Former FBI agent Manny Gomez claimed on MSNBC on Monday that hunters use suppressors so that deer cannot hear the gunshots.

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Firearm owners actually use suppressors to prevent hearing loss, and even with a suppressor, a firearm would still be loud enough to spook a deer or other wild game.

“Sportsmen, hunters would make an argument that they need that so that their target, whether it’s a deer, etc. don’t hear the shot,” Gomez claimed, “but numerous other sportsmen have shot from muskets–when the founding fathers started the Second Amendment–up until now successfully killed game animals without the use of a silencer.”

In addition to misrepresenting the reasons hunters and other firearm enthusiasts choose to use suppressors, the former FBI agent claimed that crime will increase if suppressors are made more widely available.

“It gets us more assassinations and a higher crime rate,” Gomez said of efforts to loosen regulations on suppressors. “Silencers were made for one purpose and one purpose alone–that’s nefariously kill people with little evidence and little to no sound.”

Over the past decade, an average of 0.003 percent of suppressors were used in crimes each year. There are currently about 1.3 million suppressors in circulation in the United States, and the level of noise made by suppressed guns has been compared to jackhammers.

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