You may remember Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner. If not, those who oppose making it easier and less expensive to buy a silencer want you to remember the cop who went seriously rogue. That’s because Officer Dorner is the only example they can find of a bad guy using a silencer to shoot and kill innocent folk.
That’s made him the anti-silencer poster child. Here’s how Mother Jones spins it . . .
Ever since gun silencers were first regulated in the 1930s, they have been used only rarely in violent crimes, with one notable recent exception:
In early February 2013, a former police officer using a silencer on a 9mm Glock shot a young couple sitting in their car in what the Police Foundation called a “gang-style hit.” “Not a single neighbor had heard or seen a thing,” the Police Foundation wrote in its report about the beginning of a string of murders committed by Christopher Dorner in Southern California.
In “lightning bolt attacks” over the following 10 days, Dorner killed two police officers and wounded several others—including an officer who was shot nine times but survived—and drew a legion of cops into the mountains, where he eventually shot himself to death as they closed in.
So even Mother Jones admits that Dorner’s silencer use was a black swan event. And it’s hardly an iron-clad example; the wikipedia article on Dorner’s killing spree doesn’t mention silencers and [you and I and even members of the mainstream press know] that silencers don’t make guns silent.
But bloody shirt-waving is what the antis do, and Dorner’s all they’ve got. Here’s another example from usatoday.com:
Gun-control groups say the bill puts gun manufacturers’ profits over safety and would allow dangerous people to buy silencers, just by finding an unlicensed seller. They say crimes with suppressors are rare because the current law works, but the results are devastating when silencers are used. They say Christopher Dorner’s use of a suppressed firearm helped him avoid detection during a 10-day shooting spree in Los Angeles in 2013 that killed four people, including two police officers.
And here’s the LA Times’ version:
Others point to indications that silencers can reduce public awareness of developing firearm attacks and interfere with law enforcement. That appeared to happen in the 2013 Southern California murder rampage of former Los Angeles police Officer Christopher Dorner.
As The Times reported, Dorner’s early morning killing of a couple in a parked car in Irvine initially went undetected, even though he loosed 14 gunshots — apparently with a silenced weapon. Later in the rampage, when Dorner was cornered in the San Bernardino National Forest, his use of a silenced sniper rifle made it difficult for sheriff’s deputies under fire to pinpoint his position.
If Officer Dorner was still alive, he’d be delighted that gun control advocates are using his suppressed firearm(s) to argue against their de-regulation. Here’s the relevant excerpt from his manifesto:
In the end, I hope that you will realize that the small arms I utilize should not be accessed with the ease that I obtained them. Who in [their] right mind needs a fucking silencer!!! who needs a freaking SBR AR15? No one. No more Virginia Tech, Columbine HS, Wisconsin temple, Aurora theatre, Portland malls, Tucson rally, Newtown Sandy Hook. Whether by executive order or thru a bi-partisan congress an assault weapons ban needs to be reinstituted. Period!!!
It’s too bad hatred for Americans’ Second Amendment protections didn’t die with Officer Dorner. But it didn’t. So here we are, with silencer deregulation heading to the Senate. We’ll soon find out if Democrats respect the wishes of a murderous madman.