December 2, 2014 Learning the Silence Behind Silencers

 December 2, 2014 Learning the Silence Behind Silencers on the Range with SilencerCO Hollywood gets it consistently wrong – in the real world, they’re merely less loud Lee Hutchinson Firing a Remington 870 tactical shotgun with SilencerCO’s Salvo suppressor. Note lack of hearing protection AUSTIN, Texas—Let’s get this out of the way immediately: movies and TV consistently get silencers totally wrong. The ways silencers are used on the screen—
often clamped to the barrel of a submachine gun or assault rifle or large-­‐bore pistol, mowing down bad guys while other, blissfully unaware bad guys calmly sip their tea at the end of the hallway—is just not possible. Silencers, more properly (and accurately) referred to as "suppressors," do not silence the sound of gunfire. In most cases, they don’t even make a weapon particularly quiet. That’s first-­‐hand information after several hours on the range with Jason Schauble of SilencerCo, where we fired off a few hundred rounds of various sizes and shapes on a wide assortment of different firearms. With the exception of small-­‐caliber ammunition being fired out of carefully designed weapons, suppressors don’t come anywhere even close to being quiet. They’re bloody loud. What suppressors can do is make it possible to fire a weapon, without wearing hearing protection, and retain the ability to actually hear again after. That’s another thing Hollywood gets absolutely wrong. Heroes regularly blast off hundreds of rounds in a firefight without earplugs, and they're able to hold a conversation immediately after. Anyone who’s fired a weapon before can tell you that without hearing protection, it doesn’t take more than a handful of nearby shots to temporarily deafen you—guns really are that loud. Companies that manufacture and sell suppressors, then, have a difficult uphill battle to fight. They're working against a popular perception that these products are murder-­‐tools best suited toward stealthily killing humans and that there are few other reasons besides "covert assassination" or possibly "taking over Nakatomi Plaza" that someone would need to own one. But after shooting for a couple of hours, we came away with the impression that suppressors are actually useful even for casual gun owners. And even if you’re not a gun person at all, the technology that goes into stealing away much of the weapon’s report noise is fascinating. That technology is why we ended up on the range. This obviously isn’t "Guns Technica," and we don’t often seek out advancements in weaponry to cover. However, actually getting the opportunity to try out suppressors on a dozen different weapons in order to dig into how they work was too much to resist. So we went to Austin and met Schauble, who brought a veritable smorgasbord of firearms and SilencerCo-­‐produced suppressors to walk us through how it all worked. SilencerCo: New company, old faces If Jason Schauble’s name sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because this isn’t the first time Ars has run into him. Schauble is the former CEO of TrackingPoint, the company that makes highly accurate (and highly expensive) Linux-­‐powered firearms We most recently wrote about TrackingPoint back in August when we got some hands-­‐on time with the company’s preproduction AR-­‐15 carbines. At that time, we mentioned that Schauble left the company a few months prior, but didn’t get into where. It turns out that he hopped across town to SilencerCo, working in the Austin branch of the Utah-­‐based company as its Chief Revenue Officer. His past experience at Remington and Advanced Armament Corporation (not to mention his active duty service in the Marine Corps) seems to have prepared him well for the job. When we rolled up to the Best of the West range—the same range where we shot with TrackingPoint—Schauble already had a long table laid out with firearms and suppressors. SilencerCo, it turns out, is a major player in a seemingly off-­‐the-­‐radar industry. Though it employs only 125 people, the company has about 40 percent of the domestic suppressor market—so they’re responsible for a big chunk of the more than 100,000 suppressors purchased yearly in the United States. The company has been selling suppressors since 2009, and it’s a growing market. According to marketing materials provided by SilencerCo, suppressor sales in the United States are rising at a rate of about 20 percent a year. For 2014, SilencerCo expects to sell about 40,000 of the devices to customers ranging from private individuals to local law enforcement to military. SilencerCo was originally started by two fellows named Josh Waldron and Jonathan Shultz—a photographer and an audio technician. The pair was frustrated with both the process of buying suppressors and also what they felt was a lack of customer service