Violent Crimes Committed by
People Using Suppressed Weapons

According to the Violence Policy Center, there have been 2,504,105 suppressors registered from 2010 to 2015.

The VPC’s report, Silencers: A Threat To Public Safety, is nine pages long. It contains not statistics, but narratives, of “violent crimes” committed between 2010 and 2015 by people with suppressed weapons, however three of the nine listed scenarios are the crime of possession of suppressors.

The remaining six crimes described in five scenarios are truly violent crimes committed with suppressed weapons:

March 16, 2015: Robert Dahl fatally shot and killed Emad Tawfilis.

October 22, 2015: gang member Xia Lin murdered restaurant owner Quin-Jin Fang.

February 2013: Christopher Dorner fired multiple suppressed shots at LE, and killed Monica Quan and Keith Lawrence.

June, 2011: Israel Keyes, a confessed serial killer who murdered up to 12 victims, used a gun with a silencer to kill at least one of his victims, Bill Currier.

January 27, 2011: Mark Langlois fatally shot 65-year-old Jim Schueler, Jr.

If these are true, then VPC correctly points out that suppressed weapons have been responsible for crimes in 0.0000019% of purchased suppressors.

For comparison’s sake, consider that 687 people in the United States were murdered by someone using “hands, feet or fists” in 2013.

I therefore and hereby opine that the current push to continue strict control of suppressors is somewhat overblown.