What's Stopping You From Buying a Silencer?

Cost is semi prohibitive for me, but I bought 2 (.22 and .308 ).

Not a fan of registration, but it's the law that needs to be followed right now, so...

The one thing that almost stopped me is the wait time. My .308 isn't even at my gun shop, yet, so I might have it in hand by Christmas 2015... Not really a good feeling spending over $2000 (both cans and stamps) for a product I can't even handle for a year or two.
 
For those of you who are discouraged about cost, for under $1000 out-the-door (that's including the transfer tax) you can get an SWR Octane 45. It's a very durable suppressor that will probably last your whole life. And if something happens to it during normal use Silencerco has EXCELLENT customer service and will probably fix it for free. It's very versatile; you can use it on the following calibers:

.45 ACP
.45 Colt
.44 Special
10mm
.40 S&W
.357 Magnum
.357 SIG
.38 Super
9mm
.380
.32 ACP
.25 ACP
.22 Magnum
.22 LR
.17 HMR
.308 (Subsonic)
.300 Blackout (subsonic)
Or any other caliber that doesn't exceed the diameter or pressure limit of the suppressor.

Sure, it's a little large and unwieldy for some of the guns that shoot some of those calibers, but one suppressor that can do all that for under $1000 doesn't seem that expensive to me.
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If more of my barrels were threaded I might be tempted to make such an investment, but unfortunately less than 5% of them are, and making a good number of them so would cost as much or more than the silencer I'm afraid.

Edit - Maybe not. A 1911 threaded barrel appears to be $200 or more. Ruger centerfire pistol threaded barrels don't appear to be available at all. Revolvers... fuggedaboutit. There are inexpensive barrel end adapters for Ruger .22 pistols that might work pretty well, not sure.
 
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spacecoast said:
If more of my barrels were threaded I might be tempted to make such an investment, but unfortunately less than 5% of them are, and making a good number of them so would cost as much or more than the silencer I'm afraid.

Edit - Maybe not. A 1911 threaded barrel appears to be $200 or more. Ruger centerfire pistol threaded barrels don't appear to be available at all. Revolvers... fuggedaboutit. There are inexpensive barrel end adapters for Ruger .22 pistols that might work pretty well, not sure.
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Would a silencer even be effective in a revolver with the cylinder gap? Seems like a lot of the blast wouldn't even make it to the silencer.
 
Yeah, unless you have a design where the cylinder/barrel gap closes when the trigger is pulled (the Nagant revolver or some custom designs) you're still going to get a lot of flash and noise out of the gap. And you're going to get even more of that flash and noise out of a suppressed revolver than an unsuppressed one due to the extra back-pressure a silencer gives you. Therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if a suppressed revolver was even louder from the shooter's perspective than one that was unsuppressed.
 
Ah, I had forgotten the cost and hassle of threading barrels. Most of my guns don't have threaded barrels, so there's another reason to not....

If they weren't NFA items, the price would be cheap and I'd be down for it.

Not with the cost and hassle of registration and regulations.
 
leadcouncel said:
Ah, I had forgotten the cost and hassle of threading barrels. Most of my guns don't have threaded barrels, so there's another reason to not....
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Fair enough. For me, most of my guns either have threaded barrels already or have threaded barrels readily available. And I'll never again buy a .22 that doesn't already have a threaded barrel. Same goes for rifles: almost all semis-auto rifles come with threaded barrels already, and many bolt-actions have threaded barrel options.
 
I have no real need for one right now

no problem with recoil one my two big guns

I may suppress a potential 30-30 but dunno if it lowers the velocity too much
but suppresing a lever action is sacriligious or?:D

oh and laws, license required for each silencer but it is basically shall issue, but not for handguns or small calibres
 
Money. Nothing more, nothing less. As others have noted, you've got to have the suppressor, tax stamp, and a host, at the very least. If you're going to put it in trust, you have to have the trust work done.

Even with all of that, though, a suppressor is at or near the top of my Wish List. :cool:
 
I'd say there are 2 major factors.

