I'd like to ask you what your stance is on legalizing silencers
I know it would've made the Las Vegas shooter easier to locate because people wouldn't be having their ears blown out, but I'm not sure this shooting would have been stopped by that neighbor if this shooter had a silencer, given the different environments these took place in
Well, first we should clarify that the Hollywood depiction of the silencer that reduces your gun shot to a tiny "pew" is just a Hollywood myth. A lot of people don't realize just how extremely loud gunshots are. A silencer/suppressor only slightly reduces the sound of the expanding gases. The bullets are still supersonic so they still make the same sonic boom crack as it whizzes by.
The Vegas shooter IIRC was several hundred feet away, he wouldn't have been "blowing ears out" from that range. The reason he would have been hard to locate is because of echos, and people confusing the cracking of the bullet wizzing by with the gunshots themselves.
A suppressor wouldn't have made the shooter easier to find. It might have made them harder to find, but it's hard to say. Maybe a suppressor would have reduced the gunshots to be just quieter than the music. But people would still have noticed something was wrong as people started dropping and screaming in pain. Then once the music stops, you'd hear the gunshots.
Was the guy who stopped the church shooter in a neighboring house? I didn't know, all I knew was "a dude with a gun chased and shot him" so I kinda got the impression it was a church goer.
But there are legitimate uses to using suppressors, like enjoying a day on the range or a hunt, without disturbing people around you as much. Or reducing the risk of permanent hearing damage if you need to use a gun to defend your home, and aren't able to/think of grabbing full hearing protection
I don't think they should be (and IIRC, aren't) sold freely and unregulated. I think the same level of regulation as guns themselves is fine
