Why are there no integrally suppressed centerfire pistols?

johnwilliamson062 said:
I think there is a market for a suppressed CCW pistol.
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What makes you think that? I own silencers, and I have absolutely zero interest in an integrally-suppressed CCW pistol. It would simply be too big and too loud to be worth it, and the last thing most people are worried about with their CCW pistol is how loud it is.

Most people buy silencers primarily for recreational use. Sure, some people put silencers on HD weapons because they're worried about their family's hearing inside their house, but most people don't buy silencers specifically for that reason. But concealability isn't an issue with an HD gun, while it's definitely an issue with a CCW gun. And silencer technology isn't even close to being able to make an integrally-suppressed CCW-sized pistol that's anywhere near as quiet as a normally-suppressed pistol.

Even though it's one of the quietest 9mm silencers on the market, my Octane 9 is far from hearing safe; no silenced 9mm is "hearing safe". It meters about 125 dB with subsonic ammo, which is about as loud as a chainsaw or a jackhammer and will permanently damage your hearing over time. And it's still 7.5" long and 1.37" wide.

My home-defense Octane 9/Glock 19 combo is almost 15" long overall. I'm really curious as to how someone is going to fit an integral silencer into a package that's both adequately quiet and also chambered in an effective defensive caliber, all while being a practically-sized CCW pistol.
 
Theohazard,
If you have an "integrally" suppressed pistol, which is more often a pistol with a suppressor specifically designed for it instead of a general use one like you own, it can be designed in a more ergonomic matter. There is nothing saying it has to be a big fat cylinder.
You could even make it curved to fit the shooters body better :)
 
johnwilliamson062 said:
Theohazard,
If you have an "integrally" suppressed pistol, which is more often a pistol with a suppressor specifically designed for it instead of a general use one like you own, it can be designed in a more ergonomic matter. There is nothing saying it has to be a big fat cylinder.
You could even make it curved to fit the shooters body better
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That's partially true, but you still need a certain amount of internal volume in order make a silencer work well; that volume needs to go somewhere. Also, the most efficient way to make a silencer quieter is to increase its length. For example, a short, fat silencer will usually be louder than a longer, skinnier one even if they both have the exact same internal volume.

So you'd basically have a handgun that was a whole lot bigger than a typical concealed carry pistol and a whole lot louder than a pistol with a typical silencer. It's not the kind of thing that would sell well at all.
 
simonrichter said:
actually, the Russian integral suppressor design is also detachable, because it's two-stage (ported barrel + extra suppressor)

See this cool video! (Russian language, but anywhere interesting)
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With the silencer attached, that pistol is way bigger than a typical concealed carry pistol. And the ported barrel is going to lower the potential power of that cartridge by a lot, and I'm guessing it's chambered in a lower-powered round to begin with.

Siggy-06 said:
Look for a Russian PSS silent pistol.
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That pistol uses a completely different ammo design than a traditional gun, and it's extremely underpowered compared to all conventional defensive pistol cartridges.
 
Over the years I've seen a couple of Ruger .22-based "integrally-suppressed pistols. They're basically custom guns, expensive, and only sought after by people with very specialized needs or very big wallets.

A 'net search for "custom suppressed Ruger .22s" will give you a number of them, and if you switch to "IMAGES" you see quite a few.

There may be others in addition to Ruger-based guns, but I searched for those because I knew they existed.
 
That's partially true, but you still need a certain amount of internal volume in order make a silencer work well; that volume needs to go somewhere.
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True, but a big fat tube isn't the most user friendly route for something that needs to be concealed.
Also, the most efficient way to make a silencer quieter is to increase its length. For example, a short, fat silencer will usually be louder than a longer, skinnier one even if they both have the exact same internal volume.
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I think your statement is an oversimplification. I think increasing the length of the barrel after the porting increases the amount of time gas has to expand. If the port is .250" from the end of the barrel there isn't much time for high volumes of gas to take advantage of the expansion chambers.
 
