It has been teased for decades but it looks like the Magpul and ZEV FDP, in both carbine and pistol format, will be headed to market in 2025. It’s real, and we’ve shot it.
If ever a gun was wish-cast into existence, it is this one.
This strange path, of producing an innocuous-looking box that could transform as if by magic into a PCC, started with Francis Warin’s boxy ARES project in the 1970s – which used a German MP28 magazine, of all things – then quickly moved on to Utah Connor’s “boom box” (complete with collapsing antenna) style Undercover 9 or UC-9, and James Boatman’s companion DEB M-21.
The latter gained everlasting fame in the 1990’s “Robocop 2.”
Connor called his one-of-a-kind weapon the “Undercover 9” or UC-9 back in the day and people have been chasing it for 50 years.
In 2008, Magpul reimagined the UC-9/M-21 in a concept gun that dropped the dated portable boom box disguise and updated the look to that of an extra laptop battery (which was a thing at the time).
Dubbed the FMG-9, it remained vaporware until Magpul succumbed to public demand in 2021 and announced what was then termed the Folding Defensive Pistol-9 and a Folding Defensive Carbine-9, using a ZEV OZ9 operating system inside a Magpul chassis.
While Magpul brought prototypes to the last three SHOT Shows since then, the FDP and FDC have yet to appear, which is something of a bummer.
But 2025 is set to be a year of sweet, sweet fulfillment as the now FDP-C carbine and FDP-P pistol are headed to market.
The terms “silencer” and “suppressor” are used interchangeably in the firearms community, and we are here (hear?) to tell you the story of how this came about and which term is more correct.
Going back to the 19th century, “devices for the lessening the noise of firearms” were patented as far back as 1894. However, it wasn’t until Hiram Percy Maxim, a man uniquely obsessed with making loud things quiet for the sake of hearing protection, that the first trademarked “Silencer” (big S) came about in 1909.
Dr. Shush
Why was Maxim interested in hearing protection? A big part of this was because his father, Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim, generally regarded as the inventor of the modern belt-fed machine gun, went quite deaf after long periods of exhibiting his guns for interested clients sans ear protection.
Sir Hiram Stevens Maxim seen showing Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales and future King Edward VII, around his gun, and depicted in a 1904 caricature.
The junior Maxim began working on his acoustical mufflers in 1902 and by 1909 started securing a series of patents on “Silencer” and “Silent firearm” devices. His Connecticut-based company first was branded as the Maxim Silent Firearms Company, and later the Maxim Silencer Co.
Maxim, a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, even marketed himself as “Dr. Shush.” Following in his father’s footsteps, he was his own best spokesman for his products and stressed how they made shooting safer and more enjoyable.
Maxim was a showman. (Photos: SilencerCo)
He successfully landed a series of large newspaper interviews in 1909.
The allure of a “noiseless gun” was sure to draw headlines. (Photos: Library of Congress, Chronicling America newspaper archive)
The company sold not only a series of Silencers but also couplings to attach them to barrels and instructions for gunsmiths and hardware shops to thread barrels for the screw-on devices, interestingly advocating a rather fat (by today’s standards) 20-thread pattern. Silencers could be purchased by mail order for $5, about $160 in today’s inflated dollars.
Were Maxim’s designs truly silent? Not at all, but it was great branding, especially when he had to fight for market share against a crowded field of contemporary competitors. Matthew Moss, writing for Small Arms Review, notes at least nine inventors at the time (Harry Craven, Anthony Fiala, Charles H. Kenney, Herbert Moore, Robert A. Moore, Eugene Thurle, R.M. Towson, Andy Shipley, James Stinson, et. al) were seeking patents for similar devices, with several ultimately going on to market them with mixed success.
There are few period tests between these 1910s-era firearm mufflers. The Army’s Ordnance Bureau, which ordered 100 of Maxim’s devices and 100 from Robert A. Moore’s firm for tests on the M1903 Springfield, preferred the former, noting that “it was possible to give perfectly audible instructions when the Silencer was used.” It was estimated to have reduced noise by as much as two-thirds. Given the technology of the era, that had to be what could best be described as a wild guess.