#1 A totally untrustworthy government. Anyone that has watched even 1 hour of news in the last year knows that's not a theory, it's a fact!

#2 Rip-off pricing.

Now this one is something to look at carefully.

A SUPER GOOD Bench-Rest Grade barrel, threaded, short chambered, crowned and contoured, will cost up to $550. The machines that make such barrels cost WAY more than most machines that stamp baffles and do good screw threading.

The best barrels have to hold tolerances of less than one ten-thousandth of an inch over a length of 22 to 26 inches.

Good suppressors need to hold about + or - .040”, and that only over a length of about 6 to 10 inches.

So a good barrel in Stainless steel, 26 inches long holds tolerances 400 times better than most suppressors which are 9” long.

Yet we see prices on suppressors that are often a lot higher than the best barrel you can screw it onto.

If we compare them to “ordinary barrels” which only hold tolerances of .0005, (barrels you can buy for $90) we have a barrel that is 22” long, holding (only)80X better tolerance than a suppressor, yet costing only 1/15th as much.

Folks these are facts, not opinions.

Some would argue that there are not enough suppressor sales to keep the pricing down, but as a former CEO of a bullet company I can assure you that's not the case. I know something about manufacturing and marketing.

The PRICE is the #1 reason there are not more sales.
If Fords cost what Rolls Royce’s cost their sales would be down too.

If they would charge what they are worth instead of what .5% of the market can justify and bear, they would sell them by the millions not the hundreds or thousands.
 
Wyosmith, are you saying all the different silencer companies get together and work to keep prices high artificially?

I may not have ever been CEO of a bullet company, but I work at a large suppressor dealer. I can tell you that due to the huge amount of extra paperwork the mark-up is rather high across the board, from manufacturer, to the distributer, to the dealer; we all have to charge higher margins to actually make up for all the extra man-hours spent on dealing with BATFE regulations.

That, and suppressors are a rather small market with HUGE amounts of innovation and R&D happening in the last few decades. This all is what makes prices what they are.

There are a bunch of smaller, lesser-known silencer companies that charge a little less for their products, but they have a lower quality as a result.
 
If I had my own property to shoot on, I would almost certainly own a suppressor. I do all my shooting at gun ranges--nearly always with other shooters present. Silencing my own gun would be kind of pointless in terms of trying to reduce the noise level.

The additional issues that come to mind are cost of the suppressor itself, the cost of the tax and the associated hassle of the paperwork approval process, the cost/hassle of either acquiring some means of preventing my spouse from accessing it or setting up a trust to allow us both to legally access it, the additional exposure to a new set of laws that need to be learned and followed, functioning/reliability issues associated with the use of silencers on locked breech pistols with floating barrels.

If it weren't for the additional issues, I'd probably get a supressor just for the "gee whiz" aspect of ownership even though it wouldn't make a lot of sense to use one at the range given my situation.
 
Hummmmm
Let's look at this closely.

"I can tell you that due to the huge amount of extra paperwork the mark-up is rather high across the board, from manufacturer, to the distributer, to the dealer; we all have to charge higher margins to actually make up for all the extra man-hours spent on dealing with BATFE regulations."


Years ago I did gopher work for Huston Oil and Mineral Corp. We purchased high explosives 2 times a month for mining in open pit and strip mines. Dealing with the ATF was something we did about 3 times a week and the paper work was constant, but we could go through it in about 1 hour on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. If you have a system down pat it's not hard to do and it's not THAT time consuming.

Now....are you really going to tell us that you have to charges HUNDREDS of dollars PER SUPRESSOR to fill out a few pages and mail them in?

You do say "the mark up was high across the board". I agree. TOO HIGH! BY FAR!

It’s nothing more than greed and there are apparently enough buyers to support that greed, but I stand by my first post.

If the suppressor manufacturers can make enough money to feed that greed by ripping off a few people, and if those people are willing to be ripped off, then more power to them. I don't care that much myself, and I don't have a need for one if it costs me much more than a few good sets of ear muffs.

