As decades of Hollywood action movies have taught us, a silencer slowly screwed onto the end of a pistol is shorthand for "somebody's about to get murdered." But as The Washington Post reported recently, the gun industry is trying to clean up the silencer's image by arguing that silencers are a health issue. Hunters can suffer noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL) from repeated exposure, and none other than President Donald Trump's oldest son, Donald Trump, Jr., has joined the cause to #fightthenoise.
If you're not a gun owner, you might be surprised to learn that silencers are legal or that most people in the gun industry don't call them "silencers." More surprises below.
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