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Fair or not, a big influence in whether a District Attorney will charge an incident is HOW IT LOOKS. If you shoot someone with a suppressed weapon, there is a good chance that the D/A will consider you as stalking the intruder with no thought of dissuading him - only killing him.
If the D/A issues charges, now you can have the same problem with a judge and jury. More cases are being decided on feelings and less on facts.
In fact, you're probably going to be scrutinized less if you use a lever-action 30-30 or a 4-inch .38 Special than if you use an AR-15 or a Desert Eagle or a M-11 (although none is, technically, any worse than the other).
My opinion is that the risk of increased legal fees outweighs any perceived benefits of using something that can be considered as a "offensive" vs a "defensive" firearm. Remember, that people get their opinions from movies, and movies show suppressors to be only used by the Mafia and assassins.
Back when no warrant was needed to use a thermal imaging device to attempt to detect the heat signature for an indoor drug grow, a senior Assistant District Attorney didn't want us to use one, because he saw the movie "Blue Thunder" and thought that we could see through walls into peoples bedrooms (NOT).
I still remember the judge passing sentence on an offender who used a Mac-11 in his crimes. It was a female judge, and she started her pronouncement with, "Mister Ortiz. You used a really-big gun in this incident, so I'm going to give you a really-big sentence."
Not worth the risk.
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