But just knowing something about marketing and assuming greed is a factor, I for one would rather make $150 dollars 40 million times than 1000 dollars 3000times. I think it would be a better way to run such a business.

If I am wrong, it's ok with me. I hope I am wrong.

But if I am wrong, why are these companies’ not growing and selling cans at the same rate as other companies can sell barrels, or muzzle breaks for that matter?

I say it's because the prices are FAR too high, and as I said in my first post, there is no reason other than greed to explain it.

Cans are not that precise. Barrels are. Cans are not much more precise than muzzle breaks.

I have shot with suppressors several times in my life. I have used a Maxim, a few Sionicks suppressors, a Gem-Tech, a British Reflex and one that a friend in Nevada made himself.
Some were quieter than others, but none were “head and shoulders” better than the others. Certainly not enough to make me believe that there was all that much money spent on getting them quieter. If there was they didn't spend that money very wisely.

If a company were to have spent $2,000,000 on R and D (VERY UNLIKELY) and sold 20,000 cans, that still only come out to $100 a can.

But if I made a guess I’d bet that average company that makes cans has probably spent about $10,000 on R and D and maybe not even that much.

I don’t think there is any way to get around this argument.

Facts are facts. They are priced to rip off the shooters. I would hope I am wrong and I am humble enough to admit it if someone can show me some FACTS that might prove it. Until then, I stand by my assertion that they are priced about 7-10 times too high.
 
Wyosmith, you want me to show you facts, yet you haven't shown any yourself. I really don't feel like arguing, but I can tell you you're flat-out wrong.

Due to the registration process, the wait, and the $200 transfer tax, there is virtually no market for used suppressors. When customers buy a suppressor they want the best one possible made from the best materials possible. And they expect lifetime customer service from the suppressor's manufacturer because they're going to have that suppressor for life.

Silencerco just spent a huge amount of time and money developing the most innovative 5.56 silencer on the market. It's made out of an even stronger and more advanced materiel than inconel they call "Hoplon", it's as precisely machined as any high-end firearm, they developed a new and better mounting system, and the suppressor with the mount costs less than $1000. Yet they'll never sell anywhere near as many of them as they would if it was a fiream, and they have to do a lot more paperwork and jump through a lot more federal hoops.

As someone who sells suppressors, deals with distributors and manufacturers, and is involved in the industry as an enthusiast, I can tell you you're wrong on this.
 
Wyosmith said:
You do say "the mark up was high across the board". I agree. TOO HIGH! BY FAR!

It’s nothing more than greed and there are apparently enough buyers to support that greed, but I stand by my first post.
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We mark up suppressors more than we mark up guns, and we still don't make as much on suppressors. Many shops don't carry or stop carrying suppressors because there's just not as much money in them due to the extra overhead. I even have a friend who just started his own shop and decided not to carry suppressors for that very reason.

Wyosmith said:
Cans are not that precise. Barrels are. Cans are not much more precise than muzzle breaks.
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Modern cans are very precise and very well-made. Just screw on a Saker's MAAD mount, or take apart an SWR Spectre or Octane, or a Silencerco Sparrow. Or better yet, shoot them next to any of the older, outdated suppressors like the ones from Gemtech. And the materiels the centerfire cans are using (inconel and now hoplon) are very expensive and very hard to work with.

Wyosmith said:
I don’t think there is any way to get around this argument.
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Your argument is based on made-up numbers and very little experience with suppressors. And none with the newer, cutting-edge ones.

It's not very often I see someone present an argument with such certainly that's based on so little personal experience.
 
OK,
Points taken.
Maybe I am wrong. (I still doubt it, but I don't care because as I said, I don't value a suppressor enough to even consider buying one. If they cost $250 I might change my mind, but if pigs had wings they might fly. I don't have a dog in this fight.)

But the numbers still say that they are not near as popular as you'd like them to be.
That means they cost too much!

