INDIANAPOLIS–You may be hearing about a movement in Congress to ban suppressors, which are sometimes called silencers. The shooter in Virginia Beach may have used a legally-bought suppressor in a mass shooting two weeks ago. Gun rights attorney and “Gun Guy Show” host Guy Relford, said banning them wouldn’t make guns any less lethal.

“Something that truly protects our hearing, has no effect on the lethality of a firearm, does not silence the firearm at all, only takes it down about 30 decibels, why the hell are we talking about banning it?” said Relford.

He said the suppressor, sometimes called a silencer, was invented and patented by the same man who invented the car muffler, and was originally referred to as a muffler. Eventually Hiram Stevens Maxim began calling his invention the silencer, and movies portrayed the device as able to almost completely muffle the sound of a rifle or pistol.

“I want to know how the even produce that sound. I honestly don’t know.”

Relford said Congress reacted to fiction rather than fact in seriously regulating suppressors with the National Firearms Act, which calls the device a silencer, rather than a muffler or suppressor.

Relford said the device actually reduces the sound of an average gunshot from about 160 decibels, to around 130 decibels.

“How loud is 130 decibels? That’s the sound of a jackhammer. That’s the sound of a jet taking off. That’s the sound of an ambulance siren. Don’t all those things still sound pretty loud to you?”

Pres. Trump told British journalist Piers Morgan he would consider whether a ban on suppressors would be effective at curbing gun violence.

“I don’t love the idea of it,” he said.