Suppressors are century-old technology, more or less. Sure, those today are generally better than Hiram Maxim’s first successful silencer, but the idea behind them has been around for a long time now.
While suppressors are more easily available today than at any other point since 1934, the export of them is a different matter entirely. It seems the Trump administration has moved the regulation of these devices from the State Department over to the Commerce Department. You still need approval to export them, but it’s not quite the same ordeal.
And Everytown’s so-called publication, The Smoking Gun, is very alarmed by this.
On July 23, the Trump administration issued joint rules that will move oversight of silencer exports from the jurisdiction of the State Department, which controls exports for military firearms and accessories, to the Commerce Department. The transition will reduce the vetting required for silencer export applications, thus making it easier for silencer manufacturers and retailers to export these tactical accessories to more customers abroad, and for silencer owners to travel with them.
The move is the latest by the Trump administration to help the gun industry sell more silencers, or sound suppressors, which were federally regulated in 1934 because of their use in violent incidents and the danger they pose, as they make it difficult for bystanders and police to recognize that a gun has been fired and pinpoint the direction of fire.
Despite these dangers, the gun industry has spent years trying to normalize silencers and get them into more hands, marketing them as hearing protection aids. The Trump administration has also eliminated the federal tax required to own silencers and put forward proposals to streamline the silencer-buying process.
It should be noted that those “violent incidents” cited are a small handful of cases. Nine, in fact, between 1909 and 1934.
They also cite the assassination of Brian Thompson, which involved an illegally manufactured suppressor. I’d think that would undermine their case that the regulations are necessary, but I’m not an anti-gunner. I actually have a fully functional brain that is capable of using logic to see the flaw there.
The truth, though, is that this is about the exporting of suppressors to other countries. In many of them, suppressors aren’t regulated as they have been here. In fact, there are a few where it’s apparently illegal or, at a minimum, bad form to shoot without one, because no one wants to hear the gunshots.
Nothing about this rule change will have an impact on domestic policy, but that’s not important for anti-gunners. What’s important is that any change to the anti-gun status quo is a dangerous change that cannot be tolerated, and if we’re not careful, we might have another small smattering of incidents spread out over four decades, most of which likely would have still happened if suppressors weren’t a thing.
But when you’re fearmongering, that’s what you do. You engage in language designed to make people afraid. It’s a psy-op designed to get people upset that an actual safety device is being made available to the general public and more easily accessible than it has been for the better part of a century.
And honestly, they’re just embarrassing themselves by doing it.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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