In real estate, if a house is on the market for 5-10 years and doesn't sell there is only ONE explanation.
No one wants it at the asking price. It costs too much.

If you are selling enough suppressors at the current asking price then this thread is useless and unnecessary.
If not, they cost too much.
 
Yeah, silencers are growing quickly in popularity and I like that. Not really from a business perspective, but from an enthusiast's perspective; if they become more popular then maybe there will be more political pressure to make them easier to get (even though Obama made an Executive Action recently to ask the BATFE to make them harder to get).

But there are definitely some companies that have their silencers overpriced. Surefire makes the best rifle cans from a military perspective; they're very expensive and many say they're overpriced, but people want them because the military uses them a lot. AAC's are noticeably cheaper and quieter, but have a less-solid mounting system, are less durable, and have more gas blowback and more point-of-impact shift. Gemtech hasn't come out with anything new in years, but is living off name-recognition alone. And then you have Silencerco, who came on the scene several years ago, bought out SWR, and is making new and revolutionary designs at lower prices than any of these manufacturers.

Then there are many other companies making good products at lower prices, like Liberty, YHM, AWC, Tactical Solutions, etc., and there are countless smaller shops around the country making their own silencers, but rarely do you see even the cheapest ones priced that much lower than the big guys' prices (it rarely gets as low as half) and with those lower prices you usually get designs that are heavier, harder to clean, less durable, and louder.

Basically what I'm saying is that even the smaller companies that are trying to compete with the big guys can rarely get their prices down to even half of what the big guys charge, and they can't make stuff that's as good as the stuff the big guys are putting out. That sure doesn't sound like a market that has artificially high prices that are 7-10 times too high.
 
Another thing that drives this market is customer service. Most suppressor owners I know are worried less about cost and more about having the latest and best suppressor on the market. After all, when you're buying a product that already costs a lot, has a $200 transfer tax, is hard to get and takes 9 months to get it, and is virtually impossible to sell or transfer to someone else, they want to know that the company will stand by their product.

Imagine a company comes out with a good handgun, and then another company comes out with a better one, so the first company redesigns their handgun and offers all customers a free upgrade to their latest version. That happens all the time with silencers. AAC came out with the Prodigy, a simple monocore baffle .22 can. Then other companies beat it in terms of loudness. So AAC made a minor tweak and upgraded to a new quieter 2nd generation baffle design for the Prodigy and offered a free upgrade if you sent your 1st gen Prodigy in to them (it's against federal law for them to send out extra baffles). Then other companies beat the Prodigy in terms of ease of disassembly when dirty, so AAC completely redesigned the baffles and again offered a free upgrade. Still, many years after AAC introduced the Prodigy, if you have a 1st or 2nd gen Prodigy, AAC will upgrade it to the new 3rd gen design for free.

And many other companies do this to; a customer bought an SWR Octane 9, and when it was sitting in one of our safes while he was waiting the many-month wait to get it, SWR completely re-designed the Octane's baffles. So we were able to send it back to SWR for him, where they upgraded to the new baffle design for free. So when he was finally able to take his can home he had the newest, best baffle design. They've made a few minor changes to the Octane since then, but it's not really worth mailing it back for those changes - I might mail my Octane 9 back for a free upgrade to make the first baffle that surrounds the piston easier to take out when dirty, but I haven't really had a problem with it yet so I haven't bothered.
 
Wyosmith said:
If you are selling enough suppressors at the current asking price then this thread is useless and unnecessary.
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We're selling tons of suppressors. We're running out of space to store them while we wait for the 9+ months it's taking for customers' Form 4 approval.

I made this thread because I see a lot of people on here aren't interested in suppressors; it had nothing to do with my job. The NFA forum here is one of the least-active forums on TFL, and when the subject of suppressors comes up in the other forums those posts are largely ignored.

Despite the rapid growth of suppressor popularity in this country, they're still mostly a fringe item in the firearm community. I made this thread because I was curious as to peoples' individual reasons why they're not into suppressors like I am.
 
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