Say Uncle linked to a very good study on the use of suppressors in crimes [PDF]. The study concludes that most crime involving suppressors are only crimes because the people in possession the suppressors failed to pay the government extortion tax to get a stamp saying it’s all good to own them. The use of suppressors in actual crimes is very rare. The other thing concluded by the study is the fact that banning suppressors is pointless:
A more telling criticism of laws against silencers is the ease with which they are avoided. Since one can ef- fectively muffle a firearm by doing nothing more than wrapping it in a towel it is unlikely that laws banning professionally manufactured (or home-made) silencers are likely to have any real effect on crime. In one case, for example, the murderer used a towel as “a make-shift silencer” and yet because it was only a towel this was not an additional crime (People v. Garcia, 2006 WL 3307392, *7 (Cal. Ct. App.)).
This is very near and dear to my heart because Minnesota has a complete prohibition against owning suppressors. Suppressors are only courteous to your neighbors as it reduces the amount of noise produced by firearms and therefore also reduces the number of noise complaints. I know one of the bigger headaches for firing ranges is when somebody new moves in and shortly afterwards complains about the noise from the fucking gun range that’s been there for over 80 years. Instead of realizing how stupid they were to miss a long established range these people try to get the range shut down and ruin it for everybody. Legalized suppressors would be beneficial for both the dip shit and the range members.