Why You Should Own a Suppressor – Before we begin, let’s address some inconvenient facts: if you wish to purchase a suppressor intentional hurdles have been placed in your path to legal ownership. Large among these is a $200 “tax stamp” fee (though you do receive an actual lick-it stamp) added atop the retail price of an already-expensive “can” (most $500 to $1,000 today, though many cost more). Why $200? When the 1934 National Firearms Act (NFA) was enacted by “Progressives,” in the name of stopping Prohibition-era gangland carnage, $200 represented about $4,000 adjusted to 2023 inflation (though it is now difficult to keep up with an exact figure these days). The sum was devised to monetarily discourage ownership, ironically allowing only bootleggers and organized-crime figures to afford them; citizens the legislation was purported to thwart.
The purchase of a suppressor involves a stack of government paperwork and other assorted busywork, which I’ll not get into in great detail here. Your dealer will walk you through the procedures. In a nut shell, you will first pay for your suppressor, purchased from a federally-licensed dealer, so you’ll have a serial number for federal paperwork. The suppressor remains in the dealer’s safe pending application approval. Paperwork includes Form 3 filled out in triplicate, three passport photos, official fingerprint cards (produced by your county sheriff for a fee, if they are willing) and a check for $200, made payable to FBATF.
You then wait for federal approval. By any reasonable metric in a computerized world this should require no more than a month to complete. In the universe of federal bureaucracy nine to 12 months is required, with approval times lengthening conspicuously under the leadership of the current DOJ. Suppressors can also be placed in trust, allowing suppressor use and transfer between assigned trustees (who must each also pass background checks).
Suppressors are currently legal in 42 states that I am aware of—Iowa the most recent inductee. The nine states excluded from the list are the usual progressive suspects inclined to restricting Constitutional rights. These include Democrat-controlled California, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
There were recent rumblings of streamlining the process, making suppressor ownership no more difficult than passing a gun-purchase NICS check. Sadly, bill-friendly congressional RINOs developed cold feet following the infamous Las Vegas/Mandalay Bay mass shooting and the mainstream media labeling the legislation “The Assassin’s Bill” (in the same way ARs become “assault weapons” or “weapons of war”). There weren’t enough votes to justify moving the bill forward and it died on the vine. The hassle and long waits, then, come to seem intentional.
The term silencer is another absolute misnomer. Suppressors aren’t silencers, any more than vehicle mufflers are silencers. In fact, car mufflers and gun suppressors were both invented by the same fellow, Hiram Percy Maxim (also known for creating the Maxim machinegun). You will not realize James Bond or John Wick level silencing with any suppressor, as that is more Hollywood silliness. Shooting subsonic ammo (with velocities less than 1,100 fps) comes close, but is not truly silent. Besides, very, very few serious big-game hunters or varmint shooters employ subsonic ammunition—tight-cover, nighttime thermal-image hog cullers the possible exception—because it creates rainbow trajectories. The internal chambers or baffles of a quality suppressor muffle powder combustion as it is oxygenized outside the barrel, but have no influence over the distinctive crack caused when bullets break the sound barrier. Though, this noise normally occurs 50 to 80 yards away from the shooter, making it less irritating. This disconnect also means game such as hogs or predators generally don’t know which direction shots are coming from. The real-world implications is shooting even large cartridges generally requires nothing more than plug-in “foamies,” instead of full-blown ear muffs or expensive gel-plug hearing protection.
I do an inordinate amount of varmint shooting. Those rifles once held muzzle brakes, because I prefer a lot of magnification and like to mark my own shots. Even minor muzzle jump made marking missed shots difficult. Brakes tame scope movement, but come with the price of obnoxious muzzle blast. My long-range 6mm rockchuck rifles and bottle-neck-cartridge T/C pistols once caused migraines after firing too many simultaneous rounds. Suppressors provide muzzle-brake effect (about 65-75 percent of the most effective brakes) while eliminating head-crushing muzzle blast. Wielding my .22 Creedmoor, for instance, becomes as pleasant as shooting a .22 Hornet.
Why You Should Own a Suppressor – Before purchasing a suppressor consider these factors: serviceability, bulk/weight and effective noise reduction. The ability to disassemble suppressors for cleaning is vital with rimfire cans, as .22 LR powders are notoriously dirty. Even with centerfire cans I prefer segmented designs or removable baffles/mono-cores to better facilitate occasional cleaning.
Standard 30-caliber centerfire suppressors make the safest investment. While .224 to 6.5mm caliber-specific cans are certainly offered (sometimes more affordably), .308 options prove most versatile. My two .30-cal suppressors, for instance, muffle varmint rifles exceptionally, but are rated to .300 Win Mag, should I find the need.
An obvious apprehension when adding a suppressor is whether it will alter harmonics on rifles for which precision reloads have been tailored. I have noted accuracy erosion on especially thin-barreled rifles, but my heavy-barreled varmint rifles have proven nearly impervious to this.
Bulk and weight are sometimes synonymous with noise reduction, but not always, especially with milder varmint cartridges. Aluminum is lightweight, for instance, but more care must be applied to avoid buggering threads (I apply choke-tube grease to aluminum threads for this reason). Titanium includes similar mass and is obviously stronger, but also more expensive, while steel automatically adds weight but proves indestructible. After picking up my first suppressor I found that not all suppressors are created equal. A friend owned a titanium suppressor retailing for twice the money as my aluminum model, but mine was conspicuously quieter on all rifles it was shot on.
Extensive testing since has revealed that adding a suppressor did not affect velocity, all variations well within standard extreme-velocity-spread deviations. I also found something like a $50 Little Crow Gunworks’ Boom Tube—a “noise-funneling” tube not requiring federal involvement—was often as effective as a suppressor from the shooter’s perspective behind the gun.
Why You Should Own a Suppressor – Noise reduction with a .22 LR (using a smaller, less expensive rimfire suppressor), starting with 82 decibels (dB) for subsonic rounds and 86 dB high-velocity rounds, is generally reduced 1 to 3 dB with the Boom Tube or something like my $250 Huntertown Arms Guardian 22 rimfire suppressor. Noise reduction with the Boom Tube is about 1 to 3 dB with something like an AR-15 in .223 Rem, while a true suppressor supplied noise reductions of up to 3 to 5 dB. Reductions of 3 to 4 dB in rounds such as the .22-250 Remington, and about 4 dB with a round such as the 6mm Creedmoor were observed. Shot noise is directly tied to velocity, so a slower round might see higher decibel reductions.
These reductions may seem slight, but understand the decibel scale is based on orders of magnitude on a nonlinear logarithmic scale. For instance, if total silence is 0 dB, a sound 10 times louder is 10 dB, a sound 100 times louder 20 dB and a sound 1,000 times more powerful 30 dB, and so on. So, by this scale human conversation, at 60 dB, and a jet fighter taking off 100 feet away, about 130 dB, are separated by only 70 dB, though the latter is 1,000s of times louder. From the shooter’s position behind an unsuppressed rifle an average .22 LR round, shot from an 18.5-inch barrel, produces around 85 dB, or only 5 dB louder than a busy restaurant. This also means the difference between an unsuppressed 85 to 86 dB centerfire rifle report and an 80 to 81 dB suppressed shot is more significant than would first appear.
Is the hassle of legally securing a suppressor worth your hard-earned cash, time and effort? Absolutely, if you value your hearing and would love to dispense with sweaty earmuffs or uncomfortable plugs. Since purchasing my first, if I can help it I will never shoot without a suppressor again.
Read the March Issue of Inside Firearms at insidefirearms.com