It helps morale, and makes stress easier to deal with, and can build solidarity. Several years ago, in a situation where me and 131 other people were waiting for our imminent deaths, and were powerless to do anything about it, some people were freaking out, some sat in silence, and others of us joked and laughed about the situation. I actually asked one of my friends if he’d like to retake an exam, so he could maybe pass it, and sue with a better grade. He really bombed an exam badly, the day before, and there obviously wouldn’t be time for other remediation. He he told me to fuck off, we both laughed, did a “cheers” with our half empty coffees, and finished them off.

I was one of the laughers/jokers, but when the situation changed, giving us hope of survival, the laughing and joking went silent. Hope brought the stress for the rest of us. Obviously, we survived (I’m thumbing this missive out on my phone). I’ve been married over 20 years, have a couple kids.

maybe i never saw the internet as a social environment. just a space for organization.

then maybe more of us need to be pointing that out

Not commenting on the other parts of this discussion but a single shot from a rifle absolutely CAN cause permanent hearing damage. Even some weapons suppressed are still loud enough to damage your hearing over a short amount of time/multiple shoots. Have you ever seen or watched news of cops shooting someone and NOT firing multiple rounds?
Of all the tactical battle rattle these ICE dorks are wearing to capture people, I think suppressors are the least worrisome; should maybe even be mandatory for law enforcement in urban environments. That’s coming from my experience shooting in the Marines and being a hobby shooter since then.

I would prefer the cops not have any guns at all. They would certainly be more polite. If they are going to go do something that would need a gun they need a warrant and then 5 pages of requisition forms filled out in triplicate to request the guns.

It’s not like they’ve been trained in any de-escalation techniques, if they’ve been trained at all.

A suppressor on a subsonic .22 caliber gun is about as close to movie/video game quiet as you can expect. There is still variation, but subsonic ammo eliminates the “crack” from the sonic boom (comes from the bullet itself), and the suppressor reduces the muzzle noise a lot. In person I’ve heard one suppressed subsonic .22, and it was about the level of a good clap. 👏

A good answer to your question needs more specifics, but in general, suppressed handguns with home-defense or target ammo are still loud enough to gain attention.

On the other hand, subsonic ammo will be pretty quiet and reduce the noise drastically, but unless you have the semi-auto mechanics tuned properly, the gun won’t cycle the next round in very well. I can’t speak to the stopping power of subsonic ammo but again, it probably requires specifics to give an accurate answer.

YES. That is the most annoying shit ever. I’m just tryna have a good time practicing good technique with a handgun and I have to sit and listen to some moron spray hundreds of dollars worth of ammo away so they can feel like they’re the coolest dude at the range. Then they leave and we all look around at each other like “thank fuck that asshole is finally gone eye roll emoji”

1. There are different kinds of 5.56mm ammo, they don’t all have the same construction or behave the same way. We don’t know what ICE are loading.
2. Even M855 green tip (which is what it sounds like you’re describing, or at least some similar variety of FMJ soft core round) can pierce lighter body armour and still be lethal. That means against an unarmoured target it’s going to have very little problem going in and out of a human body.
3. While I’ll grant that most softer varieties of 5.56 will be stopped by brick (again, we don’t know exactly what ICE are loading, but fairs fair, it was somewhat of an overstatement on my part), they will certainly have no difficulty going through drywall, wood, and other visual obstructions that could be concealing an innocent bystander. While it’s certainly true that something like a 9mm can also penetrate many of these obstructions, it will not retain nearly as much lethality when doing so, and it simply makes no sense to increase your risk of injuring a bystander every time you fire for basically no gain. If you fire an AR-15 inside a building (which, y’know, is where a bunch of people doing no-knock raids expect to be spending a lot of their time) you have a very high chance of killing an innocent bystander you couldn’t even see.

For more on this I consulted my wife who confirmed that she’s been shown videos in training of 5.56 going through multiple layers of dry-wall and still retaining lethal velocity. You can see this in this video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3BlRPtCj2E) but know that this is also what professionals are taught about their weapons when considering targets, over-penetration and cover.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

the left never sees an opportunity, unless it’s an opportunity to whine to the choir.

The police normally have uniforms uncovered faces and come with warrants and badges which can be inspected verified and furthermore verified with dispatch if you call 911.

You could pretend to be an officer and people do but it would be easy to verify both at the time and after the fact making it a rarity because its hard to pull off.

Right now you could gather 3 bros and a van and snatch someone and it would probably take months to find out that they were murdered rather than in some holding facility or prison in El Salvador

People are more scared of the boogeyman than the people literally kidnapping folks off the street and sending them to concentration camps merely because they belong to a 3 letter agency with authority.

Personally, I think suppressor should be the least of illegal things about firearms.

The majority of the people I know with one have it so they don’t bother their neighbors as much and they have a little extra buffer zone for their earpro.

I’d much rather it sound like my neighbor is using a large sledgehammer all day than gunshots.

The masks, lack of clear identification (not “I’m a cop” but actual identifying information), and what looks like 270 rounds of ammo waiting to go for a supposed kidnapping deportation are of FAR greater concern.

The ammunition is, but the mechanical parts of the gun are still fairly loud.

You can get the sound down to maybe 100 dBA. That’s much quieter than the 160ish that you get without a suppressor. But, that’s still loud. Things that are around 100 dBA include blenders, electric drills, motorcycles, etc. It’s only a very brief sound, but it’s loud for that moment. The Guinness record for loudest finger snap is 108 dBA. So, the quietest gun will be much louder than the average finger snap.

That means those movie scenes where people are having a shootout with silencers in a library and nobody notices, or even in a crowded train station. That’s not realistic. People might not recognize the sound as a gun, but they’d definitely be looking around for the source of that snapping sound. It also means the scenes where someone is sneaking through a house at night killing people without being noticed are not realistic either. If you’re asleep, a loud finger snap might not wake you up, but if you’re awake you’re definitely going to notice it.

I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person using subsonic 556. Subsonic 22LR? Every day. But not 556. 223? Only when hunting deer. Not for social work.

Most rifle rounds depend on speed for their energy.

A subsonic 5.56 is only going to have 15-20% the muzzle energy of a standard round at best.

Agree. A 9mm with a nice suppressor? All I can hear is the “action” of the gun: Click. Click. Click.

It depends on what you shoot, also. A subsonic 22lr will sound like an airgun. A 55gr 5.56 (common to AR-15s) will still be loud as shit from the sonic boom.

Compared to…?

It’s extremely quiet compared to shooting a gun without a silencer. Sure, but guns are incredibly loud.

This hits different after just having watched several videos of people raving about the subharmonic excellence of Geoff Castelluci 😄

He absolutely murders with his subharmonic sonic ammo, is what I’m getting at 😉

The reason we jump to that is because it’s common misconception, and that misconception directly leads people to support bans on suppressors.

The title of the post quite literally uses the term “silencer”.

Right now, the market for them is distorted by the tax stamp. Only a few people bother with the paperwork and fee (even though it’s been highly streamlined in recent years). That means companies producing them have to make up their costs with high prices rather than volume. It’s almost a stealth tax on top of the stated tax.

That results in only a few well off people getting them. This has little overlap with skill or appreciation for the hobby.

Drop them from the NFA, and now everyone with a 3D printer can just run one off. Even in traditional manufacturing, you have a much larger customer base, and the company can sell on volume rather than high prices.