Suppressors 101: Debunking 5 Myths About Suppressors

Overview:

There's a lot of bad information that gets passed around about suppressors. Some of this is due to Hollywood and video games, but also in the firearms community. Rob dispels 5 myths about suppressors in regard to losing rights, poor range/velocity and accuracy, not needing hearing protection, "Hollywood quiet" suppressors and the use of suppressors in home defense.

MDT Article:
https://mdttac.com/blog/five-common-questions-about-nfa-items-inside-mdt/

Skip To Video Topic:

00:00 - Intro
00:23 - 1) You'll lose some of your rights
01:48 - 2) Poor Range and Accuracy
03:26 - 3) You Don't Need Hearing Protection
04:33 - 4) "Hollywood Quiet"
05:15 - 5) Home Defense Legalities

Transcript:

If you own a suppressor, you lose some of your legal rights. This is completely false. However, I hear this all the time at the gun store and rubbing shoulders with all the different guys in this field, that silencers have tons of myths and they're completely untrue. So let's take some time and debunk some of these crazy myths that are not real. First, you lose some of your rights when you buy a silencer. You lose none of your rights. You retain all of your rights just because you own a silencer, machine gun, SBR, SBS, any of those cool toys, it does not affect your freedoms. Well, the ATF can knock on your door at any moment and inspect you, no, they can't. So why am I saying this? I'm not a lawyer, I don't give legal advice. However, I did just conduct an interview for MDT that's modular driven technology to make some of the cool chassis you might see behind me. I've been writing for them for, I don't know, about a year now and I asked, hey, can I do an interview with my lawyer who's an expert in guns? Can that help the industry understand silencers and NFA stuff and help them be more educated towards purchasing and understanding their rights? He said, absolutely, it sounds like a great idea. So we launched it. This educated me as well. I'm always asking questions and I'm sharing those answers with you so that you don't have to go through the painstaking and payments to a lawyer. And what he said is, that ATF has no special privileges, that agent, that branch, that whatever, they're not gonna bother you, they're not gonna ask you anything. And if they do, treat it just like they said, hey, can I see your pistol? It is no different. Can I see your suppressor, can I see your pistol? He says, hey, dude, it's no different. Don't allow access to any of those things. You'll have to read that article to figure out the rest of those details. Maybe we'll throw a link in the description below. But understand you're not sacrificing any of your rights. The ATF is not gonna come inspect you. They don't have permission. They don't have the permission slip to come violate your rights. They need a warrant for that. So don't worry that you're giving up some kind of rights. Next, you lose range and accuracy. Where does this come from? Well, two places. One, once upon a time, that was true. Suppressors used to work on wipes. Some suppressors still do today because they're so tiny and they use a single baffle, a single wipe baffle, which means the bullet contacts that wipe and it erodes that wipe. It affects your velocity. It affects the bullet stabilization. Yes, once upon a time, that is how suppressors did work. That is now how suppressors work now, for the most part. So having said that, suppressors do not reduce your velocity. In fact, in my experience, it often increases your velocity. It acts to a degree like a barrel extension, not really. You're not adding seven inches. You're more like adding a half an inch. So you might gain 20, 15, sometimes even 30 feet per second more velocity on your gun. So suppressors are your friend when it comes to velocity. Accuracy is not affected by your suppressor. It can affect barrel harmonics. Now, I've talked about that in other videos. I won't spend too much time on that here. But the simple answer is when you fire your barrel, it can whip. And if you put weight on the end of your barrel, it can pull that down. Unless you're talking precision rifle, most of the time we won't notice this kind of stuff. So it's not going to affect your accuracy adversely. And if it does give you a point of impact shift, P-O-I shift, it is usually very repeatable. So don't stress over losing velocity, range, accuracy. That's not a thing. I think the other perpetuator of this problem is call of duty. In call of duty, if you have a suppressor, it doesn't cost you anything, then everyone would have suppressors. So to keep things fair, they say, okay, you can have a suppressor, but it's going to reduce your effective range and power for whatever reason. Okay, for video game land, I guess, fine, fair enough. Next, I am a victim of this one. I made the same mistakes a lot of people make. I don't need hearing protection because I'm using a suppressor. I highly recommend against this. If you're going coyote hunting and you might shoot five rounds in the day, sure, don't wear a hearing protection. That's fine. It's kind of like a small dosage of hearing exposure. If you go to a concert and they say, well, we're going to keep it at 139 decibels because 140 is not safe for your ears. 140 at a quick exposure, not good for your ears. Anything below that for prolonged exposure is also not good for your ears. I have tinnitus and hearing loss from combat experience and overseas operations. Then I came home and said, well, I got a suppressor on it now, so it shouldn't bother me. It made this worse. So definitely give yourself the longevity of one of your five senses. Try to hang on to that by wearing hearing protection. And if you're not sure what's good hearing protection, we'll probably make a video on that soon to help educate everybody in why I choose the expensive hearing protection that I choose. But do please rock out to hearing protection. Even the 22s, even the nine mils, prolonged exposure, wear hearing protection. One or two, three, 10 shots, your choice. It's your own ears. You can't get that back. And tinnitus kind of sucks.

