Being acquainted with hunting, firearms, and silencers before writing an article about them seems like a good idea, right? The editorial board of Raleigh’s News Observer would beg to differ.

According to an unsigned editorial from the Sunday edition, when the state legislature lifted the state’s silencer hunting ban this past spring, it put the public at risk. The author apparently believes that hunters are out there steadily banging away with their unsuppressed firearms all the live long day. The writer opines that this practice must be the only thing keeping people from being gunned down while traipsing over hill and dale in the Tarheel state.

Among the foolish changes to North Carolina’s gun regulations passed by the General Assembly were the easings of restrictions on where people could carry weapons and one that sort of slipped through with little debate. That was the provision allowing gun silencers.

Consider what one critic of the law said: Hikers and, for that matter, other hunters might be in jeopardy if they were walking in the woods where hunting was allowed and couldn’t hear the sound of gunfire. That sound lets others in the woods know where hunters are.

Advocates of the law counter that many hunters develop hearing difficulties, something silencers would help prevent. True enough. But certainly there are new technologies being developed to address the problem….

Someone should explain to the editorial board at the News Observer why they call it “hunting” and not “shooting.” This objection about suppressed firearms being too quiet signals that maybe the writer doesn’t know too much about silencers. Contrary to what Hiram Percy Maxim‘s old trade name suggests, a silencer doesn’t silence the report of a firearm. It just makes it hearing safe: