Suppressors: Fact Versus Fiction
Why the US military is issuing more and more suppressors to its troops
It’s generally a good policy to disbelieve absolutely everything you see on TV or in the movies. These are entertainments, not accurate guides to reality. They are designed to provide an illusion that captivates the audience, not convey accurate information. The difference between a gunfight in an entertainment (or a video game) and reality is the same as the difference between an illusion presented in a magic trick versus real life. In a magic show, the magician can saw an assistant in half without any harm befalling the supposedly dismembered victim; try it in real life and you’ve just committed murder.
Unfortunately, it seems this very obvious lesson is not easy for people to inculcate. Juries convict under the belief that DNA evidence infallibly points to a single person, never realizing that it’s a statistical correlation that singles out one person per ten thousand — so in a large city, potentially hundreds of matches are possible. Well-meaning would-be Good Samaritans attempt to restart the heart of someone who’s suffered cardiac arrest and no longer has a pulse, because this tedious and dangerously misleading trope is used by every lazy scriptwriter who’s ever put finger to keyboard. In reality, attempting to restart a non-beating heart…