Okay, Hollywood quiet. In the movie, suppressor go like a pellet rifle. The reality is most of us already know that's not true. Some of us had to buy a silencer to figure out that that's not true. Unfortunately, if you're like me, you bought a tiny silencer first, so you're really disappointed. There is a company saying that they're Hollywood quiet. In fact, they even coined that idea at SHOT Show 2020 or CanCon, whatever it was. They said this thing is Hollywood quiet. And that's the PTR vent suppressors. I have one on the way. I'm gonna test it in about two and a half weeks. And I'll be releasing a video showing you my experience with that suppressor. Hopefully it is Hollywood quiet, but unless you're talking a 22 suppressor, you're usually not gonna find this Hollywood quiet type silencer. That's just another one of those misnomers.

Finally, don't use a suppressor for home defense.

This is a dicey one. So you gotta know your own state laws. You gotta understand in Arizona where I live, if you defend your home within the confines of your home and there's some weird dude in your house at 3 a.m. and he's got a knife on him and you've shot him, probably they're gonna ask you very little questions about your weapon. Probably they're gonna spend very little time investigating you. However, whatever can be used against you will be used against you. So if your rifle looks like it's fresh off a call of duty, that could potentially be used against you. So make minimal modifications to your defensive tools. Use stuff that's gonna help you win the fight, but try not to go much beyond that. You don't need your ejection port to say F you on the side of it. That's just something that's gonna come up and go, "Well, this guy wanted to hurt somebody." Try to avoid that. Again, not giving legal advice, just using some common sense approach to staying out of trouble. The I use this pressure in my home because I don't wanna scare my kids.

I'm an advocate of if I shoot my rifle in my house, I want my neighbors to know, I want them to come see if I'm okay, I want them to get their rifle and make sure that they're safe. I want the world to know what took place at what time it took place. I want the police to show up and see what took place and have my neighbors say, "Yeah, at this time I heard a gunshot and I came over to see if he was okay." I want all of that to happen. The suppressor means that it's my story against the body potentially, and that might not look good. That might, whether it's smoke, there's fire. So it's up to you if you wanna use suppressors for defensive situations. Personally, I would say it's a good idea to shy away from it. Know your state rules. Know you can get in trouble for things that have nothing to do with you. And finally, my previous lawyer had a really good statement. Anybody with a crayon and a napkin can sue you. So there's criminal, which is the law enforcement saying, "Hey, you're a felon, you did wrong, you're going to jail." And then there's civil, and that's the family of this person who may have recovered had you not shot them. And they're gonna sue you because you used a gun that was mean.

We live in America and that's just the price we pay for the freedoms that we have. Everyone else has those freedoms too and they might use them against us, unfortunately. So understand in your defensive tools, less is more. Use stuff that will help you win, but don't go overboard with the call of duty, strobe lights and tactical this and laser that and night vision gun. Try to just make it as simple. This could have been my grandpa's rifle and this is what I defend my property with. Make it simple for your best chance. In the comments section below, tell me what your favorite home defense tool is. If it's a flashlight, a shotgun, a carbine or a Taser, you let me know what you think the best tool is for your defense. As always, stay safe and we'll find in the comments section.