Patrick Sweeney - Gun Digest Suppressor Handbook

Most firearms books focus on gear. Gear, tools, equipment goodies are a major focus for a simple reason: better tools usually give better results. This is something that the parents of music students are told, If you want little Jimmy to do his best as an XYZ player, you need to buy a good one.

A suppressor is a large-ish investment in time and money. Dont abuse it, or you risk having your months and dollars busted, like this.

This is true up to a point. If little Jimmy has no chops, no skill at music, you can hand him a Stradivarius or Guarneri and hell make a hash of the music. Too much does not deliver greater rewards. You want to get little Jimmy something good enough that he has a fair chance of succeeding, but not so expensive that it breaks the bank.

So, the question to answer is how much do you spend, to get how good an instrument, to make sure your skills are fully used.

What well do here is not a test and comparison of suppressors. The contents of this book simply provide background information to help you choose a suppressor. You can view it as your I wont make a mistake in buying my suppressor title, but let me offer a prediction: your first probably wont be your only.

In February 2016, the ATFE published a small and interesting bit of information: there were 900,000 registered suppressors in the U.S. By the time this book gets into your hands, that number could easily be over a million. Thats a lot of previously forbidden items getting out in to the real world.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of that data point, there are just under 180,000 transferable machine guns in the U.S. The term transferable means those that you or I or any other lawful citizen can purchase. There are other machine guns, known as Dealers Samples, that can only be bought and sold between dealers, and then only when they have a need for one, like buying it to demonstrate to a police department, for instance. There are all the R&D machine guns built by manufacturers, but those items cannot even be sold to other manufacturers. (Well leave out of this the 12 million M16s and hundreds of thousands of belt-fed machine guns the government has bought, for they might as well be on the moon for as much chance as well ever have of seeing them, absent enlistment.)

The Hughes Amendment to the FOPA 1986 stopped sales of new machine guns (MGs). Thats why, the last time I saw a transferable M16 (and not a NIB one at that), the price tag on it was $25,000. No, thats not a typo, twenty-five grand for a Stoner-system rifle with a giggle switch.

The reason is simple: Econ 101. Restrict the availability of a desired item and the price goes up. Transferable MG numbers were forever frozen, and the price just went up and up.

The good news was that suppressors were not also covered. Im not sure suppressors were even known about in the anti-gun community in 1986, let alone being on their radar. So, they were left alone.

It took a while, and a bunch of states had to change their laws, but by the early 21st century suppressors became hot commodities. This was due in large part to two things: inflation and price increases in machine guns. When MG prices went to Youve got to be kidding me! levels, those who wanted more than just a bolt-action deer rifle looked around,. They saw lots of ARs, but also suppressors.

Suppressors come in a variety of sizes, for different calibers and uses. There is no one size fits all, so dont expect one.

The inflation part stems from the original law covering suppressors, the National Firearms Act of 1934, aka NFA or NFA 34. Not being able to ban firearms back then, the legislators did what they could they taxed them. The transfer tax was set at $200 per, and thankfully not adjusted for inflation.

In 1934, $200 was a pile of cash. In fact, if you had a decent job then (not common, it was the Great Depression, after all) $200 was a lot of money. A quick check turns up some average annual incomes of the time: construction worker $907, registered nurse $936, steel worker $423, U.S. congressman $8,663. $200 was a bite for most people, and intended to be so, representing more than two months of income for that construction worker. The Congressman? Not so much a problem, then and now.

I was on a recent trip, and over dinner one of the people in the tour made the kinda-shocked, sort-of amused observation that people change their behavior to adjust for taxes. Well, duh. That, for a lot of people, is the main reason to have a tax. And was meant entirely to be the reason for the transfer tax. It was meant to be a bar to purchase and to change behavior.

Fast-forward to the beginning of the 21st century and a $200 transfer tax is not big. Not exactly miniscule, but in an age of $1,000+ a year cell phone plans, a one-time $200 tax is not a big deal. Heck, at the price for a flavored latte plus tip for the barista at your local over-priced coffee emporium, $200 lasts as long as that construction worker had to work to earn it.

So people in the 21st bought suppressors and not machine guns.

A third reason making suppressors a hot commodity, but definitely not near the top, at least not in the beginning, is quiet for gun clubs. Convincing your local gun club to let you shoot your brand-new-to-you machine gun is going to be tough, if they arent already doing it. While a suppressor is exotic (still, in some places) the decrease in noise is welcome at a lot of gun clubs, who are in a constant wrangle with the neighbors over noise. The machine gun represents an increase in noise, and a marked change in the nature of that noise. The sound of a machine gun is instantly identifiable. Holy cow, Martha, they are shooting machine guns at the gun club. Call the police! Suppressors? A good suppressor on a .30 rifle can make it sound like a .22LR to your neighbors. The smart ones will love it. the rest will still grumble.

Once you go quiet, you wont go back.

The fun of it is something it takes a lot of getting used to. Maybe you never do. The fun of seeing other club members eyes light up when they realize what youve got, and the Can I try it? impulse never gets old.

In the course of this book, well go over some of the same material in several chapters, doing it from different directions or highlighting different considerations. This is a complex area of firearms (not that any of them are simple) and I want to make sure you have complete coverage.

And my prediction of the future? Yes, a lot of shooters will search for the one suppressor to rule them all, but even after theyve found it, they usually go back for more.

Buying requires information, research, and finding a place to buy. You cant just buy one over the counter at your hardware store, like they can in Finland.

There is much talk at the moment of the HPA, the Hearing Protection Act, which will (if/when passed) remove suppressors from the purview of the NFA and make them the equivalent of plain old firearms. We might find that, in the time between writing this and it getting to press, the HPA has passed, and a lot of the information is old hat. Also, the HPA will remove the $200 transfer tax from purchasing a suppressor.