by existing suppressor manufacturers (so they decided to start their own company in an attempt to do better). One of the first products the duo designed and built was the Osprey suppressor—a non-­‐round "eccentric" silencer that stands out in a lineup of its typically cylindrical fellow silencers. "Eccentric" here means that the bore through which the bullet passes doesn’t go through the middle of the suppressor. SilencerCo made this choice because most cylindrical suppressors actually stick up past the gun’s front sights, obscuring them and making it much more difficult to effectively aim. The Osprey design avoids this by putting most of its guts below the bore, leaving the gun’s sights usable. Aren’t these things illegal? Contrary to what most people think, suppressors are legal to purchase and own in 39 states (the exceptions are California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont). They are regulated items under the National Firearms Act but can be purchased through any Federal Firearms License-­‐holding dealer that can deal in Title II NFA-­‐restricted items. Buyers must meet all the other legal requirements to own a firearm. Suppressor sales are controlled by the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. To receive the suppressor from the dealer, buyers are required to pay $200 for a BAFTE tax stamp and fill out some paperwork. The suppressor is registered directly to you and cannot be possessed by anyone else (though there are ways to instead register the suppressor to a trust or corporation to work around this). The devices themselves can be expensive—potentially costing as much or more than the firearm itself—but not prohibitively so for most people interested in buying firearms in the first place. It’s reasonable to feel some kind of unease at hearing this, especially if the experience you’ve got with suppressors comes wholly from movies and entertainment. The use cases aren’t immediately obvious—as a private individual, how many enemy bases do I need to silently infiltrate ala James Bond? The answer is almost always "none." No enemy bases. If they’re not illegal, why would you want one? So, why on earth would any reasonable person need a suppressor? "Need" is a funny word and one that typically doesn’t apply to both firearm and computer ownership (you don’t need a new $700 handgun or a new $700 video card, though you certainly might want them). It’s pretty likely that no one needs a suppressor for their firearms. This is definitely what you’d classify as a luxury purchase. Nonetheless, a suppressor is a nice accessory to have because guns are loud. It’s difficult to describe exactly how loud they are, especially to someone who has never fired a pistol or rifle or shotgun before, but remember that firearms work by explosions. A round that contains some amount of propellent is detonated, and a bullet is propelled though a barrel and away from the gun on the back of the expanding gases from that explosion. That explosion and those expanding gases cause the overwhelming majority of the noise a gun makes when it fires. In movies, it’s common to see characters speaking to each other during or immediately after a firefight; in real life, this is patently impossible (at least, not without some kind of electronic hearing suppression to dampen out the gunshot sounds). Firing almost any kind of handgun or rifle or shotgun, even a single round, results in the shooter’s ears being subjected to sound pressure levels as high as 160db. That's far in excess of the 140db level the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says can cause immediate hearing loss. Even the sound of a single gunshot can cause pain and ringing and temporary hearing loss (I’ve experienced this first-­‐hand, more than once, and it’s not fun). Firing a dozen or so rounds without hearing protection would leave you essentially deafened for many minutes (I’ve also experienced this, and it’s even less fun). When you’re on a line at a firing range surrounded by dozens of other people shooting, you wear hearing protection, full stop (though Schauble points out that a range that employs suppressors can have extended operating hours and will potentially disturb its neighbors a lot less than one that doesn’t). But there are other occasions where you might be shooting in a small group—if you’re out hunting or shooting on private land, for example. In those cases, constantly wearing ear protection can be a hassle, especially if you’re spending hours in a hunting blind or other location. If you forego ear protection, you might find yourself having to fumble to put it on when it is time to fire, or you might just not bother and shoot anyway. "When I do go take that one big shot," said Schauble, describing how he uses suppressors while hunting, "I'm kicking my ass and I'm blowing out my ears. But now I don't