World War I era cutting edge: M1903 Springfield with the M1913 Warner & Swasey Musket Sight mounted. It also mounts a Maxim Model 15 “Government Silencer,” October 1918. The Army maintained its stocks of Silencers until 1925. (U.S. Army photo via National Archives)
Common Vernacular
In the end, Maxim’s Silencer (which wasn’t silent), won the marketing war and emerged as the Dr. Pepper among a crowd of Mr. Pibbs. Teddy Roosevelt used one to quietly zap tin cans around the yard without disturbing the neighbors and exchanged personal correspondence with the inventor. Period cartoons even gagged about noisy diners being offered “Maxim Soup Silencers.”
Maxim’s company went on to market Silencers for motorboats and automobiles on much the same principle.
Maxim upsized his Silencers for other applications.
The public had so associated the Silencer with firearm report moderators by 1934 that the National Firearms Act hearings – which largely started as an effort to ban most guns in the country, including all common pistols and revolvers – used the term no less than eight times. While handguns escaped the government regulation, silencers (little “s”) did not. Never being banned outright on the federal level, they were instead hit with a $200 tax, which adjusts out to $4,800 in today’s terms. The silencer term, enshrined in 1934, is still on the books in the U.S. Code, retained in the 1968 Gun Control Act, and used by the ATF today – an organization that was only established in 1972.
In the meantime, the repressive tax largely killed the American suppressor industry until the 1970s, when companies like Mitch Wer-Bell’s SIONICS and Dr. Phil Dater’s AWC (now Gemtech) began quietly (see what we did there?) operating. By then the stifling NFA tax, frozen at $200 since the Depression, had been whittled down to a more manageable outlay thanks to the federal government’s habit of printing fiat currency in an economic pinch after Nixon ended the gold standard.
What About the Term Suppressor?
In today’s terms, “suppressor” has largely supplanted and replaced “silencer” in use, starting with patents filed in the 1980s. The term is more correct as, while the devices moderate and reduce the sound signature of a muzzle report, they do not remove it. In most cases, despite what Hollywood would lead us to believe, while suppressors paired with subsonic ammunition that removes the “crack” of a projectile breaking the sound barrier can be made hearing safe, you can still hear the gunshot, albeit muted.
As detailed by the American Suppressor Association, suppressors typically “reduce the noise of a gunshot by an average of 20 to 35 decibels, which is roughly the same as earplugs or earmuffs.”
Even the most effective suppressors, on the smallest and quietest calibers (.22 LR), reduce the peak sound level of a gunshot to between 110-120 dB. To put that in perspective, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), that is as loud as a jackhammer (110 dB) or an ambulance siren (120 dB). For normal caliber handguns and rifles, suppressed sound levels routinely exceed 130 dB, just shy of OSHA’s “hearing safe” threshold of 140 dB.
For reference, check out this Taurus TX22 with a SilencerCo Switchback, one of the better rimfire cans on the market, firing standard velocity .22 LR ammunition.
It’s quieter, but you can still hear it.
In addition to noise abatement and hearing protection, the use of a suppressor can also help with firearms training, especially as it curbs the traditional “crack” to a more manageable “pop.”
Is it a “silencer?” Not really.
Is it a “Silencer?” Only if made by Mr. Hiram Percey Maxim’s Silencer Company.
Is it a suppressor? Yup.
So in other words, to turn a phrase, a Silencer is a suppressor but a suppressor is not a silencer, despite what the media says about potatoes.
In the predawn hours on Tuesday morning, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives published its final Stabilizing Braces rule in the Federal Register.
With an effective date of Jan. 31, 2023, the new 98-page rule, unless successfully challenged in the courts, will fundamentally outlaw the use of pistol stabilizing braces in their current form, instead reclassifying large format handguns so equipped with one as a short-barreled rifle to be regulated under the National Firearms Act of 1934.
