Help! I’m Being Suppressed!

The Low-Down on Suppressors — How They Came to Be Regulated by the NFA, and Why There’s Reason to Be Optimistic About Their Future in America

by Richard Baimbridge

Whenever I get sucked into debates on the issue of gun legislation with people on the other side of the fence, one of the first things I ask them is why they think I should have to pay a $200 federal tax and go through a stringent background check in order to buy a suppressor? I find it’s a good starting point to a broader conversation about their general lack of understanding of guns, and the importance of creating laws based on logic versus emotion.

Usually, the first question is “What’s a suppressor?” To which I reply, “It’s a silencer. But unlike what you may have seen in the movies, it doesn’t actually make gunshots ‘silent’ – it just suppresses the noise enough to not cause hearing damage to the person firing the gun, or to other people nearby.”

Considering the thousands of Hollywood movies and TV shows with spies and assassins taking out victims in a crowded room with a barely audible “pew,” the misconception is quite understandable. From a decibel perspective, a gunshot muffled by a suppressor typically registers just below 140 decibels (or about the same as a jackhammer) – which is hardly “silent.” And that doesn’t even take into account the supersonic crack of a bullet, which is totally unaffected by a suppressor. For comparison, an average unsuppressed gunshot from a 9mm Glock is around 162 decibels.

And keep in mind that, just like the Richter Scale for earthquakes, decibels are logarithmic. So, a difference of just 10 decibels means a 10-fold increase in sound intensity.  

Suppressors (or “Maxim Silencers” as per their US patent name in 1909), were lumped into the same category as machine guns and sawed-off shotguns by the 1934 National Firearms Act, signed into law under the FDR administration. The NFA was inspired by two things: Chicago gang violence during Prohibition, and a failed assassination attempt on FDR by Italian immigrant and communist, Giuseppe Zangara. In fact, the $200 federal tax we now pay today is based on the exact price of a Tommy gun in 1934 – ie, $200.

Although the rationale for including suppressors in the NFA is unclear, the original legislation also applied to all handguns, as well. In the end, cooler heads prevailed and handguns were removed -- but suppressors weren’t so lucky. The result is that generations of American hunters and gun-enthusiasts have had their hearing unnecessarily damaged for basically no good reason whatsoever. It would be like passing a law today making car mufflers illegal.

In fact, many European countries actually require hunters to use suppressors in order to reduce noise pollution. In 2021, Governor Greg Abbot passed The Texas Suppressor Freedom Act, making it legal to produce, sell and use silencers within the state — without a federal tax stamp. That means that in Texas, you can now buy a suppressor that was made in Texas, and legally use it anywhere within the state. Yet technically speaking, the ATF can still prosecute you (or residents of any other state that has legalized suppressors without a federal permit) under Federal Law -- even within that state. This was recently confirmed by a ruling under the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Currently, suppressors are completely illegal for civilian ownership in 8 states, including the usual suspects – California, New York, and the District of Columbia. The good news is that in states that do allow suppressors with a tax stamp, the approval process has been streamlined tremendously. Until fairly recently, the wait time for buying a suppressor was as much as a year. Today, it’s usually under 48 hours. This has sparked a major uptick in suppressor sales and popularity across the nation, and brought more manufacturers into the market. Online companies like Silencer Central will handle the paperwork for you and deliver the suppressor right to your front door.

You can also set up a trust that allows you to share the suppressor with your friends and family, as long as the users meet the requirements of being over 18 and legally allowed to own a firearm.

Although the suppressor industry had hopes of passing legislation under the Trump administration, those hopes were unfortunately never realized. And according to gun lobby experts, the latest version of the Hearing Protection Act is also unlikely to pass – even if Trump does win a second term.

The problem of convincing Congress and the Senate remains to be the major hurdle. And as long as emotion prevails over reason, the Hollywood-inspired myths about suppressors will continue to stifle new innovation and result in many gun owners damaging their hearing unnecessarily.

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