Disclaimer: I am not a hunter. I am too lazy to be a hunter. I have friends and family that hunt and enjoy it for the sport and the eating.

So the Sun Sentinel editorial staff is having their collective panties on a bunch because there is a proposal to eliminate Florida’s prohibition to use silencers for hunting.  In their editorial, they managed to hit just about every misconception that exists about silencers, hunters and crime there is out there. Let’s begin.

What does it take to bring down Bambi?

So what is the fixation with Anti-Gunners and Bambi? Every time there is a pro-hunting initiative, they bring the poor animal up front as a banner which is stupid because a) It is a character in a movie and b) It was Bambi’s mother who got shot.

It would appear Florida hunters of deer, turkey and other wild game have every conceivable, technological advantage over their virtually unprotected prey. Now arrives word of a plan to allow hunters to use silencers to employ even more deadly stealth.

Holy crap! The editors are tuned to the latest in silencers. What has it been? A week and a half or so since a true effective silencer for shotguns hit the market? Them turkeys are cooked! And yes, you hunt using stealth, ask anybody. Having a party in the woods only attracts the wrong kind of animal and that tends to be a biped and predatorial.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will consider a proposal at its Sept. 10 meeting in Kissimmee to permit noise-suppressors that fit at the end of a gun muzzle to lower the sound of gunfire.

Because the silencers that fit at the other end of a gun tend to suck suppressing sound.

What, camouflage hunting clothes are not enough?

No, being naked in the Florida woods is an invitation to get all kinds of nasties attached to your body. And get sunburned too.

What about laser-guided binoculars

Whut? Oh, you mean range-finders. You perused a Bass Pro Shop catalog but didn’t read it, did ya?

powerful spot lights,

Not legal to use in Wildlife management areas in Florida.  And you need a permit to hunt with a light and only to hunt nuisance wildlife.

thermal night vision cameras

Only to be used on night-time game determined by Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation. You guys are not very good at research.

— or even dogs outfitted with GPS trackers that allow a hunter to tell when their canine companion is seeing a bird, rabbit or deer or pointing at one

Because God Forbid hunter should find game. Last I know, Bambi does not text its location or posts it in Facebook.

— and other modern tools hunters use to game the hunt.

Because Science!

And isn’t anyone else scratching their head about why hunters are firing off rounds close enough to a residential area that noise becomes a factor? Forget the bang, we should be worried about stray bullets hitting a home or occupant.

Because bullets shot through silencer hit harder than the ones that not…because Science! Excedrin anyone?

Opponents point to the possibility that poachers will use silencers to illegally kill animals in droves, with less chance of detection. 

Funny that you mention that as it was the real reason silencers were included in the National Firearms Act of 1934. You see, the United States was in the middle of what the cognoscenti call The Great Depression and people actually were starving. Hunting was a way to bring some sort of protein to the table and those who had access or could build a silencer had a better chance to get game repeatedly. But the Government said that it was bad for you to obtain what now is known as Free-Range protein with such a device and without permission of Prince John…er… the Government.

All of this also begs the question of what happened to good, old-fashioned hunting techniques? It used to be man pitted himself against beast and nature in the hunt. The mere pursuit of an animal was oft a point of pride for hunters, who used their own eyes, feet and wits to catch prey.

Ah! The beauty of hunting by proxy via a Hollywood movie, how they miss the old-time hunting when Punt guns were the rage, poison bait, attack dogs, spotlights, illegal traps and other “sporting techniques.”

It’s sad to think about how many modern-day hunters rely on unfair methods to bag prey — like the Texas hunting ranches favored by Gov. Rick Scott, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, House Speaker Will Weatherford, incoming Speaker Steve Crisafulli and many other Florida politicians, all on Big Sugar’s dime.

You mean the Texas ranches where species imported from Africa are found in greater numbers than it its native land? Where the hunting is so scientifically managed that the animals thrive better than in any Federal land? That kind of unfair method?  By the way, cool the way you took a pun at the Republicans in power since the elections are coming.

Such ranches use fences to trap animals inside. They are constantly replenished with fresh animals. Virtually every hunter is guaranteed a head, no matter the skill level.

Sparky, since the late 1800s, ranches have fences, in case you haven’t noticed. and as for the replenished part, are you insinuating that ranchers go out into public land to trap deer and other species or to Africa every month and then drop them in the ranch to have them hunt? Are you seriously that stupid? Did you even sat down for one second and figure out how costly and time-consuming that could be?

But perhaps the biggest argument against opening the door wider for the use of silencers is the potential proliferation of a product that used to be the stuff of the military, assassins and trained killers.

Nothing says Professional Journalism than actually base your knowledge on TV shows.  And a nice side of jackass to associate our military assassins and James Bond. Really?

How long before silencers are hanging on the shelves of Walmart, Target and other big box stores?

We wish we could get them tomorrow, but we have that stupid NFA law that needs to be changed first.  I mean, if the Brits have silencers available in their stores without all the BS and they are used as the example of “reasonable gun laws” how come we can’t?

How long before a silencer ends up in the wrong hands, used in an act of domestic violence or mass murder, offering perpetrators that much more of a chance to escape?

If a brain is a terrible thing to waste, the Sun Sentinel editorial staff should be cited by the EPA for illegal dumping.  OK let’s give them the bad news: Silencers already can be found for sale in Florida. In fact, there is at least one dealer close to the Sun Sentinel headquarters (5 miles)and about ten dealers in a 20 mile radius.  I do love the “Domestic Violence” shtick, because the screaming and the yelling, the bashing of heads against the wall and the throwing stuff around is not an indicator at all.

I imagine that the Sun Sentinel staff is worried that somehow silencers are going to be so popular, anybody right off the street can get one  at Publix and of course go kill without anybody hearing a thing….. except it is not that easy. First silencer are not cheap as they retail in the mid $200 for .22LR, can go for between $750 to $1,000 for hunting calibers and the new shotgun silencer retails for $1,400. Clearly this are not prices that your local gangbanger can afford. Then they have to go through a nice complicated procedure and paperwork that can be read here (all of 10 pages) and then comes the fun part: Waiting for the approval and the stamp from the ATF.  For Florida, the times according to NFA tracker are amazingly long: I saw one silencer that was bought in September of 2013 and was just approved this month but the stamp has not arrived yet. Another two were purchased in November of 2013 and both approval and stamp just happened last week. Yet another silencer bought in August of 2013 is still in legal limbo.  So the idea that hunting with silencers will immediately create a glut of those deadly devices rolling around the streets of South Florida killing buses-full of children are nothing more than loads of manure by people with wild imagination and little concept of the realities of guns. And that brings me to the last quote:

“You don’t want to have shooting in the area and not hear a thing,” Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told the Sun Sentinel. “The report of a firearm is how you know if a hunter is nearby.”

And now we know where the Sun Sentinel got its “accurate” load of manure information.

Lord, give me patience.