have to do either one, because I’ve got an integrally braked silencer that allows me to take that shot, and even get a followup shot if I miss—it gives me both of those advantages on a hunt where I might have just spent four days walking around trying to get at an animal." Interestingly, Schauble brought up something else we hadn’t thought of, primarily because we're not regular hunters. Suppressors don’t just save hunters’ ears but also the ears of any hunting dogs they might have with them. "A good bird dog will go deaf in five years," said Schauble. "We’ve got a lot of people who are super stoked about these because their dogs aren’t going to go deaf, which is something we’d never even contemplated." Suppressing a rifle while hunting is one thing; the use cases for suppressing pistols are a lot narrower. "That's the hardest one," Schauble said when we asked why anyone would need or want a suppressed pistol. "You can shoot outside without hearing protection. Most of the guys we sell to are in the Southwest or Southeast. They have land, and they want to be able to go outside and shoot at a target without wearing hearing protection and waking everybody up." In just about any case other than being on a crowded firing range, having a suppressor and being able to shoot without needing to worry about ear protection is a convenient time-­‐ and frustration-­‐saver. And that, really, is all it is. A suppressor isn’t going to turn you into a black-­‐robed assassin-­‐ninja or psychopathic long-­‐range killer who can vanish into a puff of smoke after firing some rounds. That’s not to say that there aren’t military or paramilitary uses. To ignore the fact that military organizations use suppressors (and that SilencerCo is a supplier to the Department of Defense) is to be willfully ignorant of a very real, very significant real-­‐world use case for suppressors. Law enforcement groups across the country are also SilencerCo customers. But even then, suppressors are employed not so much for their fictionalized ability to eliminate sound but rather to lower the sound of gunfire to a level where police or soldiers can still communicate with each other during and after firefights without hearing protection. That protection almost always brings with it some reduction in situational awareness. So how quiet are SilencerCo’s suppressors? The best answer to the above question is "it depends, but quiet enough so that you can shoot without earmuffs or earplugs." The rated noise reduction from each model is available on SilencerCo’s website, and we've got the numbers (along with some audio recordings) in the section below. Unless you’re familiar with how logarithmic SPL measurements work, the numbers aren’t going to mean a lot. But all of the suppressors produced SPL measurements below the 140db level NIOSH says will cause hearing damage. The quietest thing we fired on the range was the suppressed Walther PPK/S, chambered in .22LR. Capped off with a Sparrow silencer, the James Bond gun made a sound that felt about as loud as a person clapping their hands together. A .22 caliber pistol isn’t anywhere near as loud as a big .45—the round is physically much smaller and contains a lot less powder—but, unsuppressed, a single round from a .22 revolver or a semiautomatic .22 pistol still makes more than enough noise to leave your ears ringing. (On the contrary, .22 rifles are less loud, since there’s more gun and more barrel to absorb sound.) The loudest weapon we fired was either Schauble’s customized XM2010 sniper rifle, chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum, or the vintage FN FAL Schauble brought, chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO. Even with hefty suppressors slung on the end of their barrels, both weapons were still loud enough that their reports felt like physical things. However, as mentioned near the outset of this piece, we didn’t wear hearing protection for the entire multi-­‐hour range trip. Even when banging away with the shotgun, SilencerCo’s suppressors kept the sound below dangerous or painful levels. How a silencer works As mentioned earlier, firearms work by detonating some amount of propellent. A bullet rides an expanding cloud of gas from that propellant out of a weapon’s barrel, and that explosion and its cloud of gas is loud. Suppressors trap that gas using a series of baffles, and in doing so they muffle the direct sound of the weapon’s report. If you disassemble a silencer, you’ll see that most of the inside of the can is made up of a stacked series of interlinked baffle chambers that slow down the barrel’s exhaust gases. On one hand, this is a relatively simple principle, and it’s why you can google "homemade silencer" and read about how you can do crazy stuff like duct tape an empty Mountain Dew bottle onto the end of a shotgun and make it quieter or whatever (we made