Theo, I've seen lots of silenced weapons at the range and they weren't 125 decibels. They were pretty quiet.
I fired a buddy's silenced .22 and his suppressed full auto M-16. The .22 made a brief air rushing sound and then you heard to bullet hitting its target.
The M-16 round still made a sonic boom, but we didn't need any hearing protection as the overall effect was very quieted.
 
johnwilliamson062 said:
but a big fat tube isn't the most user friendly route for something that needs to be concealed.
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Exactly. That's my whole point. The traditional silencer shape is efficient because of its shape. Change the shape to make it shorter, and you loose efficiency and therefore quietness. So, in order to keep the same overall dB rating with a less-efficient shape, you'll need more internal volume to make up for it. And like I said, that internal volume needs to go somewhere. And it will make a concealed-carry gun not very concealable.

johnwilliamson062 said:
I think your statement is an oversimplification. I think increasing the length of the barrel after the porting increases the amount of time gas has to expand. If the port is .250" from the end of the barrel there isn't much time for high volumes of gas to take advantage of the expansion chambers.
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Yes, it's an oversimplification, but it's an accurate one. Look at a can like the Osprey; it's a uniquely-shaped offset design, and it's shorter than most other pistol silencers. But it actually has to have more internal volume to make up for it. So it has more internal volume than the Ti-Rant or the Octane, but it's not any quieter. And because of its baffle design, it has more first-round-pop than those other cans.

As for the barrel porting, that does allow you to lower the overall length of the whole package, but it also will lower the potential muzzle velocity of the round being used. And the farther back you put those ports, the lower that velocity will be.

Look at the AWC Amphibian, the integrally-suppressed Ruger Mk II:

awc_amphinian_mk2_ss.jpg


A .22 is by far the easiest handgun to integrally suppress; .22 silencers are a lot smaller than centerfire pistol ones, and the guns are straight blowback so there's no locked-breech action to deal with. And yet the Amphibian is way too big to be considered a viable CCW pistol for most people. And it's only a .22; imagine how large a 9mm would need to be, even if you managed to change the shape up a bit to make it shorter.
 
By the way, I'm not saying that an integrally-suppressed CCW pistol is impossible, I'm saying that with the current level of silencer technology there would be too many downsides for it to be commercially viable.

Let's assume we're dealing with a pistol in .380 (9mm would be bigger and most people won't use anything less than .380 for CCW). So let's say the handgun platform we're using is about the size of a Glock 42. The smallest 9mm/.380 silencers I know of use a combination of an ablative like wire-pulling gel and wipes to keep the ablative in the silencer, and they only last a mag or two; after that they're way louder than a traditional silencer. And those tiny cans are still about 4 to 5 inches long and about 1 to 1.25 inches wide. Add that length to a .380 barrel, take off an inch or two for the ported-barrel overlap (but not too much, otherwise you'll cripple the .380's velocity too much), and you still have a gun that's longer than a 1911 and probably wider.

So here we have a concealed-carry gun that's less powerful than a Glock 42 (because of the barrel porting), longer and wider than a full-size 1911, and the suppression only lasts for a few mags or so because after that it requires more ablative. And if you've ever shot a pistol can "wet", it gets nasty; it shoots gunk out of the ejection port and it's a pain to clean.

Sure, a gun like that would be cool and I'm sure some people would be interested, but it just wouldn't sell enough to be commercially viable.
 
Andy Blozinski said:
Theo, I've seen lots of silenced weapons at the range and they weren't 125 decibels. They were pretty quiet.
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They were almost certainly 125 dB or more: Most 9mm silencers shooting subsonic ammo are around 125 dB or more, larger pistol calibers are even louder, and supersonic rifle calibers are louder still. Most silenced 300 Blackout subsonic loads are about the same as a 9mm. Once in a while you'll see a test that puts subsonic 9mm or subsonic 300 Blackout rounds at around 120 dB, but those are extreme outliers.

Andy Blozinski said:
I fired a buddy's silenced .22 and his suppressed full auto M-16. The .22 made a brief air rushing sound and then you heard to bullet hitting its target.
The M-16 round still made a sonic boom, but we didn't need any hearing protection as the overall effect was very quieted.
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You actually did need hearing protection; you permanently damaged your hearing when you shot that M16, even if it had the quietest silencer avaliable. The best 5.56 silencers get the sound down to around 130 - 135 dB, which is well above the threshold for noise-induced hearing loss. Now, that damage was probably small enough to be unnoticeable, but with repeat exposure it would cause cumulative hearing loss.

Even a silenced .22 with standard subsonic ammo can cause permanent hearing loss. The quietest .22 silencers on the market with standard subsonic ammo only get the sound down to around 115 dB, and I've never seen a reliable test where the sound was below 110 dB. That's about as loud as a chainsaw or a jackhammer. And any audiologist will tell you that repeat exposure to noises as low as 85 dB can cause cumulative hearing loss:

http://american-hearing.org/disorders/noise-induced-hearing-loss/

People tend to vastly underestimate how loud suppressed firearms are, even .22s. There are several reasons for this:

1) They're often shooting at an indoor range and they have hearing protection on.
2) They don't have hearing protection on, but they're mentally comparing the gunshot to an un-suppressed one; comparatively, the suppressed shot seems whisper-quiet even when it's not.
3) A silenced gunshot is much quicker and has a much different tone than some other noises, which is why it doesn't seem anywhere near as loud as something like a chainsaw that's continuous and has a different tone.
 
