy for hearing loss.

I think that Hollywood has played a part in this, people think that if you put a "silencer" (peet is right, it's a suppressor, far from silent) on a gun that you now have a totally soundless baby killing machine. But it's just not true. You still have to wear hearing protection when shooting suppressed firearms unless they are subsonic (which are still loud, there is an explosion going on there) or that cool Nagant Revolver. Even then it's not this pew-pew you hear in the movies.

So people hear "make silencers legal" and immediately have visions of assassins murdering entire neighborhoods of innocent people in the dead of night and no one ever knows or criminals putting "silencers" on their guns for their drive-bys and no one ever hears them (you would, and most drive bys are with rifles anyways).

Also peet I loved the condom line. I may be using that from now on :D

Plus suppressors are just badass.
 
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Personally, I'm "ok" with the status of silencer laws. Not because I have anything against silencers, but because I'm afraid of what would happen if our legislators ever did get wise about this.

Think what would happen if the US followed what a few other countries require with regard to silencers for "protecting the shooter hearing". The nanny-state gun banners would quickly realize that if ALL GUNS were required to have silencers, this would":

1. drive up the cost by several hundred dollars, and
2. make most guns too large for comfortable conceal carry

two things that the gun banners would just love to see happen. Requiring silencers would quickly accomplish what they haven't been able to do up to now.

While silencers may be "bad ass" they don't do much for those of us who want to carry a gun that is small, compact, stealthy and light for protection. And, most folks who are out hunting aren't going to want to make their rifles heavier - particularly more muzzle heavy.
 
I'd love to see the laws changed, even though I finally got my suppressors a couple months ago.

I don't see them becoming mandatory as "safety features," and if they did, prices would come down. In the US, they're so expensive because they're practically heirloom items due to the difficulty in obtaining them. If your suppressor craps out, you're looking at MONTHS before you have a replacement (it took me about 10 months from ordering to actually having them). That's not counting the hassle and the price of the tax stamp itself. You'll pay more for quality. With easier access, we'd see lower quality suppressors that would be much less expensive.
 
The feds collect $200 tax on each suppressor, they will never give up that kind of money
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I bet you if they reduced the tax to $5, and got rid of the licensing requirements, they would see a higher volume of sale to the point where they would actually increase revenue.
Well, worked with the income tax anyway...

I would love to see the stigma associated with suppressors go away, if only for the fact that I would like to not worry about prosecution as much when I put one on my home defense weapon.
 
Do you think that there is any chance that common sense would prevail and the law be changed?
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Yeah, and it's going to rain nickels later this evening, too. Government doesn't willingly give up control or money.
 
Raise the tax, and get rid of the licensing requirements, and they'd see a huge increase in sales. The increased demand would lower prices on them, so you'd be paying less than you do now.

Not that I want them to raise the tax mind.

On a slightly related note, if they just remove the pre 86 registration on full-autos, I think they could come close to a balanced budget with the increase tax revenue :D
 
I bet you if they reduced the tax to $5, and got rid of the licensing requirements, they would see a higher volume of sale to the point where they would actually increase revenue.
Well, worked with the income tax anyway...
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Actually it didn't work that way on the income tax. But it's a bad comparison because income taxes are based off wages, which are typically determined by the economy, and any reduction in taxes typically is used by the people who get it to save or pay down debt, which doesn't result in economic expansion.

NFA tax stamps on the other hand, are directly proportional to the number of suppressors sold, and more importantly make up a significant percentage of the cost. Whether there would be enough new sales would depend on market demand for suppressors, for which we have no solid data: how many people would buy one if they were cheaper?

I used to do analysis on the sales of expensive electronics, and one of the companies my company worked with told us that their market research showed that when the price of the sort of product they made went from $300 to $400, it only attracted a quarter as many sales. Is something similar possible here? Maybe. But you could just as easily find out that suppressors at, say, $150 would be nothing more than a novelty item that most people would ignore.

In any event, I seriously doubt that suppressor tax stamps make up enough of a revenue stream that it would impact on any discussion of how to change laws about them. If there were 100,000 suppressors manufactured, sold, or transferred in a given year, that would be only $20 million dollars of revenue. Now offset against that amount the cost of maintaining the database on suppressors, filing the paperwork, conducting background checks, inspecting and licensing manufacturers of suppressors, and you're probably talking about 50% of the cost off the top going to administration and enforcement.
 
The feds collect $200 tax on each suppressor, they will never give up that kind of money
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True enough. There's a parallel to licensing/taxation schemes on concealed carry.

A tax on a civil right is unconstitutional. I think we can all agree on that.

Unfortunately, getting the courts to agree is another matter. We've won two major battles in getting the 2nd Amendment acknowledged and incorporated, but attacking the NFA is a whole other can of worms.

Under the NFA, suppressors are tied in machine guns. Any challenge to the constitutionality of taxes on suppressors will also constitute a challenge to the taxes on machine guns. It's all or nothing. If and when there's a credible court challenge to the NFA, expect cries of "OMG machine guns for everybody" up and down the ladder.
 
