Suppressors in the woods
It was called Senate File 79, a proposed law that would have allowed hunters to carry automatic weapons such as machine guns into the woods. And to equip those guns with Godfather-style silencers.
Which conjured up some negative images. People using the silenced guns for poaching of wildlife, for example. And, of course, the image of the Soprano family vacationing in Wyoming, being insulted by an elk and having it whacked.
However, the proposal went on to say that while hunters – who make up more than half the population in this wildlife-rich state of just more than 500,000 people – would be allowed to have the automatic weapons and silencers, it would remain illegal to actually use them for hunting.
People have these morbid fantasies that sound suppressors were regulated as part of the 1934 National Firearms Act due to mafia style hits or some such. Actually, they were regulated because people at the time of The Depression were using them to hunt on restricted Federal land to avoid getting arrested.
Suppressors do serve a safety function because the report of a firearm can do significant damage to your hearing. When hunting, other hearing is just not desirable as you can’t hear other things in the woods. Makes sense to me to allow them for hunting. In other countries, suppressors aren’t regulated that extensively and there are suppressor only ranges to avoid hearing loss and to keep from annoying your neighbors.
February 27th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
In Finland, with much stricter gun control than the USA, silencers are perfectly legal, and used for hunting quite frequently.
February 27th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Actually from what I’ve read suppressors were including in the NFA when they realized that including handguns (as they originally were going to do) might touch of massive noncompliance & forceable resistance (i.e. an uprising/insurrection/civil war). I’ve never seen any metnion of the reason for their inclusion having any practical cause; just that they thought they could get away with it. The hunting on restricted federal land/poaching things sounds reasonable, but when you speak of a $200 tax on a $2 item (which is what they sold for at the time) I’d say that reason was not even in town when they discussed things. So more or less they substituted suppressors for handguns simply because they didn’t think anyone would riot over it. I could have missed something though so let me know what your source for the “hunting on restricted federal land” angle is.