that up). In practice, the shape and size and orientation of the baffles has a significant impact on the quality of the suppression. "The baffles, the way they’re configured and how they’re designed—that’s the essence of innovation in this space," explained Schauble. "The whole idea is to redirect the turbulence, slow the expansion of the gases down, and give it a place to go." The bigger suppressors SilencerCo makes can have their individual baffles removed for cleaning or replacement, while the simpler ones (like the Sparrow on the .22 Walther PPK we fired) have their baffles fixed in place. Either way, though, the fact that suppressors are controlled and licensed items affects their construction. The outer tube that surrounds and contains the baffles carries a serial number and is legally considered to be the controlled object. The baffles can be replaced, but the tube itself is the singular part that keeps the suppressor from becoming Theseus’ ship (much in the same way that a serialized lower receiver is legally the whole weapon when it comes to a modular AR-­‐type carbine). The attachment point of the suppressor to the weapon is also a complex affair, because semiautomatic firearms are actually complex mechanical devices themselves. Propelling a round out of a weapon’s barrel is only one major action; the reason semiautomatic weapons are called "semi-­‐automatic" is because some of the chemical and mechanical energies released from a round’s propellent detonation are used to cycle the next round into the chamber and reset the weapon so that it is ready to be fired again. Attaching a suppressor to a weapon can alter the weight distribution and balance of the weapon, and it also alters the behavior of the exhaust gases. So, typically a semiautomatic pistol suppressor has a component called a "muzzle booster" or a "Nielsen device" as the part that is directly connected to the weapon’s barrel. These boosters allow the pistol’s action to cycle normally with each shot, rather than jamming, misfiring, or failing to feed. Decreased accuracy or range? A common misconception about suppressors is that they negatively affect either a weapon’s accuracy or range (or both). This seems like a logical concern, since it seems to follow that pushing a bullet through an extra tube after firing it would drag at the bullet, but it turns out this isn’t the case. First, rounds fired through a suppressor never come in contact with the surfaces of the suppressor’s internal baffles—their diameter is wider than that of the weapon’s bore. There is no additional friction imparted by a modern suppressor on a round and no internal rifled barrel through which the round travels. Secondly, it actually appears that suppressors can have a small but noticeable increase on a weapon’s accuracy. The slowing and redirection of exhaust gases reduces the amount of recoil generated with each shot, and the added weight on the end of the weapon also helps to counteract and steady a shooter’s tendency to anticipate recoil and preemptively jerk the weapon downward. We didn’t conduct any scientific benchmarks or try to plink dimes from a hundred yards, but throughout the day there was no noticeable effect on the accuracies of the weapons used. According to Schauble, SilencerCo manufactures its suppressors to have "minimal point-­‐of-­‐aim, point-­‐of-­‐impact shift," and any variances will be "sub-­‐
MOA"—that is, less than a single minute of arc (which is about one inch at 100 yards or about 2.9 centimeters at 100 meters). The wild card here, of course, is SilencerCo’s unique shotgun silencer—a piece of kit which no other suppressor manufacturer has produced so far. Anything you strap onto the end of a shotgun has to be able to cope not just with slugs but also with different types of shot, plastic wadding, and chokes. SilencerCo appears to have cracked the code for an effective shotgun suppressor that handles all the different types of rounds one might put through a shotgun while not affecting shotgun choke patterns. After 3,000 words or so of background—let’s finally get to the range. Aren't we missing something? Shooting without ear protection is weird. As someone with a lot of background experience with firearms and who regularly shoots—
