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Still not sure why suppressors are NFA
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Because the original drafts of the NFA 34 restricted machine guns, sawed off shotguns & rifles, and handguns. (I believe all handguns).
Someone shrewdly advised the sponsors that if handguns were included, the bill would never pass. So they re-wrote part of it, removing handguns and substituting "silencers" instead.
Now, you also need to know a few things about the times. Some of them are mentioned in some histories, many aren't.
First off, there was no watchdog group to warn the public about the proposed law. Don't blame the NRA for that, either. Second, the regulated items were only a small fraction of guns, most people weren't owners.
And, third, something that almost never gets mention, is that even after the law passed, and survived a Supreme Count challenge (which is a different argument) it wasn't particularly onerous aside from the $ amount of the tax.
Because, it was a tax law. Yes, the criminal provisions were in there, but for decades, it was enforced as a tax matter. Meaning, (most of the time) if it was an honest "oops, I din't know that was the law" (and many didn't) you paid the tax, got the stamp, and you were good from then on (and you kept your gun).
I think it wasn't until the later 60s when it was decided that policy would change to criminal prosecution as the standard. There was an amnesty period of (I think) 6 months, where they would allow items to be registered and tax paid without any other penalty, but after that expired, criminal prosecution became the standard policy.
Silencers/suppressors shouldn't be NFA items but they got away with putting them in and getting the law passed, so they are. And, after the Supreme Court ruled "we have been shown no evidence..." the entire NFA was treated as valid and unchallengeable. And so its been, ever since.