Debate on silencers to get louder
Maxim had a knack for reducing loud noises; he also contributed to the development of the automobile muffler.
“I have always loved to shoot, but I never thoroughly enjoyed it when I knew that the noise was annoying other people,” he said late in life. “It occurred to me one day that there was no need for the noise. Why not do away with it and shoot quietly?”
Maxim solved the problem in the bathtub. He noticed that the water swirled silently down the drain. What if the gases produced from firing a bullet could swirl that way, too? So Maxim put what he called “a whirling tube” on the end of a rifle. It successfully muffled the sound of the gunfire.
Soon, the whirling tube was U.S. Patent No. 958,935, titled “Silent Firearm.”
In the 1930s, to curtail gang violence, Congress passed the National Firearms Act, putting restrictions and special taxes on machine guns and other high-powered weapons. Though they hadn’t been used frequently in crimes, silencers were included anyway, reportedly out of concern that poachers would use them to steal food during the Great Depression.
"It’s a very strange tale," said Stephen Halbrook, a Virginia gun rights attorney who recently published a law review article about the history of silencers. "If you think about it, if [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] had been around then, they probably would have required people use these things."
Though silencers are legal in 42 states, industry officials say the onerous and expensive task of buying them keeps gun owners, particularly hunters, from their preferred method of protecting their hearing.
They frequently point out that Britain, with some of the strictest gun laws in the world, has no restrictions on silencers for many types of firearms.
"There isn’t this negative stigma because of Hollywood that has suppressed - pun intended the use of suppressors in this country," said Josh Waldron, the founder of SilencerCo, the Utah manufacturer.
Waldron started his company in 2008 after a career in photography, aiming to educate shooters about the benefits of silencers and to essentially hold buyers’ hands through the purchasing process. He sells about 18,000 silencers a month.
"I want to create an environment where people understand the real purpose of these devices and that people aren’t using them for nefarious acts," he said.Silencer use in crimes is likely to be the focus of the debate later this year.
Gun rights proponents and the silencer industry cite a study showing that in California, from 1995 to 2005, silencers appeared to be used for criminal purposes only 153 times in federal cases.
Gun-control advocates contend that serious crimes are being committed with silencers on guns. Former police Officer Christopher Dorner used silencers on an AR-15 and a 9mm handgun during a two-day rampage in Los Angeles in 2013.
A serial killer in Vermont used a silencer in the killing of at least one of his 11 victims.
And the planner of a disrupted mass shooting targeting a Masonic temple in Milwaukee last year was charged with possessing a silencer, in addition to other weapons charges.