seriously, stepping up to a firing line without my Peltors on felt a lot like driving without a seatbelt or going to the grocery store without any pants on. It also felt—sadly, no lie here—a little bit Hollywood. We wore a wireless lavalier mic throughout the entire interview with Schauble, including the entire time we were on the range. Below is a movie with audio samples of each weapon if you just want to hear what everything sounds like without reading through more text. Unfortunately, while this does at least give some idea of what each weapon sounds like, it doesn’t really capture the volume or "real" sound. This mic just doesn’t have the dynamic range necessary; it clips at far below the actual peak sound produced by each shot. So when listening, it sounds like all the rounds are quiet as can be. But rest assured this wasn’t the case—it’s just essentially impossible to accurately capture gunfire, even suppressed gunfire, in a meaningful way and then play that audio back at the "correct volume." Get your Bond on The first thing we shot was a Walther PPK/S, a .22 caliber pistol that most people would probably immediately recognize from hours spent playing Goldeneye. It's essentially James Bond’s signature firearm, though Bond carries a more potent version chambered in .32 ACP, rather than the teeny tiny .22LR rimfire rounds we were shooting. Schauble paired the Walther with a Sparrow suppressor, the smallest can the company produces. The company says that shooting .22LR rounds through the Sparrow results in a measured SPL of between 110-­‐115, or about as loud as an average size car door being slammed shut. There also just wasn’t a whole lot of recoil to be dealt with (not that the pistol generated an appreciable amount in the first place). A little bit louder now: 9mm and .45 ACP We next shot a pair of semiautomatic Glocks—a Glock 17 chambered in 9x19mm (or "9mm parabellum" or "9mm Luger," the ubiquitous and famous round referred to by rap stars and common folk alike when saying "nine millimeter") and a heftier Glock 21 in .45 ACP. The .45 caliber Glock 21 was equipped with a large Octane suppressor, while the smaller 9mm Glock 17 had the non-­‐cylindrical Osprey. Both were a noticeable step up from the Walther with its Sparrow, in both weight and also volume. The sound was definitely louder than a clapping hand or a slammed car door—both were absolutely loud noises. SilencerCo’s documentation says that the 9mm version of the Osprey generates SP levels of about 125db, while the Octane with .45 ACP goes up to about 133db. "It’s loud, but it’s not, like, 'oh my God' loud," we eloquently judged. The round Octane suppressor on the Glock 21 exhibited a common problem to most suppressors, rising up past the front sight of the handgun and making it a lot more difficult to acquire a correct sight picture—you essentially had to make an educated guess about where you were shooting. The Osprey, on the other hand, kept itself out of the sight picture entirely. And the eccentric silencer with the non-­‐centered barrel looked pretty cool, too. And it's hard to ignore the fact that for at least some percentage of SilencerCo’s customer base (and any weapon manufacturer’s customer base, for that matter), cool sells. A little bit louder now: We do the weird stuff Chances are if you’ve fired a pistol before, you’ve fired something chambered in .22 or 9mm or .45 ACP, but the next thing Schauble had for us to shoot was a Belgian FN Five-­‐seven pistol, an odd duck of a gun which shoots a less-­‐than-­‐common type of round: the FN 5.7x28mm cartridge. This was accordingly an odd gun to fire, and initially we couldn’t pull it off without constant mis-­‐feeding. The problem turned out to be using far too "thorough" a trigger pull (having grown up on a diet of Berettas, this is how I was taught to fire a pistol). The Five-­‐seven requires a much lighter trigger pull. The suppressor SilencerCo recommends with the Five-­‐seven is its rimfire Spectre, which is predominantly used to suppress .22 rifles firing faster .22 round variants like .22 magnum or .22 Hornet. The high-­‐velocity 5.7x28mm is definitely a step up in sound pressure from those smaller rounds, and the noise produced was significantly louder than the 9mm Glock. In fact, it was loud enough that after a full extended magazine of thirty rounds, our ears were definitely ringing. It faded over the course of about ten minutes, but it was absolutely a step up in volume from the others. SilencerCo doesn’t have a published SPL level for the Spectre when using it with 5.7x28mm rounds, but we’d estimate it was at least equal to the .45 Glock 21 and its much larger suppressor. This particular combo—the high-­‐velocity round with the .22 Spectre can—
