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Editorial

Echoes of Gunfire Hurt Tender N.R.A. Ears

It is a chilling commentary on the nature of gun mayhem in this country that dozens of cities and towns are resorting to new listening technology so the police can track the location of gunfire in a matter of seconds.

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A customer trying out a Remington 1911 equipped with a silencer at a gun store in Chantilly, Va.Credit...Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images

The annual tally of 30,000-plus gun deaths accounts for just a tiny fraction of the total shots fired, most of which miss their targets but terrorize neighborhoods. Amid the lethal cacophony, the police in more than 90 cities here and abroad seek to reach the scene of the latest gun troubles more quickly by using an audio detection system called ShotSpotter, which triangulates the sound of gunfire onto computer maps. Police officers in major cities hail these precise early alarms of where the latest shooting is.

Yet despite these advances, the National Rifle Association argues, self-servingly, that noisy guns are a public health hazard. With the help of supporters like President Trump’s son Donald Jr., a gun hobbyist, it wants to roll back an 80-year-old federal law that tightly controls the sale of firearm silencers. Immune to irony, the N.R.A.’s congressional friends have introduced a measure called the Hearing Protection Act, which contends that the sound of gunfire is hard on the ears of gun owners.

“What about the rest of us?” the nation’s unarmed majority might well ask. When it comes to public health, the noisier a gun is, the better the chances for innocent bystanders to hit the ground and for police officers to apprehend the shooter.

At present, silencers, also known as suppressors, are available only to gun owners who pay a $200 tax and undergo a rigorous nine-month vetting process. Like machine guns and hand grenades, silencers were considered a special menace by Congress back in the mob warfare days of the 1930s when tight controls were enacted.

Firearms sellers, eager to cash in on what has become a vanity item, argue that silencers should be regulated no more tightly than gun purchases. The latter, of course, undergo a shoddy process with dangerous loopholes that Congress has declined to close.

If the bill succeeds, ending the $200 tax and the vetting period, silencers will be much more available to the public. Inevitably, they will show up in the hands of the mass shooters who indulge macho fantasies in brandishing the adapted military assault weapons and large ammunition clips available in the civilian market. Before congressional lawmakers give in to the gun lobby’s latest twisted demand, they had better ask themselves why they would want to help muffle a shooter’s deadly deeds.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Echoes of Gunfire Hurt Tender N.R.A. Ears. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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