Federal regulators have classified the accessories since 2012 as being compliant with the NFA, and Congressional Research Service estimates run as high as 40 million braces in circulation.
“Any weapons with ‘stabilizing braces’ or similar attachments that constitute rifles under the NFA must be registered no later than May 31, 2023,” notes ATF. Alternatives include handing the firearm over to the agency, destroying it, converting the pistol to a normal rifle with a barrel at least 16 inches long, or “permanently” removing the brace so that it can’t be reattached.
The modern brace as introduced and extensively patented by SB Tactical came about after USMC and Army veteran Alex Bosco went shooting with a disabled combat vet who was having such a hard time shooting on the range that the RSO stopped him over safety concerns due to lack of control. Bosco then created the prototype for the brace in his garage and submitted the design to ATF for approval.
In a November 2012 letter from the agency, regulators at the time noted:
The submitted brace, when attached to a firearm, does not convert that weapon to be fired from the shoulder and would not alter the classification of a pistol or other firearm. While a firearm so equipped would still be regulated by the Gun Control Act … such a firearm would not be subject to NFA controls.
The new rule seems to only be popular with a minority of gun control advocates and the White House. By the ATF’s own admission, of the 237,000 comments logged over the proposed rule last year, “There were over 217,000 comments opposed to aspects of the rule.”
There are sure to be legal challenges to the new rule by firearms industry groups and Second Amendment organizations. As for SB Tactical, they said on Monday, “We are still here and have not left you. At this point, we have to let the legal team do what they have been preparing to do for a very long time. Nothing is over, and we are still in the fight. More to come soon.”
One of the scariest sounds for any of the Kaiser’s foot soldiers in the Great War had to be that of the Vickers gun, ready to rattle away in .303 all day.
The below amazing eight-minute video is the sight and sound of 16 Vickers machine guns rocking and rolling at a recent event saluting the centenary of the disbandment of the British Army’s Machine Gun Corps. Held at the Century range at Bisley, Surrey, it was pulled off by the Vickers Machinegun Collection and Research Association. Set up as a machine gun company, the guns represented gunners from 1912 through 1968, including one team of female factory testers.
“The Kaiser’s necklace, compliments of Camp Lee, Va.” showing Doughboys training with a Vickers gun and holding up one of its 250-round cloth belts. Both the 80th “Blue Ridge” Division, drawn from volunteers from Virginia and western Pennsylvania, as well as the 37th “Buckeye” Division of the Ohio National Guard trained at Camp Lee. (Photo: The Library of Virginia)
Ironically, the rule would allow you to keep this pistol, just get rid of the base, because, somehow, “the brace is what makes it dangerous”
The public comment period on a plan by the White House and federal gun regulators to crack down on the legal use of stabilizing pistol braces is closing in the coming days.
The proposed rulemaking by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives largely bans the use of popular stabilizing braces on pistols by proffering a complicated multi-part test to determine if large-format handguns equipped with such braces could stray into being illegal short-barreled rifles.
The comment period is open until Sept. 8 and, as of Thursday morning, only had 149,960 comments listed. By comparison, almost twice as many comments were logged on the ATF’s proposed rule change on firearm frames and receivers, which ended last month.
Keep in mind that there are as many as 40 million braces in circulation right now, meaning only like 0.37 % of brace owners have taken five minutes to weigh in on the issue. My bet is that most don’t know what is coming, which could be bad for them. Like 10 years in prison kinda bad.
With a 71-page proposed rule to clarify when attached stabilizing brace accessories convert pistols into illegal short-barreled rifles now open for public comment, we disastrously attempted to apply it.
In a test with a pair of unloaded large-format AR-style pistols, I sat down with my buddy Ben Philippi to honestly wade through the minefield of potential disqualifiers on proposed ATF Form 4999 to determine if a pistol/brace combos selected– which are legal now– would continue to be so should the rule goes into effect as-is.
