Simple Things About Guns That Every Gun Person Knows That Every Gun Control Advocate Doesn’t

I’m going to present a series of misconceptions that you probably believe. What’s interesting about these is that without exception, almost every gun owner will get these right, whereas almost every non-gun-owning gun control advocate will get them wrong (apologies in advance to gun people who read this; I will be glossing over minor technicalities).

I’ll explain why each one is wrong, and offer an analogy to familiar liberal issues often aligned with gun control.

1. Which is more powerful, a WW2 rifle, or the modern M16?

WW2-era M1 Garand

M16 US military standard-issue

Which one of these is the more powerful rifle?

You would probably say the M16. You’d be wrong.

The WW2-era M1 Garand rifle fires a larger bullet with nearly twice the muzzle energy of the modern M16. (The reason we use the M16 today is due to other characteristics relevant to battlefields and military operations, beyond the scope of this piece) A round fired from an M1 Garand can tear through multiple targets while the M16 cannot.

Why does this matter? Because it leads people to say things like the AR-15 (the civilian model of the M16) is “the deadliest rifle” or to misunderstand how it’s not appropriate for hunting. That’s true that the AR-15 is not appropriate for hunting, but not because it’s a scary military rifle — it’s because it’s underpowered.

Making this kind of error because of assumptions you think are reasonable but really aren’t is like insisting that abstinence-only programs prevent teen pregnancy. They don’t.

You’re letting plausible-seeming assumptions lead you to be grossly misinformed about how and why things work and the many factors involved.

2. A silencer allows you to kill someone with a gun quietly

This is false, and entirely a Hollywood construct. There is literally no device in the world that will make a gun quiet.

A typical gun discharge is somewhere in the range of 150 to 170 dB.

Adding a silencer (or as the gun community prefers to call it nowadays, because of this myth, a suppressor) will lower that volume to about 130 dB at best.

Here is a list of common noise levels:

10 dB: pin drop

30 dB: whisper

60 dB: conversation

90 dB: lawnmower

110 dB: being at a rock concert or near a jackhammer

140 dB: jet engine at takeoff

How often can you fail to hear a jackhammer even a block away from your house?

Nevertheless, silencers are banned in a number of states (e.g. California) but not for any good reason — entirely because those who support a ban only know about them from films and not reality. Being near a firearm is damaging to your hearing even with ear protection. The correct nanny-state legislation would actually be to mandate that all guns include silencers on them to protect the hearing of sportsmen and shooters.

Believing otherwise is like saying that making contraceptives and sex education available to teens will result in promiscuity, earlier teen sex, and more pregnancies. It’s untrue and contradicted by the evidence. Places with comprehensive sex education have lower teen pregnancy rates and teens delaying their first sexual activity.

Thinking otherwise only happens when one has been fooled by false and sensationalist media, while the true, evidence-based solution is to encourage broader adoption. This is especially relevant right now given the suppressor legalization bill currently in Congress: in many European countries with comparatively strict gun control laws, gun owners are encouraged and (in some cases) even required to have suppressors for their guns.

3. “Hollow-point bullets are cop-killers, there is no legitimate use for these and they should be banned.”

Saying this to a gun person will immediately reveal that you don’t understand anything about how bullets work.

Bullets roughly do one of two things when they hit a human being: they either over-penetrate and shoot all the way through, or they “mushroom” (deform) and stay inside the first thing they hit. The “hollow” part of hollow-point bullets is what makes them deform.

In a home defense scenario, the most important thing you are taught is to avoid either 1) missing the bad guy and shooting through a wall and hitting your loved ones on the other side, or 2) hitting the bad guy with a bullet that does the same thing because it went through him entirely. You want bullets that stop in the first thing they hit: hollow-point bullets are the ones most likely to do this.

Thus, hollow-point bullets are the opposite of cop-killer bullets: they are the ones most likely to be stopped by a cop’s protective vest, rather than punching through it.

In most cases, using hollow-point bullets is one of the safest things you can do.

The reason you may believe otherwise is because the information you got about hollow-point bullets is from 1980s-era sensationalist media, and not any real understanding of how bullets work. You’re misinformed because of someone’s fear-mongering, like how anti-abortion activists believe that the only thing Planned Parenthood does is provide abortions, rather than 99% of their services just being medical and pre-natal care. You‘re missing the facts, and like anti-abortion activists, haven’t been interested in educating yourself.

Don’t be like that.

Bonus round: “The killer used an automatic weapon. There’s no reason to own those and we should ban them!”

When you say this, every single gun owner can instantly tell that you don’t know anything about guns.

There are two things wrong with this statement:

The killer did not use an automatic weapon. Automatic weapons have been banned since 1971, and their possession is strictly controlled. It’s very, very hard to get one. The killer likely used a semi-automatic weapon. This is not a semi-automatic weapon:

The killer did not use a weapon like this.

A semi-automatic weapon is a gun that fires ONE bullet each time you press the trigger. To fire another bullet you need to press the trigger again, individually. One press, one bullet.

For example, this common hunting rifle is a semi-automatic:

Ruger Mini-14

A semi-automatic weapon is differentiated from non-semi-automatics because you don’t need to manually pull the little handle back, eject the cartridge, hand-load another one, and then fire. It does not “fire bullets continuously while you hold down the trigger.” A semi-automatic rifle is a pretty reasonable thing to have because when you are hunting or target shooting, you don’t want to hand-load every bullet one at a time. It’s primitive.

Every gun person knows this, and when you say something like claiming the killer had an automatic weapon and that they should be banned, you immediately reveal a total ignorance the same way anti-abortion people do when they say things like “the morning-after pill causes third-trimester abortions, so they should be banned.” All it does is show that you don’t know simple key terminology, or even what the existing laws are.

You cannot say “we need to ban automatic weapons” and expect to be taken seriously in any discussion of guns ever.

Now that you know this, go look and see how often this statement is made. You’ll find that it’s everywhere, and you’ll begin to see how much ignorance there is. It’s why people who own guns tune you out, even though many of them supposedly agree with you.