Did 'silencer' make a difference in Va. mass shooting?

Police say a suppressor was attached to the handgun the gunman used to kill a dozen people

Associated Press

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — The shooter who killed 12 people in a government office building in Virginia Beach used a firearm equipped with a suppressor that muffles the sound of gunfire. It's the nightmare scenario that gun-control advocates have warned about amid efforts in recent years to ease restrictions on the devices, which they say can help shooters escape detection and inflict more carnage.

But gun-rights advocates and most law enforcement experts say DeWayne Craddock's use of a suppressor likely had no bearing on his ability to kill so many people in so little time Friday.




"This is the concern we were talking about when Republicans were trying to deregulate silencers as 'ear protection,'" said David Chipman, a retired agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and now the senior policy adviser with Giffords, a gun-control lobbying group.



"A suppressor does not alter the lethality of the weapon at all. All it does is just limit the noise it makes," said Gregory Shaffer, a retired FBI agent who was a member of the bureau's elite Hostage Response Team. "It doesn't increase the rate of fire. It doesn't do anything other than make it more comfortable to shoot because it's not so loud."

It's not immediately clear how long Friday's attack lasted, or how much time passed before the first police officers arrived. The police department is in the same complex as the building where the shooting took place.

It also wasn't yet known how Craddock got the suppressor he used on his handgun, though authorities have said he legally purchased multiple firearms recently.





"Clearly this was an individual who did understand and have experience with firearms and had given potentially some forethought into the advantage that using a suppressor would offer him, particularly the suppressor coupled with the caliber of weapon he was using," said Thor Eells, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association and a retired law enforcement officer with the Colorado Springs Police Department, where he oversaw a SWAT division.


As a current employee, the shooter would have had such a pass and would have known the floor plan, areas that were "easy to control," where the best places to hide were and how to move quickly from one area to another, Eells said.

While responding police might have had some familiarity with the building, it's very possible the shooter knew it a lot better after working there for years.

His protracted gunfight with law enforcement officers would indicate that he "was in a place that was difficult for officers to access or engage," Eells said.

"Whether that was happenstance or intentional, it's too early to tell."

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