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Comment by oceanplexian | Hacker News Reader

In the interest of brevity, they're not called silencers, they're called suppressors since they don't "silence" anything like in a Hollywood movie. Typically a suppressor will reduce the sound signature of a gunshot from something like 140dBA to 110dBA. Still enough to cause hearing damage and be heard a quarter mile away.

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They're called suppressors among gun nerds. But silencer is the standard term in American English.

If you have complaints about how language has evolved, you may contact Richard Stallman and ask him for advice.

> you may contact Richard Stallman and ask him for advice

the guy who eats his toenails? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I25UeVXrEHQ&rco=1

I think gp was referencing his crusade that Linux should be called GNU/Linux

It's less about complaining, more about explaining that it's still very loud.

The original use case was hearing protection. The modern tactical use case is that it makes it somewhat harder to tell where a shot came from. In almost no scenario does it actually make a gunshot quiet (maybe a subsonic .22).

You can load subsonic rounds in many calibers, but tbf the best and most convenient options are all embargoed from the US because of Russian sanctions.

I mean .45 is already subsonic right?

Off-topic, but the US is, oddly, a bit of an outlier compared to some of our cousins on the other side of the Atlantic, where buying one can be an over the counter transaction. It's weird to be in a situation where the US is more restrictive in anything related to firearms, but I assume the European attitude is that it reduces nuisance when gun ownership is more regulated at the front end.

There is an enormous amount of theater in US lawmaking. “I’m doing something about the <X> problem.” (or even just “I proposed legislation that would have done something about the <Y> problem…”)

Crafting of US legislation has absolutely no basis in efficacy or data, it's entirely driven by the news cycle. Something attention grabbing (like a Mandalay) happens, something extremely specific from the headlines but largely secondary to enabling the actual crime (like bump stocks) are banned, then the whole thing is forgotten about

They are called silencers. It's the number one definition for the word in my dictionary.

Gun owners don't call them silencers. Movies call them silencers and non gun owners watch movies so that word has entered the lexicon.

But it's extremely incorrect-- suppressors don't silence guns. Suppressed firearms are still loud.

This is nonsense. Even the companies that make them often call them silencers. And your information is wildly out of date on how quiet suppressed subsonic ammo can be.

https://www.silencercentral.com/shop/silencers/rifle

> Gun owners don't call them silencers.

In the US where there are around 100 million gun owners, you can't say much about the group collectively other than they own at least one gun.

Lots of gun owners (including me) call them silencers.

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