Sale of Gun Silencers on the Rise
JACKSON, Tenn. — It’s not just gun sales that are booming across the country; the sales of gun silencers are also on the rise. Silencers are legal in Tennessee, and federal records show the civilian market for silencers soared 37 percent in 2013 when the total shot up to nearly a half a million compared to $360,000 in 2012. Silencers are so popular, especially among some hunters, that there’s now up to a 9-month wait to have a registration approved by the ATF. “You have to file an application through them with a serialized supressor,” Capt. Buddy Brien with TWRA said. “You have to be finger printed, you have to make application through your local sheriff’s department and generally depending on what the backlog is, it’s going to take anywhere from 6 sometimes 7 months to get it all done.” Suppressors are often more expensive than the guns they’re attached to and range in price from $750 to $1300.
