Doug Clark: There’s no suppressing this shooter’s enthusiasm for silencers

It’s not every day someone invites you to go shopping for a silencer for his fancy new handgun.

Sometimes my job is just a like a field trip.

“I’m in,” I told Dave McCann, a sport shooting enthusiast, former Marine and a guy I’m proud to call a friend.

I’m no expert on firearms. I like to shoot my .22s at targets at the lake with the accuracy of Annie Oakley’s blind uncle.

But as a lad who grew up in the 1960s, my head was stuffed with cinematic visions of the long tubes that screw into the ends of firearms.

Silencers were an essential part of the toolkit for James Bond, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and just about every Mafia hit dude.

And in every movie or TV show the silencers always make the same spitting noise.

“Fffftt. Fffftt…”

Eager to learn what the real deal was like, I met McCann at Spokane’s Sharp Shooting indoor range and gun shop, 1200 North Freya, on Tuesday afternoon.

Well lit. Nicely appointed. Sharp Shooting is like the Nordstrom for things that go bang.

In a nondenominational area set up with plush couches, a Holy Bible rested on one table while a Shooter’s Bible sat on another.

Before we went in, however, McCann made me sit in the passenger seat of his black Chevy Tahoe while he turned on his sound system.

“We have to set the mood,” he told me just before punching a button and filling the SUV with the theme to one of the best Bond adventures ever.

“Goldfinger – ‘wah-wah wahhhh’ – he’s the man, the man with the Midas touch. That spider’s touch…”

The voice of Shirley Bassey. Now that’s what I call a real weapon.

Inside Sharp Shooting we connected with store manager Jeremy Ball who confirmed what McCann had told me earlier: Silencers are the hottest items going in the sport-shooting world.

A silencer, by the way, is a metal tube crafted with ingeniously placed internal baffles and spaces that are designed to contain some of the energy being expended during firing.

Except manufacturers don’t want to use that word “silencer” any more, added Ball. Today we’re supposed to call them “suppressors.”

Getting away from the aforementioned theatrical connotations is the obvious reason for this.

That said, “suppressor” does more accurately describe how the gizmo seriously mitigates both the noise and the recoil that happens when you squeeze a trigger.

“A good suppressor,” notes an article on the Guns&Ammo website, will trim 20 to 40” decibels off a gunshot, often making the report “ear safe according to government standards.”

Good news for a guy like me. I fried my right ear years ago by not wearing earplugs during rock band outings. What an idiot.

And so we went into the shooting range where Ball laid out several handguns and silencers, um, suppressors. Ball ran a target out 15 feet and told me to blast it with and without suppression.

First I tried a .22, then a 9 mm and finally a .45 ACP.

In each case my accuracy improved dramatically with a suppressor attached.

That’s because I usually flinch about a minute before the gun ever goes off. The suppressor’s minimal recoil cured my case of the “yips.”

That wasn’t the only surprise.

I also learned that silencers don’t make that iconic “Fffftt” sound.

That’s just a movie thing. The real sound is more a softer – but higher pitched – pop.

McCann took a turn. He’s a serious shooter who has shot competitively. With or without a suppressor he can hit a bull’s-eye.

But trying these gadgets out was great fun.

As I learned in gun safety classes as a youth, using firearms for hunting or for targets can be a wonderful experience as long as you obey the rules and don’t act like a moron.

So, would I shell out the $300-to-$900 that it takes to buy a suppressor?

Hard to say. You need a weapon with a barrel that has been threaded to accept the device.

Then there’s the red tape factor.

In order to legally own and use a suppressor one must A. fill out a form, B. pay the federal government 200 bucks for a tax stamp, and C. wait up to six months for approval.

McCann, for example, is still waiting for his permission to arrive.

On the other hand…

“It does have the cool factor,” said Ball with a grin.

No argument there, Jeremy. No argument there.

Doug Clark is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review. He can be reached at (509) 459-5432 or by email at dougc@spokesman.com.