There are between an estimated 3 and 7 million (that’s a big swing) stabilizing braces on the market right now, all of which got there after the SB15 brace was released just a decade ago. ATF has been notoriously squishy on the legality of braces, especially at the intersection of its use on a handgun to the point that it turns a pistol into an illegal short-barreled rifle or SBR. Unregistered SBRs can get you a dime in the federal hoosgow.
You sitting in the federal hoosgow, looking to trade a pack of mackerel fillet to make unwanted friends in the shower:
“What are you in for?” says the broker
“I added a plastic stock that is not a stock to my pistol and the ATF found out and, it turns out, they ruled it was a stock,” says you.
Heavier than 64 ounces and between 12 and 26 inches? Boom, just failed Section I on ATF 4999, head to Section II.
There, if you earn a maximum of three points, proceed to Section III. Have over four points, and you are out of compliance and have an extremely dangerous SBR. So dangerous it only magically becomes safe for the public to own after you pay a $200 tax and wait 10 months for the paperwork to clear.
At Section III, you can earn a maximum of three more points to keep your brace/pistol combo legal. Four or more, which can be earned even by installing “peripheral accessories” that would show you “intend to shoulder” your pistol, such as a bipod and/or short eye relief optics, or BUIS sights and it’s an SBR even if you passed Section II.
Sounds “simple”, right?
Check out these three examples in the proposed rule. One is (barely) legal, with 3 points in both Sections II & III; the second is an SBR, with 8 and 5 points in each section, and the third is also hot with a combination of 23 points on the worksheet.
The thing is, the photos, to the average user, look almost identical.
It is almost as if the feds want to make it so complicated and sow so much confusion and angst over the legal use of braces that most gun owners won’t even bother in an abundance of caution.
HEYYYY-OH!
Worse, what about the average gun owner who bought one of these, legally, at their local gun store thinking it was neat or cool, then they take it to the range five years from now (the proposed rule has no grandfathering) and a picture from that trip makes it to social media and someone casually tags the ATF in it.
The first “silencer” was invented by Hiram Percy Maxim over a century ago, who marketed an entire line of these cheap little mufflers for your rifle and pistol long before the NFA was a thing.
In the below short, Kevin Brittingham with Q brings in one of these relics for show and tell – a 1909 Maxim rimfire silencer, to be exact. Brittingham also discusses the history of the silencer, and why it was invented.
Federal regulators on Friday set off the starting pistol in the race to establish what stabilizing brace makers term the largest firearm registration scheme in American history.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives scheduled its proposed 15-page “Objective Factors for Classifying Stabilizer Braces” to publish Dec. 18 in the Federal Register, the official journal of the federal government, for public inspection. Americans have two weeks to provide feedback on the plan, which could be the last chance to make their voice heard on the issue before ATF moves forward.
Written comments on the ATF proposal must be postmarked by, and electronic comments must be submitted on or before Jan. 1, 2021, by midnight Eastern time. SB Tactical is also encouraging members of the public, who are concerned about the issue, to reach out to their lawmakers in Congress as well as the White House.
More background on the brace issue in my column at Guns.com here and here.
As a “stamp collector” myself, I enjoy covering National Firearm Act trends. The past few years, the trend has been high. In fact, there are more of these items– suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, AOWs, machine guns and destructive devices– in legal, registered circulation, than at any time since the registry started in 1934.
The number of NFA items saw a spike last year — including a 10 percent bump in suppressors and 16 percent rise in the short-barreled rifles registered — according to new data released by federal regulators. Now in the wild are:
-2.8 million Destructive Devices (grenades, artillery, shells bigger than .50 cal, Molotovs, etc)
-1.5 million Suppressors
-638,260 Machine guns of all sorts
-345,323 SBRs
-149,866 SBSs
– 60,706 AOWs (things like pen guns)