The increased demand would lower prices on them, so you'd be paying less than you do now.
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That's an interesting economic theory - sort of the reverse of what I was taught.:confused:
 
From Tom Servo:
"Under the NFA, suppressors are tied in machine guns. Any challenge to the constitutionality of taxes on suppressors will also constitute a challenge to the taxes on machine guns. It's all or nothing. If and when there's a credible court challenge to the NFA, expect cries of "OMG machine guns for everybody" up and down the ladder."
The NFA is probably unconstitutional. The Supreme Court has allowed this law to stand by simply not taking any cases that challange the law. Cases that have been taken were very narrowly defined. This is not the only time that the court has refused to review a law that is unconstitutional.
Look at the laws about slavery. Clearly, anyone born in the US was entitled to the full rights of citizinship. Yet the courts, for political reasons, waited until after the Civil War to affirm this. Laws that were unconstitutional have often been allowed to stand for 80 years or more!
I would not look to the courts to redress this problem. The courts have taken the position that the legislature gets the lead in many of these areas. It's the idea that the greater public good is being served.
I would expect that any change to the NFA would have to come from congress.
I don't believe that the ATF is making much on the $200.00 tax stamp. Because they have to do an actual check on the person applying for the stamp; they only break even. If it was a $5.00 tax stamp with no checks it would probably make money. (I would expect this type of tax to be applied to all firearm parts and accessories)
 
So, yes, they should be legal and, no it's not going to happen anytime soon.
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I agree. Can you imagine the Brady Bunch and their hype over

"AKs equiped with silencers that would allow criminals to "spray fire" from the hip without making any sound and would create thousands of silent death machines."
 
Skans, I hadn't considered the risk that suppressors would be made compulsory before, but there is a logic to that analysis. We do require suppressors (mufflers) on vehicles.

If we didn't require mufflers on cars, and there was a six month wait, LEO approval and a $200 tax, I believe our cars would sound very different.

Skans said:
That's an interesting economic theory - sort of the reverse of what I was taught.
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His point is that these are currently rare niche items sold only to people willing to shell out $200 for a piece of paper and jump through some other hoops. If all you needed was an extra $5 for a fellow at the shop down the street to pay an excise tax, then demand should rise to the general population and there would be a market to satisfy larger suppliers.

Then we could complain about the shoddy quality of $15 walmart suppressors and urge others to hold out for a locally made $45 item.
 
zukiphile said:
Then we could complain about the shoddy quality of $15 walmart suppressors and urge others to hold out for a locally made $45 item.
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:D That's dang funny.

Skans was saying that when demand goes up price goes up. In the market we would have to assume that supply rises to meet demand, but when this is the case the effect on price is ambiguous, it depends on how much supply goes up. We would hope that supply rises above the initial rise in demand so that the price goes way down.

But even then we have to assume that demand for suppressors is sensitive to price (elasticity). You could make arguments that demand for suppressors is both relatively elastic and inelastic; a lot of people will view them as novelty items that no one will want to spend too much money on and then you have the people that just have to have them on all their guns.

On the mandatory suppressors note, that would be bad. Like Skans said, it would make concealment pretty difficult. But it is an interesting argument for suppressors that even the "nanny-state" countries go as far as to make them mandatory. Not a very good one, but an interesting one.
 
Then we could complain about the shoddy quality of $15 walmart suppressors and urge others to hold out for a locally made $45 item.
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That would be funny!:D Or, we would simply make our own..... I could see it now - Officer pulls up to the shooting range "Sir, if you are going to use a potato duck-taped to the end of your rifle as a suppressor, you need to change it after every shot - here's your $185 fine for excessive firearm noise."
 
His point is that these are currently rare niche items sold only to people willing to shell out $200 for a piece of paper and jump through some other hoops.
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That's part of it. Not only is the interest level kept artificially low due to the regulatory issues, but that barrier to entrance actually destroys the low end of the market.

I have read that in Europe where suppressors are just about mandatory, there is a much wider variety of them and some that are dirt cheap because they aren't made with as much care. Well, here in the US we don't see those. If you're going in the hole for $200 and waiting 6 months before you ever get your hands on one, you see less concern about paying an extra $150 or so for a quality one.

Example: one of the two suppressors I purchased was a YHM Mite in .22LR. Retail cost is $200. The same amount as the tax stamp. There's not much reason something like this couldn't be knocked out for $50, but you'd be giving up features you *really* want on a .22LR suppressor, like the ability to take it apart for cleaning. Because it's such a pain to get another, you pay more for a quality one and there's no demand for cheapies.

Remove the Form 4 requirement and drop the tax down a bit, and you'll see $50 suppressors that last 25% as long, because it's less a problem to go get another.

If buying a ratchet and socket set required fingerprinting, CLEO signoff, 6 months to wait, and a $200 tax stamp, you would see a far higher percentage of people owning Snap-Ons. The $5 Harbor Freight one that's made out of pot metal and will break easily would just be a foolish purchase- anybody wanting such a thing wouldn't buy anything lower quality than Craftsman, and more likely would not rule out shelling out for kits that were better yet.

But because there's no tax, no paperwork, and no wait, the only penalty for buying crap is the time you spent getting it from the store and the actual price paid for the crap tool. Therefore, some people buy that junk simply because they don't see their needs as justifying the higher price; if it breaks they'll just get another.

Same for suppressors- remove the obstacles, you'll see a low end fill in. Prices on current ones won't drop much- the increased demand would likely offset the amount built in just for the hassle of dealing in such restricted items, but you'll see newer ones hit the market at much lower prices.
 
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