demonstrates the fundamental tradeoff in suppressors. Schauble describes this as a balancing act between "sound, size and weight, felt recoil, and flash." You can put a huge suppressor on and damp the noise way down, but it comes at a significant cost in weight and clumsiness. Alternatively, you can put a much smaller (in diameter and length) suppressor on and get a much more nimble weapon, but at the cost of increased volume and likely an increased amount of visible muzzle flash. A little bit louder now: 5.56mm in a carbine The FN Five-­‐seven is kind of a bridge between rifles and pistols, firing a rifle-­‐type necked cartridge with a pistol-­‐sized round, and it made a good transitional weapon to slot in between the regular pistols and the regular rifles. The next thing we picked up was one of Schauble’s two ARs—this one was an expensive Noveske AR-­‐15, chambered in the standard AR cartridge size of 5.56mm NATO, with a Saker suppressor stuck on its SilencerCo-­‐manufactured flash hider. The Saker Schauble brought was actually the largest variant, which can also be used for 7.62mm rounds. Even though it was a pretty hefty suppressor, it wasn’t that much larger than the Octane we used to muzzle the sound of .45 ACP. The 5.56mm round is faster, but pistols are just bloody loud to begin with, even compared to a rifle or carbine. There’s just physically less gun around the exploding round to absorb sound. The Saker 762 variant manages to damp down the AR’s report to a measured 134db. I am not a regular AR shooter (which my awkward stance and grip should make obvious, especially when compared to Schauble and to my photographer, both of whom look like they actually know what they’re doing), but, even after the pistols, this was eye-­‐opening. Our most recent experience with ARs was back in August with TrackingPoint’s about-­‐to-­‐be-­‐released AR line, and those unsuppressed carbines were as loud as you’d expect. They were loud enough that a significant amount of sound came vibrating up through your cheek bone with each shot. With the suppressor slung on the barrel, it was a totally different experience. As with most of the other weapons, a dozen shots made my ears start ringing, but opening up and dumping a magazine in rapid fire wasn’t the total earpocalypse it would otherwise be. A little bit softer now: 300 Blackout Schauble pulled the Saker 762 off of one Noveske AR and affixed it to the second—
this one chambered for much larger 300 Blackout rounds (and sporting a super-­‐
fancy $1,300 Trijicon ACOG optic). The actual bullet component of the 300 Blackout cartridge is 7.8mm in diameter, considerably larger than the standard 5.56mm NATO. But the overall cartridge is of similar length and width, which means you can use 300 Blackout rounds in regular 5.56mm NATO magazines. Out of everything we fired on the range, the 300 Blackout suppressed AR was probably the nicest thing to shoot. The recoil wasn’t vicious, and, with the Saker can on the end, the sound pressure level measured about 126db—about the same as the suppressed Glock 17 pistol firing 9mm rounds. My photographer described it as "just downright pleasant to shoot." No disagreement here. Pulling out the big guns—like, actually for-­‐real We had three weapons left to shoot, and they were all large—large guns that fired large rounds. Each used a different type of round, but all of them were definitely of the "big" variety. First up was that most complex of beasts to silence: the shotgun. The challenges in quieting a shotgun are legion—the biggest, as we mentioned earlier, is that a shotgun might shoot a multitude of different ammunition types (including many different types of shot), with different chokes, under many different circumstances. The proverbial "one suppressor to rule them all" is a difficult engineering challenge to tackle. SilencerCo’s solution is the Salvo, which looks like a scaled up version of the eccentric Osprey. Its slab sides and beveled edges actually give it an elegant appearance, in spite of its size. A peek into the business end of the device reveals the feature that lets the suppressor cope with the wide variety of things that can be crammed inside a shotgun shell and the fact that shot typically expands when fired. The Salvo has a twisty set of rods, running the length of the suppressor. "The key to it all was, what do you do with the wadding?" explained Schauble, referring to the three-­‐part plastic framework inside each shotgun shell that contains the shell’s payload. Past attempts to suppress shotguns with traditional silencers usually resulted in the shot expanding too fast and actually ripping into the silencer itself, or the round’s wad would shred and foul the bore. The solution was to drop a removable set of rods into the suppressor’s bore, which guide the wadding and the shot out. The rods, Schauble elaborated, keep the wadding and shot contained until they exit the suppressor while still allowing the round’s gases to be trapped and muffled. If the wadding does fragment before it makes it out of the barrel, it’s shunted into the bottom of the suppressor without affecting the suppressor’s performance, and it can be dumped out later. The suppressor design means that the shot’s spread pattern is unaffected, with the effect of the suppressor basically being like having a longer barrel on the shotgun. This means that target shooters who want to affix chokes can still do so, and the choke will have the exact same effect as it would on the unsuppressed shotgun. The Salvo is designed for use with 12 gauge shotguns, and it comes in four