Violence Policy Center’s Latest ‘Study’ Nothing but Fearmongering About Suppressors

While I’m skeptical it will pass, Congress is considering a bill that would remove suppressors from the NFA list. This is good news for those of us who would like to protect our hearing while shooting, especially in a home defense scenario.

Unsurprisingly, the usual suspects don’t want these safety devices to be readily available.

In fact, the Violence Policy Center has released a “study” all about the problems of legalizing suppressors.

The Violence Policy Center (VPC) today released Silencers: A Threat to Public Safety, a new study detailing the public safety threat posed by firearm silencers. The study was released as part of the VPC’s ongoing Campaign for Gun Industry Accountability.

The study’s release comes as the firearms industry and gun lobby are pushing legislation on Capitol Hill to de-regulate silencers. Currently, silencers are regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA), the restrictive federal law that also covers machine guns and short-barreled rifles. The NFA is overseen by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

When attached to the barrel of a firearm, silencers reduce: the level of noise generated when the weapon is fired, muzzle flash, and recoil. In recent years, the gun industry has aggressively marketed silencers as a new profit center.

The study reveals that enactment of any of the bills being considered would allow the gun industry to manufacture firearms with integral silencers—creating a whole new class of firearm that could be marketed to the general public—with the goal of reselling current gun owners while hopefully appealing to potential new customers.

VPC Executive Director Josh Sugarmann states, “Silencer de-regulation efforts are the latest salvo in the gun industry’s increasing militarization of the civilian marketplace in search of increased profits. Allowing these military-bred accessories to be generally available will make it easier for criminals to take innocent lives, threaten police, and hamper the ability of law enforcement to respond to mass shootings or sniper attacks.”

Information presented in the study includes:

• A history of silencers in the United States as well as examples of crimes involving silencers (both legally and illegally possessed) including the December 2024 murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in downtown Manhattan.
• Examples of the militarized marketing of silencers in ads, publications, and catalogs and details on how silencers are viewed as a key tool to introduce children to guns.
• Data on the dramatic increase in civilian silencer ownership. In 2010 the number of legally registered silencers in the U.S. was 285,087. By 2024 this number had grown to 4,857,897—an increase of more than 1,600 percent. The dramatic increase seen in recent years has been fueled by silencer marketers and manufacturers overseeing the application process with ATF for purchasers and a shift by the agency in 2021 to allow application forms to be accepted online.

Sugarman argues that removing suppressors from the NFA list would lead to criminals using them, but then notes the murder of Brian Thompson, where the alleged killer used a suppressor despite the NFA.

The truth is that while so-called ghost guns have been held up as a massive problem, you can also download files to make suppressors, too, which is what Thompson’s accused killer allegedly did. He just printed a suppressor, which means that it’s trivial for a criminal to make one themselves, thus negating any benefits of the NFA.

Further, this so-called study isn’t a study. It’s fearmongering disguised as research.

Sugerman’s organization can’t actually produce hard data for suppressors doing any of the horrible things they claim because, despite arguing that the increase in suppressor sales is indicative of a problem, there’s little to no evidence of lawfully purchased suppressors being used for criminal activity.

There is, of course, the doomsaying about how this will help mass murderers because of reduced recoil or whatever else they care to name, the reality is we haven’t seen slews of mass killers using them, despite the fact that many are more than willing to wait to acquire the weapons they need to carry out their grizzly plans.

Suppressors might be a pain in the butt to get, but they’re obtainable even without the 3D printer files for making them being available for free on the internet. The fact that I can only recall one example of a mass killer using one despite that is telling.

This isn’t a study based on extrapolating existing data into projections for what may happen in the future. This is fearmongering gussied up as research for the gullible media to swallow whole while trying to prevent the restoration of our God-given rights.

Perhaps the more troubling thing in all of this is that it will probably work, mostly because the complicit mainstream media isn’t interested in how the answers are derived so much as it reflecting the right agenda. Most people don’t think about biased research, so they’ll just assume this is legitimate science rather than propaganda.