Readers React: The absurd argument that gun silencers improve safety

To the editor: The gun lobby never ceases to surprise. After subtly resurrecting the usual red herring argument of relating deaths by guns to auto deaths by comparing silencers to auto mufflers, Bob Owens offers the startling idea that the availability of silencers is a health issue for gun owners and everyone else. (“Gun silencers are useful, not scary,” Opinion, Feb. 29)

Under this ruse, the gun radicals in the House, attempting to circumvent the public’s revulsion to silencers, have introduced a bill to make silencers more readily available called the Hearing Protection Act.

Owens does not raise the possibility that silencers may worsen the Vietnam War-level of gun casualties inflicted on us every two years or the epidemic of mass shootings.

Gun manufacturers’ promotion of silencers is equivalent to the tobacco industry touting cigarette filters as a way to make smoking less deadly. Both silencers and cigarette filters were designed to make a deadly product more acceptable, and neither addresses a legitimate public need or public health issue.

Alfred Sils, Woodland Hills

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To the editor: Owens writes that silencers help protect hearing. There is a better way to protect shooters’ ears than by using silencers.

For many years I was on rifle and pistol teams. We put cotton in our ears or used ear plugs or ear protectors. That is not necessary for hunters who fire their weapons infrequently.

Actually, using silencers during hunting makes the sport more dangerous. For years I was an instructor in hunting safety. The one thing a hunter wants to know is if there are other hunters in the area, and one way to tell is to hear another hunter shooting.

As for Owens’ story about hunters using silencers during the Great Depression to avoid being caught poaching, I’m skeptical. Most hunters who found it necessary to poach couldn’t afford a silencer, and besides, using one wasn’t necessary. If a hunter was caught poaching (as my father was) and prosecuted, no jury was going to convict him unless he was poaching livestock.

Jack Allen, Pacific Palisades

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