Via the Captain’s Journal, this fine “past hunter and active skeet shooter” skools us on what we don’t need…
[W]hat is the actual benefit of making that noise less audible?
Is it to avoid hurting the shooter’s ears? Is it to not scare off nearby wildlife? Is it so people don’t know a gun is being fired in their immediate area?
Understandably, when James Bond wants to do away with an evil villain, it’s to his benefit to do so with a bit of stealth.
Ever hear a suppressed centerfire gun fired? It’s not ‘less audible,’ I assure you. It’s audible as hell. It’s just not damaging to be near.
I’ve got neighbors – a mile away, I’ve got neighbors – who have begun complaining every time I step outside for some target practice. I’d love to be able to buy a suppressor without jumping through NFA hoops and spending the price of a used car on a tube with some baffles or washers. I think that would be very nice indeed. And I’ve never even taken aim at an evil villain.
The only problem I can see with a suppressor is the fact that it wouldn’t fit in my holster, and would undoubtedly be awkward to draw if I had a holster to fit it. On the range, sure, when I wasn’t practicing the draw, of course. When the NFA insanity is finally removed, I would hope someone would manage to come up with a suppressor that was compatible with a carry gun… but, of course, we have a way to go until the NFA joins the dung heap of history.
Have a friend that went to the trouble to acquire a legal suppressor for a .22 rifle. One of the full barrel designs. He uses it to pot verming in the garden at dawn. Doesn’t wake the wife or scare the other critters. I would be intrested except for the permission and tax issues.
We have a poster on our kitchen wall that has a young lady teaching a little girl to shoot. The rifle is a suppressed .22. The caption says something about about “Protecting little ears…” and finishes with “Please, it’s for the Children.”
RE: The Complaining Neighbor . . .
Man, isn’t there always SOMEBODY???
Sigh.
When I hear my neighbors shooting, I complain too. Complain loudly that they have the time and coin to bust some caps and I don’t.
Firearm mufflers are now legal in my state, if it was just the money I’d have one for my .22’s it’s the paper work I don’t like, and the continuing legal hassle. I’d have to start a trust or other legal entity to own the muffler so if my wife is home and I’m not there she’s not breaking the law, I’d have to make sure I have a copy of it’s permission slip with it anywhere I take it, and then I have to tell the feds if I plan on taking it to a different state and …
Oh jeez. The complainy neighbors are new, then? Is this one of those cases where someone moves next to an airport and then starts complaining about aircraft noise? Or is it more complicated and tragic than that? 🙂
I’m all for sound suppression when it makes sense, and of course when any free person wants it. The only real problem I have with the idea is that add-on cans change the balance and handling of a piece, and usually make it conspicuously less wieldy in the field. I love the idea of training with cans at the range and dispensing in the field, but adding the suppressor to an existing design negates most pistol leather, and certainly changes technique unacceptably for anyone trying to train realistically. I’ve become an advocate of Airsoft as a viable way of keeping my training realistic, while being quiet, inexpensive, and portable in a way no firearm can be.
Now…what I’d really like to see, absent all the regulatory stupidity, is some real innovation in integral sound suppression. I seem to recall that there are some internally-suppressed Ruger 10/22s that still fit the profile of the original rifle, just with a shorter, backbored barrel; now there is an idea that has merit. Don’t know how compact one could reasonably make an internally-suppressed pistol, but maybe there is something workable in there. I wonder if that weird new Boberg design, which does seem to demonstrably shorten the overall length like a bullpup design does with a rifle, might be combined with an internal can for an overall length of a 5″ 1911 or thereabouts. Again, in the absence of the drooling rulers over at the Department Of Thou Shalt Not, who knows what innovations designers might come up with?
If I had the funds for the project (ha!), it would be fun to come up with a long gun design of my own. It’d be pretty awesome to have a competent ‘smith do up a modern update of the DeLisle carbine, but in .460 Rowland, made as compact as possible. I suspect that judicious loading of the Rowland could get you about 300 grains right under the sound barrier, which, for most of us, should be good out to the limits of iron sights.
Sigh. Then, though, the problem would probably quickly become all the noise of the steel target clanging.
Kevin, I suspect (based on nothing at all, which is near statistical proof that I’m wrong) that should suppressors ever become easily available we’ll see a boom in pistol-caliber carbines. Saw a rare integrally-suppressed (internally suppressed? Not sure of the proper term) semiauto .45 carbine one time – what can I say, you hang around with Ian, you see weird things – and I thought it was the coolest gun ever. Just a short little stick-mag carbine with a fat barrel. Lock the action down so it wouldn’t cycle, and I’d bet that gun hardly made the traditional movie “pew.”
[I’ve got neighbors – a mile away, I’ve got neighbors – who have begun complaining every time I step outside for some target practice.]
The proper remedy for that is “Blow it out your ass!” Sheesh, there is more shooting in liberal western Oregon than some desert places. My neighbor is going at it all the time. I do now and then too. Makes a person wonder…