How Do I Explain Why I Want a Silencer to My Gun-Hating Lefty Friends?
BY Herschel Smith
1 day, 21 hours ago
I’m the only gun owning liberal in my general friend/acquaintance group and the proposal to drop the $200 stamp for cans has some of them seriously worked up about how Republicans are making mass shootings easier this way, making quietly killing someone more affordable, etc. The usual.
It doesn’t seem to get through that they’re pretty much never used in crimes and that if that was your goal, you’d be far better off just 3D printing/garage building a cheap illegal one. Seriously. There are well over a million cans in this country and they’re involved in like 40+ crimes a year. And I’m not even sure that’s limited to legal ones.
There’s so much bad shit in this bill, but removing a tax on things that are seen as nothing more than safety devices in other countries is not one of them and the fixation on it is really frustrating.
I guess it just reminds me how effectively a huge number of left leaning voters have been lied to about guns and how they work (as well as gun owners, for that matter) and it’s hard to know how to start undoing that damage. How do I effectively explain that I just wanna giggle when my gun goes whump instead of boom sometimes when that thing is clearly built to spec for kid killing?
Here’s the first thing you do. You explain to them that suppressors are safety equipment, as important as any other safety equipment such as hard hats or safety glasses. And if you need to, you cite the relevant parts of the federal code where OSHA is concerned about hearing loss. You explain to them that this has to do with the proper function of the human body.
Next, you don’t use words like giggle. You insist that “shall not be infringed means shall not be infringed.” Period.
Finally, you get yourself a new set of friends. Your friends are controllers and you shouldn’t be around them.
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On May 25, 2025 at 10:26 pm, Warren Walsh said:
The NFA was a tax measure to ostensively avoid 2A issues. If they reduce the suppressor “tax” to zero, how then is it still a tax measure? If not a tax, then it is a firearm accessory that greatly enhances the gun for use, like sights, triggers, stocks, etc. It should be an OSHA Saaafffeeety device to limit hearing loss. It is standard in many other countries for such reasons. It is an infringement of a constitutional enumerated right. It has been upheld that taxing a right is unconstitutional. You cannot charge a poll tax for voting.
If passed, doesn’t this open a whole other line of legal challenges? Agree the NFA, GCA, Hughes, etc. are fundamentally unconstitutional. Gotta start somewhere and pull the loose threads…
On May 26, 2025 at 11:16 am, Frank Clarke said:
I think it was in 2003 that wife and I were strolling down a street in Stockholm, Sweden. As I passed a sporting goods store, I noticed that they were having a sale on “mufflers”. The cheapest one in the display was (if my calculations were correct) about $40. It probably wasn’t very good, but… 40 dollars???
On May 27, 2025 at 1:03 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “How Do I Explain Why I Want a Silencer to My Gun-Hating Lefty Friends?”
Herschel, don’t waste your breath. I’ve tried for years – decades, really – to use evidence, factual argument, persuasion, you name it – to sway the minds of folks on the political left, and with very few exceptions, it has been an utter waste of time.
To coin a phrase, you can’t use reason to argue someone out of a position that wasn’t reached by reason in the first place. A few fence-sitters, maybe you can influence positively – but the true believers? Forget it. You might as well go outside and argue with a passing thunderstorm. Facts bounce off those folks like they’re coated in Teflon.