different lengths. Each length adds more weight and more suppression. At the lower end, the 6" model doesn’t provide a ton of suppression (149db measured at the muzzle and 140.6db at the ear), but it does at least cut down some on the shotgun’s report; the full 12" version we fired cuts the SPL down to 137db at the muzzle and 132db at the ear. I’ve fired even fewer shotguns than I’ve fired ARs, but there was something supremely satisfying about the KA-­‐CHUNK KA-­‐CHUNK the big Remington 870 made when we cycled its action. We were firing regular 7½ shot, suitable for small game, and the amount of noise produced by the imposing-­‐looking weapon was just not at all in line with what you’d expect. As with most of the rest of the day’s weapons, it was loud but not "it hurts" loud. Shotguns are touted as the archetypical home defense weapon, and it’s easy to see that a suppressor fitted onto the end of a tactical-­‐length shotgun would produce a weapon that isn’t unwieldy to handle indoors and would also leave you able to hear after firing. If the Salvo has any downsides, it’s the $1,400 price tag—depending on the shotgun, this might be up to three times the cost of the weapon you’re attaching it to. Sniping with an actual sniper rifle The penultimate weapon we fired was Schauble’s third-­‐generation pre-­‐production XM2010 military sniper rifle, which Schauble owns because he was part of the rifle’s development for the US Army during his time at Remington Arms. The XM2010 is a development model, so it’s close—but not identical—to the actual M2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle being fielded with the Army. It’s a futuristic-­‐looking weapon, with a very spare frame fitted all over with rails and all kinds of adjustment knobs, and it used the largest round we fired on the range that day: .300 Winchester Magnum. This is the same round fired by most of the TrackingPoint XS-­‐class rifles we’ve previously shot, and unsuppressed those weapons were teeth-­‐rattlingly loud. Even capped off with SilencerCo’s Harvester rifle suppressor, the sound produced was still loud and had a physical component—you could feel the blast through your cheek and in your eyeballs when you fired, and the dirt around the rifle’s barrel would whuff up in a small cloud of dust with each shot. A single suppressed round was more than enough to induce ear ringing—though, as with the rest of the weapons, hearing protection wasn’t necessary. Still, we wouldn’t want to fire a half-­‐dozen rounds off with this thing in quick succession, even suppressed. SilencerCo’s documentation doesn’t provide a specific measured SPL for this type of weapon, only saying that the SPL reduction with the Harvester is between 21-­‐34db. For a rifle that likely scores at least 160db unsuppressed, this is still just below the threshold of permanent damage. Banging out more than a few rounds would definitely leave you temporarily deafened. On the other hand, this is a bolt-­‐action rifle—it’s not conducive to firing quickly. Silencing the Cold War The last thing we fired was a Cold War vintage Belgian FN FAL, chambered in 7.62mm NATO and with a customized threaded barrel in order to accommodate a SilencerCo Specwar 762 suppressor. Unlike the other weapons we fired that day, the FAL was a chunky, hard-­‐shooting gun. It felt chunky and unfriendly, almost Soviet in its heavy construction, with an unforgiving trigger pull and hard recoil. As far as noise reduction, the subjective experience was a lot like with the XM2010 and its .300 WinMag round—the 7.62mm NATO is a large, high-­‐velocity cartridge, and it generated a hell of a lot of noise to damp down. The listed SPL for the Specwar when firing .308 rounds is 137db, and considering that single rounds were enough to produce ear ringing, we'd estimate the SPL when shooting 7.62 was right around in that neighborhood. A significant omission: No revolvers We fired three major pistol sizes and a number of rifles, but you’ll notice that we didn’t try out any revolvers. The reason behind this is simple: revolvers vent a significant amount of their gas through the gap between the rotating cylinder and the barrel, making a barrel-­‐mounted suppressor ineffective. There are several videos on YouTube showing the extent of this venting—one of the best is SmarterEveryDay’s underwater pistol shooting test, which visualizes a typical revolver gas discharge pattern beautifully. There has been one mass-­‐produced revolver compatible with barrel-­‐mounted suppressors: the Nagant M1895, which featured a mechanical system that pressed the revolver’s rotating cylinder up against the barrel when the revolver was cocked, thus sealing the chamber. However, Schauble didn’t have a Nagant M1895 handy, so we stuck entirely with semiautomatic pistols and rifles. Should suppressors exist, and should you buy one? It all comes down to two big questions: should people be able to buy suppressors, and if you’re going to own a gun, should you own a suppressor for it? Answering the first question objectively is difficult, since ultimately whether or not you believe suppressors should be available for civilian use likely depends on how you feel about gun ownership in general, and that’s a topic far too big to tackle in this piece. From a technical perspective, the decrease in sound provided by a suppressor (the "signature reduction," as Schauble referred to it more than once on our range trip) is not enough to make the suppressor a hugely useful tool for movie-­‐
