Donald Trump Jr. promotes silencers on guns in order to get more "little kids into the game."

So @DonaldJTrumpJr appears in this commercial praising silencers as wonderful and for kids then pushes the Silencer bill! How much💰💰 Junior? pic.twitter.com/liofkmQ2mx

— Olga_Lautman NYC ✨ (@olgaNYC1211) October 3, 2017

This of course happened before this most recent mass shooting, but still....it happened.

Of course what could we actually expect from this guy?

You can read more about this over at the Washington Post.

House Republicans are attempting to make it easier to purchase silencers for guns. Wait, what?

Courtesy of HuffPo:

House Republicans on Thursday introduced a bill that would eliminate a federal tax on gun silencers and would weaken licensing requirements that currently make the devices more difficult to buy than most firearms. 

The Hearing Protection Act of 2015, proposed by Rep. Matt Salmon (R-Ariz.) and co-sponsored by 10 of his colleagues, would do this by removing silencers, which are also called suppressors, from the purview of the National Firearms Act, instead putting them in the same regulatory category as long guns. As its title suggests, the bill's sponsors are framing it as an effort to keep shooters from damaging their ears.

In 1934, in the wake of Prohibition-era violence carried out by heavily armed bootleggers and gangsters, sound-suppressing devices were included on a list of NFA weaponry and other hardware, alongside firearms like machine guns and short-barreled shotguns. Today, purchases of silencers are still subject to a $200 fee, which covers an extensive FBI background check that can take months to complete. 

People looking to buy items covered by the NFA must also go through a specific federal registration process, which is more stringent than the one that governs gun purchases from a Federal Firearms License holder. To get a silencer, for example, a buyer must submit a certification from a local law enforcement official vouching that the silencer will be used for lawful purposes.

And the Republicans want to change that?

You know I watch a lot of movies, and I cannot think of one movie where a silencer was NOT used in the attempt to take a person's life.

There are already a number of products sold to help protect the hearing of gun owners.

A gun silencer seems to me to be more designed to keep the shootee from hearing the gunfire, rather than to protect the hearing of the shooter.

 This seems insane to me.

Sales of gun silencers are exploding. That doesn't sound good.

Courtesy of Time Magazine:  

Gun silencer sales in the United Sates are exploding as firearms owners are looking to accessorize. 

Silencer sales to civilians shot up 37% in 2013 to nearly 500,000 units, increasing from 360,000 in 2012 and 285,000 in 2011, CNNMoney reports. There’s now a nine-month wait to register silencers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). 

The silencer buying frenzy is the second wave of gun-related purchases in the last two years. After the Newtown massacre, gun owners feared that a weapons ban would be enacted and rushed to buy assault rifles. Now that last year’s push for universal background checks has failed, gun owners have a lot of guns on their hands, and are outfitting them with gadgets including silencers, flashlights, laser scopes, stocks, pistol grips and rail systems. 

“People have gone crazy buying guns, but they’re done buying them for the time being, so they’re buying accessories,” Ben Shim, a firearms instructor and gun industry analyst with CRT Capital Group told CNNMoney.

Okay so if the rationale for owning a firearm is for protection of home and family, what is the rational for owning a silencer?

Even if you are one of those sovereign citizens types who believe that any minute the Feds might break down your door to take your guns, and make you pay taxes like any other reasonable person, why would wanting to fire back at them silently make any sense?

It wouldn't.

This is an accessory that is only required if you want to kill without being detected.

And the fact that these are being purchased at this rate, should alarm everybody.