Combat Veteran Turned Federally Licensed Gun Dealer DESTROYS Leftist Claims About 'Silencers'

The left is doubling, and tripling down on their “silencer” fear mongering, and one American Marine turned firearms entrepreneur wants to quash the lies for good.

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Former Marine Sgt. Phillip McCulloch was a combat veteran, and drill instructor who earned two Purple Hearts, and a Silver Star, the U.S. Armed Forces’ third-highest medal for valor in combat. While in Afghanistan in 2011, McCulloch lead his outnumbered squad through a six-hour battle where he drove back enemy insurgents, and destroying their positions. Despite being wounded and exhausted, McCulloch lead the troops under his command to victory, and became a war hero.

McCulloch would go on to become a federally licensed gun dealer, and open up Sgt. Mac’s Gun Shack in Galveston, Texas. He also attained a manufacturing license for firearms and NFA items, and has a bullet manufacturing company called Sweetwater Munitions.

Needless to say, McCulloch knows his guns, having built, sold, and tested them extensively both in combat, and non-combat situations. With leftist figures circulating falsehoods about what suppressors actually do, McCulloch contacted RedState to set the record straight.

“I’ve been in multiple combat situations where suppressors were used and not used,” McCulloch told RedState. “I know the difference in sounds pretty well, and it’s not much.”

Shortly after the atrocity that took place in Vegas on Sunday, failed Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton took to twitter to push the gun control agenda posthaste. In a widely lambasted tweet, Clinton mused aloud what kind of scene we’d be looking at if the shooter had fitted a silencer to his rifles.

Since then, the left has made “silencers” a focal point of abuse.

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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) took to Twitter and told her followers that no one can hear it when someone gets shot with a gun that has a silencer on it. Even Clinton’s former running-mate,  Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), doubled down on the claim that a silencer would have made the situation much worse on Thursday, saying “he only was stopped finally because he didn’t have a silencer on his weapon.”

McColluch dismissed the Democrat’s claims outright.

“First off, it’s not a silencer,” said McColluch. “The correct term is “suppressor.” Trust me, those devices don’t silence anything. It only muffles the sound. That sound you’ve heard in shows and movies from silenced guns is purely a Hollywood reimagining, and a bad one at that.”

McColluch told RedState that the primary purpose for suppressors isn’t to make you sneaky. While it does suppress the sound, it brings the rifles decibel impact from “very loud,” to “loud.” In fact, it’s best use is as protection for your hearing.

“You only got what God gave you,” said McCulloch. “In combat, hearing protection was out. It might guard your eardrums from the rocking they’ll get from your weapon, but it also deadens you to any other sounds around you. I’m not even 30, and my hearing is nearly shot from my time in the Marine Corps.”

“Suppressors allow people to fire weapons without harming their ears too much. It’s still loud, but at least now the long-term effects aren’t so severe,” added McCulloch.

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“A 747 taking off is around 140 to 150 decibels, and you can still hear it while it’s cruising a mile off the ground,” said McCulloch. “The Las Vegas shooter was 500 yards away, with plenty of things to echo his shots. “Putting a suppressor on a rifle only brings it down the decibel levels to just under 140.”

“A shotgun in an open field is about 140 decibels where the sound has little to bounce off of, and you can hear that go off from a good ways away,” said McCulloch. “A suppressor wouldn’t have made it any more difficult to find the shooter.”

McCulloch said that you can’t eliminate the sound a bullet makes when it breaks the sound barrier regardless of any silencer you slap on the gun.

“A lot of what your hearing from a gunshot is the crack of the bullet breaking the sound barrier,” said McCulloch. “Bullets are supersonic objects when fired, all of them at or above 130 decibels. Suppressors make little difference when it comes to breaking sound barrier as the sound doesn’t just crack the one time you hear it. It follows behind the bullet continuously.”

(Disclosure: Phillip McCulloch is a personal friend of the author.)

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