style silent missions. Putting aside imaginary use cases, it is feasible that a bad actor with no previous criminal record could purchase a suppressor and use it during a shooting. Historically it’s clear that "not having a suppressor" hasn’t stopped criminal shootings from occurring, and actually having one on the end of a weapon during a mass shooting wouldn’t necessarily make things any easier for the person committing the crime—except that they wouldn’t have to wear ear protection to avoid going deaf. Militarily, one of the uses of suppressors is to reduce a weapon’s signature to such a point that enemy troops have a harder time locating friendly troops through the sound or flash of their shots. In a criminal mass shooting or sniping situation, it certainly is possible that these same factors might come into play and make a sufficiently skilled criminal harder to find and stop. The response to those criticisms is the same as the response to questions about bad guys acquiring machine guns, since both suppressors and automatic weapons are regulated under the National Firearms Act and are subject to a higher level of scrutiny and control than "regular" gun ownership. The process of legally purchasing a suppressor is considerably more complex than purchasing a firearm (a concealed carry permit holder can buy a handgun or a rifle in about ten minutes here in Texas, while buying a suppressor typically take months due to the BATF approval process). They are not un-­‐buyable, but getting hands on them is complex, and the serial number is tracked from manufacture to end user sale. Of course, a sufficiently motivated, moneyed, and skilled criminal can probably get a suppressor and an automatic weapon and whatever else they need in order to carry out whatever crime they want. And sadly in that case, the presence or absence of laws dictating ownership restrictions isn’t going to affect the outcome in the slightest. So setting aside the ultimately unanswerable question of whether or not civilians should be allowed to own suppressors, there's that other question to look at—if you already own a gun, should you consider buying a suppressor for it? That’s a little easier. If you own a pistol, you can’t attach a suppressor to it unless it has a threaded barrel; a few pistols come from the factory with this option, but not many. SilencerCo sells a small selection of aftermarket threaded barrels for a few types of Glocks, and it has more on the way. For the vast majority of handguns, you don’t have the option, so the question is moot. If you do have a pistol that is factory-­‐compatible with a suppressor, or if you're willing to find and buy an expensive aftermarket threaded barrel, attaching one will complicate the weapon’s handling—you’ll likely need a different holster if you use one, and the manual procedure required for properly drawing and firing the weapon is complicated by the sudden doubling of the weapon’s effective length. On the other hand, the vast reduction in sound means that shooting on private land or on a private indoor range no longer requires hearing protection. For shotguns and rifles, it comes down to a matter of cost. There are almost no downsides to owning and using a suppressor; they don’t decrease a round’s velocity or accuracy to any significant degree, they don’t weigh the barrel of the weapon down by an appreciable amount, and they make rifles more convenient to handle and fire, especially when out hunting. If you can shoulder the $200 tax stamp and the cost of the suppressor itself—which ranges from a few hundred dollars all the way up to almost $1,500—then buying one seems like a good idea with few downsides. The precision manufacturing necessary to produce an effective suppressor far exceeds what the average person can bang out in their garage; SilencerCo does all of their own design and manufacturing at their Utah facility with millions of dollars' worth of CNC capability. The result is a pleasant earmuff-­‐free shooting experience—
and as someone who has spent a fair amount of shooting time with earmuffs on, that’s a good thing. If I actually owned any guns that were compatible with SilencerCo’s products, I’d likely spring for a suppressor myself.