Calling suppressors “deadly gun silencers,” U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand railed against pending legislation that would remove unnecessary federal regulations on devices that would help protect shooters’ hearing: “These deadly gun silencers pose a huge risk to our enforcement and our communities and I will do everything I can to stop this ill-thought-out legislation that would allow more criminals to get their hands on these dangerous weapons,” she said.
However, despite Gillibrand’s suggestions to the contrary, suppressors are not weapons; their use in crime is rare, despite the fact that Gillibrand’s criminals can learn to make one from an oil filter on YouTube.
Gillibrand warned that suppressors would defeat the NYPD’s ShotSpotter technology, which pinpoints the location of gunfire by triangulating soundwaves. However, this, too, is misleading: ShotSpotter documents recognize that suppressors do not silence a muzzle blast, and cities around the nation are pulling back from the technology anyway, questioning its effectiveness in solving crime.