And before anyone posts about the integrally-suppressed De Lisle carbine and how it fired a .45 ACP at 85 dB: That number is way off. SRI (Stalking Rhino Industries) tested an original De Lisle carbine and it metered in the high 120 dB range.

http://www.silencertalk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=89571

The original tests that metered it at 85 dB were done in the 1940s using equipment that was obviously far inferior to what we have today. And that makes complete sense: Considering many guns produce 100 - 110 dB of noise from dry-firing alone, it doesn't make sense that any normal cartridge could be suppressed anywhere near to 85 dB.
 
The De Lisle carbine also uses a suppressor that is absolutely massive.

I'm not saying the perforance of the silencer will compare with a normal 6 inch can with a 2 inch diameter. It doesn't need to last more than a couple mags before needing maintenance. It isn't a toy. It needs to significantly decrease hearing damage suffered in an unexpected defensive encounter and be concealable.
My understanding is that although suppressors decrease the pressure after the first port, the pressure is sufficient continue accelerating the bullet past that point. Less than added barrel, but more than open air.
 
johnwilliamson062 said:
The De Lisle carbine also uses a suppressor that is absolutely massive.
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I know, I wasn't mentioning the De Lisle carbine in reference to the subject of this thread, I was mentioning it in reference to Andy Blozinski's mistaken assertion that most silencers are quieter than 125 dB and are "hearing safe". People often bring up the De Lisle carbine when referring to a silencer's dB level, and that's because it is legendary for its quietness and it was supposed to measure around 85 dB. But it turns out that it actually measures around 125+ dB.

johnwilliamson062 said:
My understanding is that although suppressors decrease the pressure after the first port, the pressure is sufficient continue accelerating the bullet past that point. Less than added barrel, but more than open air.
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That's true, but an open silencer with baffles works better for suppressing the noise than a ported barrel with the silencer outside of it. So there's a compromise between suppression and bullet velocity.

johnwilliamson062 said:
I'm not saying the perforance of the silencer will compare with a normal 6 inch can with a 2 inch diameter. It doesn't need to last more than a couple mags before needing maintenance. It isn't a toy. It needs to significantly decrease hearing damage suffered in an unexpected defensive encounter and be concealable.
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That's fine, but my point from post #30 was that there are too many compromises to make that a marketable design. An easily concealable design will be too loud for most people to want to buy it; and a sufficiently quiet design will be too big for most people to want to carry it.
 
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Rare

James K....you used the word "rare". If you hadn't been staff, I would wonder about you. I've been going to the same outdoor range for years and have NEVER had a visit without at least one person there with a silencer.
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For perspective only....I have been going to the same outdoor range for the last 20 years and have seen a suppressed firearm only one time (three firearms actually..same guy same day..two pistols and an AR15 FA).
So "rare" works for me.
Pete
 
I don't frequent public ranges all that often, but I have only seen on one time. I also know no one who has admitted to owning one. I am seriously considering purchasing one, as I have been for years:) If I make the leap I imagine a few acquaintances will follow.
 
Someone finally made an integrally-suppressed centerfire pistol. It's not surprising that it's not anywhere close to being the size of a concealed carry pistol, and it's also not surprising that it's made by SilencerCo; they're definitely the industry leaders at the moment when it comes to innovation.

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http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2015...orlds-first-integrally-suppressed-9mm-pistol/

I don't have any interest in this myself (I prefer a silencer that isn't dedicated to one single firearm), but SilencerCo might prove my previous comments in this thread wrong if this actually becomes a commercial success. We'll see.
 
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Andy Blozinski said:
James K....you used the word "rare". If you hadn't been staff, I would wonder about you. I've been going to the same outdoor range for years and have NEVER had a visit without at least one person there with a silencer.
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I was re-reading this discussion to see what I had missed -- as I apparently miss things the first time through.

You must live and shoot in a relatively unique shooting environment, as I've NEVER seen a silenced weapon at a range. I know that a few shooters in my area have them, but their presence would be hard to notice. I have seen a few full-auto subguns, but they are rare, too -- and even more costly (to acquire and shoot, because of ammo fired! :) )
 
The maxim 9 is along the lines of my thought. You can put a whole lot of volume below the barrel before it really affects anything.
Only seeing the exterior, I think I still have a few ideas they missed.
 
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