How's this legal(airgun supresser)?

[ham385]

Has anybody seen these?
Whisper Air Gun
I haven't seen any mention of a necessary tax stamp. Has the ATF become more lenient in their definition of a supresser?
I'm considering getting one, but I don't want to get myself in a bad situation. Just because a large company is selling it doesn't make it legal.

[knight0334]

I thought I saw a ruling/letter once that stated that even suppressors for airguns and paintball guns are illegal because they could be used on actual firearms. .....but if they were permanently attached to a nonfirearm they wouldn't be illegal.

or something of the sort.

[Pa. Patriot]

Originally Posted by knight0334

.....but if they were permanently attached to a nonfirearm they wouldn't be illegal.

or something of the sort.

Bingo

(ten characters)

[destrux]

If the ATF wanted to push it, they could cut it off the end of your rifle and say it's not permanently attached (because all they needed was a hacksaw). Personally, I wouldn't worry about it. Unless you were to commit a crime with it, or do something to cause the ATF to come after you for something else, I doubt they would go through the trouble to harrass someone over this rifle.

[bloomautomatic]

If it can produce 1200fps with the lightweight pellets, the sonic crack wouldn't be much of a whisper.

Vince

[625]

If it can produce 1200fps with the lightweight pellets, the sonic crack wouldn't be much of a whisper.

Not only that but those spring piston break-barrel actions seem very noisy to me. I have one of the wood stocked Gamo rifles with the same specs as that one and that spring seems to make most of the noise. That ad might be a bit misleading. Does it reduce the overall sound the rifle makes by 52% or just the sound of the pellet?

[JayBell]

a little suppressor theory info here.

a suppressor reduces the muzzle noise of a firearm by slowing down the pressurized gasses that are propelling the projectile, so they dont make a loud bang when the pressure equalizes.
The baffles trap and slow the gasses velocity so that it is released more gently behind the bullet, as opposed to spreading out in all directions with a bang.

imagine popping a champagne cork in a box, same idea, the gasses are trapped in the box, and the noise of the pop is reduced.

suppressors dont help with reducing sonic crack, flight noise form the projectile, nor do they silence any action/spring/mechanical noise at all.

also, as a matter of note, sonic crack is not a single time phenomenon, its a continuous event that happens until the bullet drops back below the sound barrier.
The crack will be reflected from any object the supersonic item passes, and the sound will be reflected back.
Sonic crack loudness also depends on the size of the item passing the sound barrier, the smaller the item, the lighter the crack, on up to jets making a sonic boom that can break windows.

if you have access to a place where you can safely shoot down a row of fenceposts, or telephone poles, fire a suppressed supersonic shot paralell to the line of poles...you will hear a crack reflected back from each pole as the bullet passes.
It sounds like a rimfire machinegun coming back at you.

[Stooperzero]

I've handled one of these...

IMHO It's borderline.

[bloomautomatic]

They have a version of it that uses a gas spring instead of steel spring to make it even quieter. One of the online reviews I read on it said something to the effect of "if it reduces the sound by 52%, then the unsupressed version must be the loudest spring piston gun around!"

I'll stick with my $17 chinese spring piston gun. That spring is definitely louder than the shot! T'waaaang!!!

Vince

[dgeesaman]

Originally Posted by ham385

Has anybody seen these?
Whisper Air Gun
I haven't seen any mention of a necessary tax stamp. Has the ATF become more lenient in their definition of a supresser?
I'm considering getting one, but I don't want to get myself in a bad situation. Just because a large company is selling it doesn't make it legal.

I know this is an old topic, but the answer is because it cannot be removed and used on a firearm. "Integral"

Also FWIW those kinds of airguns aren't very well suppressed. The pop at the muzzle is not as loud as the sound of the internals slamming back and forth. You can tune the internals of a spring gun to clean up the sound and make it less twangish but the sound levels don't change much. Pneumatic airguns on the other hand have very little going on inside and a well-designed suppressor can make it very, very quiet. Just make sure it's really hard to remove it before you take such an airgun out in public.

Dave