Tag Archives: American Suppressor Assocation

The Marines are wanting to suppress all the things

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Marine with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, conducts a company attack range in Twentynine Palms, note the Surefire can on his M4. The can is a KAC (Knight’s Armament Company) NT4 which has long had an NSN number.

The Marine Corps has posted a Request for Information on commercially available suppressors that can work across all of their 5.56mm platforms.

The RFI, posted Aug. 3, is feeling out the industry for current availability of a detachable suppressor capable of reducing the sound of a 5.56mm round to 139dB. To be used by the M4 and M4A1 carbines, as well as the M27 Infantry Automatic Rifle — a select-fire HK416 — the Corps is interesting in buying in bulk.

Like 194,000 in bulk.

More in my column at Guns.com

Marine battalion to get very quiet in upcoming tests

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A U.S. Marine with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, conducts a company attack range in Twentynine Palms, Calif., Oct. 23, 2016. Bravo Company is participating in Integrated Training Exercise (ITX) 1-17 and preparing to support Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Sarah N. Petrock, 2d MARDIV Combat Camera)

A U.S. Marine with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, conducts a company attack range in Twentynine Palms, Calif., Oct. 23, 2016. Bravo Company is participating in Integrated Training Exercise (ITX) 1-17 and preparing to support Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Sarah N. Petrock, 2d MARDIV Combat Camera)

The U.S. Marine Corps is expanding its use of suppressors in a test that will see a full battalion using them on everything from service rifles to .50-caliber machine guns.

An infantry battalion of the 2nd Marine Division will have every element, from combat engineers to headquarters units, equipped with suppressed weapons in an upcoming experiment. The concept has already been trialed so far this year in company-level exercises.

I spoke with Adam Mehlenbacher, who knows firsthand about dealing with hearing loss and complications for many service members and their families. He’s an audiologist who heads up the American Academy of Audiology’s Government Relations committee and he is also an Army veteran who had deployed to Bosnia and Iraq.

“Hearing loss and tinnitus are the most common service related disabilities. They can have an enormous negative impact on communication ability and quality of life,” Mehlenbacher told Guns.com. He added that they’re both completely preventable.

“Everyone in the military is issued hearing protection and as an audiologist I will say you should always wear it,” he said. “Although, as a veteran I know there are times when service members just do not. Issuing weapons with suppressors is a great way to reduce noise exposure.”

More in my column at Guns.com

Enjoy the silence: There are more than 900,000 legal NFA-compliant suppressors out there

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hk 91 with suppressor and m1 garand silencerco photo

New data released last week by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows FFL numbers rebounding, over 9 million firearms produced in 2014, coupled with healthy import and export activity.

The statistics are part of the agency’s 2016 Annual Statistical Update of Firearm Commerce in the United States.

Sweeping in its context, the report gives the public a rare glimpse into the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, which is the federal list of all items, such as suppressors, SBRs, short-barreled shotguns, destructive devices and any other weapons logged under the NFA as of February 2016. While this figure includes Post-86 Dealer samples, SOT production guns up for sale and LEO guns as well, most of these are in civilian hands.

Comparing last year’s report with the new information shows the aggregate number of NFA items of all kinds have climbed to 4,436,096, adding over a quarter million devices to the registry in a twelve-month period from February 2015.

This includes:

2,545,844 Destructive devices (mostly live ammunition over .50 caliber in size)
902,805 Suppressors
575,602 Machine guns
213,594 Short barreled rifles
140,474 Short barreled shotguns
57,777 AOWs (pen guns, cane guns, shorty shotgun pistols)

Suppressor numbers have just reached for the cheap seats in the past five years. In 2011, there were 285,087 cans registered– meaning U.S. silencer ownership has more than tripled in the past half-decade.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Suppressor numbers nearly 600,000 nationwide, becoming mainstream

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Once the fodder of Hollywood spy movies and pulp fiction novels, the NFA-compliant suppressor is becoming ever more common in its use and adoption with numbers at an all-time high.

No matter whether you call it a silencer, a suppressor, or just a can, the mechanism defined by the National Firearms Act of 1934 as any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm, is shedding decades of misinformation and rapidly becoming more and more mainstream. According to figures released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives earlier this year, there were, as of March 2014, no less than 571,750 legal suppressors listed in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR).

As benchmark in the increase in the number of yearly transfers done on NFA items, such as suppressors, in 1984 the ATF collected just $666,000 in transfer and making taxes on these items. Three decades later, with no increase in the tax rate, the ATF collected almost $18.2 million in transfers, according to its 2013 figures, an increase of over 2,700 percent.

suppressed 1911as
Read the rest in my column at Guns.com, where I get the low-down on the suppressor industry from the head of the American Suppressor Association.