[As]he tiptoed through the woods in pursuit of a rabbit, Elmer J. Fudd was cautious to be “vewy, vewy quiet.”
The Looney Tunes sportsman might like what Florida hunting officials might do this week.
When the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission meets Thursday in Key Largo, the state’s rule-makers for hunters and anglers are expected to lift a 57-year-old ban on silencers, noise-suppressing devices that can be attached to the barrel of a rifle or pistol to muffle the “bang.”
Opponents think silencing guns near homes is a bad idea and will endanger lives.
via Florida poised to let hunters use silencers – Orlando Sentinel.
Hunting with silencers has been re-introduced in several states now and the gloom-and-doom predictions of the gun control activists have not come to pass.
And even though the article does a slight-of-writing trick and associates silencers with the mobster wars of Prohibition, the fact is that they were put on the National Firearms Act as an anti-poaching regulation so people who were starving during the Great Depression could not go hunt at the King’s.gov lands and hunt the King’s.gov deer. That it may have actually happened back then, i still haven’t been able to find specific cases, but I am not saying that it did not happen.
“This is not a hunting issue, and this is not a gun-rights issue. This is a safety issue,” said Patricia Brigham, who heads the gun-safety committee for the League of Women Voters in Florida. “If neighbors don’t hear gunshots in the area, how are they going to know to stay out of the way?”
If Ms. Brigham would have cared to make a wee bit research, she would have find out that silencers do not eliminate the sound of shooting 100%. It may lower the sound of escaping gases to a tolerable level but still we are talking Black Cat firecracker bang (The new ones that are so frigging weak) and since rifle hunting rounds are supersonic, that crack is not dissipated at all.
But then again Ms Brigham is not just an innocent member of the League of Women Voters of Florida but a full fan of Gun Control. The Facebook page of LWVF Gun Safety Commitee is full of links to the Brady Campaign and Everytown/Moms Demand (I thought the Leagues of Women Voters were supposed to be non-partisans and non-lobbyist). Ms Brigham’s Facebook page is pretty clean but she could not help herself and celebrate the passing of I-594 in Washington State and has a cute little graphic in it. And in her Linkedin profile she has Moms Demand and Everytown as “follows.”
Back to using silencers for hunting. I figure that the ban will be lifted because for all the moaning and hand-wringing, the opposition cannot produce one iota of evidence probing that it will be a dangerous thing. I have to think that this is gonna be one of those unintended consequences of Gun Control backfiring on its followers:
“We cannot have people shooting! It is loud and bothers me. I don’t wanna hear it”
“OK, we are then gonna approve the use of silencers so the noise does not bother you.”
“You can’t let people use silencers! It is not safe because I cannot hear the shooting!”
Oy!
Anti-gunners want it both ways – they object to the sound of guns firing to the point of trying to pass laws keeping hunters farther and farther away from dwellings, and object to hunters reducing the sounds their hunting creates.
The other reason for their objections seems to be a fear of Jimmy-Bob Bond sneaking up on them and drawing a suppressed scoped deer rifle out of their armpit and cutting down shoppers who buy more than three packages of tinsel per store visit.
It’s just another time when they want us to compromise — so llong as “compromise” means we give something and they give nothing.
stay safe.
It’s been legal to hunt with suppressors in Texas since 2012 and I’ve yet to hear about any problems. Of course if there had been anything happen it would have been major antigun news.
It’s the goldilocks problem, except to them just right is actually no guns at all.
I always thought it was a little silly that in Goldeneye, as long as you’ve got a silencer on your PPK, you can shoot one guard and the guard 2 feet away won’t notice unless he sees you.
These people apparently think the game(WHICH DOESN’T USE A SINGLE ACTUAL REAL-WORLD WEAPON) is gospel truth.
[…] Miguel on gun control advocates: […]
If that’s their reasoning then mufflers on cars should be banned for the same reasons.
The muffler makes cars too quiet and you don’t know to get out of their way……
You need only look to jurisdictions where hunting with s suppressor is already legal to get your evidence.
Me, personally, I live in New Zealand, where we can buy a suppressor whenever and wherever we want and, so far as I’m aware, it’s never been illegal to use them for hunting. There’s a booming cottage industry of suppressor makers down here!
And the idiots who knock over liquor stores STILL use sawn-off shotguns, butchered hunting rifles, and air soft replicas to intimidate other people. There aren’t any mafia hit-dudes running around.