Please don’t call SureFire’s latest “muzzle devices” a sound suppressor. Cans they are not, even though they do reduce the decibels of a gunshot. Elementary suppressor science- that pertaining to a cartridge’s gas volume and a suppressor’s internal volume- is violated by the California-based manufacturer of high-performance tactical illumination tools with their new Mini and Micro models, but the designs are an intentional compromise of sound reduction in exchange for size and weight.

SureFire has always manufactured products based on operator input, and the Mini and Micro models are classic examples of this philosophy. An elite unit within the Special Operations community approached SureFire’s Barry Dueck, director of the Suppressor Division, and requested a muzzle device that would cut muzzle flash on a 10.5-inch Mk 18 while maintaining about the same noise reduction of SureFire’s trademark K-can (part number FA556-212).

Of course these operators aren’t running 14.5-inch M4s. They employ either 10.5 inch Mk 18 SBRs or something even shorter. Black ops being what they are, you never know for sure what the intended application of a short-length suppressor might be- but the Micro would definitely not ride on an M4.

What we do know is that the weapon’s overall length was the main driver in the development of the Mini and Micro models, coupled with flash elimination for night operations. Reduced weight would be a very much foreseen consequence, resulting in faster target-to-target tracking and improved handling in an MRAP.

But at what price? The OSHA “safe” level for short-duration noise is 140 dB. It turns out that the Micro at barely over 4-inches overall nips the sound wave of M855 ammunition from a 10.5-inch barrel to 148 dB while the Mini gets it down to 141 dB, just a hair over the 140 dB “safety ceiling.”

Does it matter? Not really. At least not to the guys who specified they want to barter noise for size. An unsuppressed round of M855 measures about 170 of Mr. Bell’s eponymous units. If a fully suppressed M4 clips the sound down to the low 130s, a gunshot from an SBR with a Mini or a Micro in the low to high 140s is not much worse than the cymbal clap at the end of the Star Spangled Banner.

The Mini comes in two materials, Inconel alloy or titanium alloy. Inconel is a highly durable steel that’s popular with many suppressor manufacturers. Inconel is a brand name of Special Metals Corp. and comes in a variety of formulations, all of which are oxidation and corrosion resistant in extreme environments. The best attribute of Inconel is that when it’s heated, it forms a thick, stable, passivating oxide layer that protects the material. Inconel maintains its integrity at extremely high temperatures – and suppressors get sizzling hot in a hurry.

Titanium is an element (atomic number 22) that is known for its strength-to-weight ratio. It comes in more than two dozen commercial alloys and is a prime component in the aerospace industry. The best thing is that it’s light as a feather yet strong as an anvil, so the SureFire Mini made of Inconel weighs 14 ounces while the same exact model made of titanium barely tips the scales at 8 ounces.

The tradeoff? Titanium is expensive, it’s hard to machine and it’s not as long-lasting as Inconel. The payoff? A muzzle-heavy rifle is hard to swing dynamically from target to target but a Mini or Micro equipped AR swings like a dream.

The Mini and Micro feature the latest SureFire improvement to its lock-ring system of attachment to a mated muzzle brake adapter. One could call this the Gen 3 lock ring as it’s the third distinctive method used since SureFire first manufactured a suppressor in 2002.

The first lock ring utilized a system similar to a Walker liner lock on a folding knife. A metal tab “snapped” into place to prevent the locking ring from unloosening from the threads on the rear of the suppressor. Gen 2 eliminated the spring tab and replaced it with a press-to-unlock tab. The latest version that I call Gen 3 features an improved release latch with a lower profile. This lower profile also decreases the chances of the latch accidentally releasing, should it be bumped hard, dropped or knocked around. The new lock rings also feature user-replaceable parts so, should a repair ever be necessary, it can be made directly by the operator or armorer rather than requiring the entire unit to be sent back to SureFire.

“These (lock rings) are also all backwards-compatible,” says Dueck. “So you can have an old adapter and a new suppressor, same model, and it still fits.” This is particularly good news for armorers in military and law enforcement where SureFire suppressors have been making impressive inroads. One example: every Marine Corps M40A5 sniper rifle now comes standard with a SureFire MB762SF adapter and a SureFire FA762SF suppressor. Not that SureFire makes a .308 caliber Mini or Micro, but the point is that their cans are gaining kudos wide and far in the U.S. military.

In fact, sources within the industry tell this author that SureFire product will soon be replacing AAC product as the issue-suppressor for FN’s SCAR system. The competition has led to some contentions that will be played out in the end-user community and final contracts. When the smoke clears, SAR will bring you the report.

SureFire has been issued patents for its repeatable barrel attachment method of a muzzle brake/adapter interfacing with the suppressor via an eccentric locking ring that sucks the two together with in-line tension. Threaded-on attachment methods are useless for securing two parts; threads serve only to align, not fasten.

The primary benefit of the SureFire attachment method is that a repeatable point-of-aim/point-of-impact is achieved. Most suppressor brands cannot hold a repeatable zero from suppressed to unsuppressed, or even from attachment to removal to attachment again. Not SureFire. The engineers that developed high-intensity WeaponLights have also worked out how to make a rifle hold its zero – with or without a can.

SureFire suppressors are not inexpensive. The street price for a SureFire can is around $1,300, not including a muzzle brake/adapter.

An electro-optical sighting device for the M203 grenade launcher sets a whole new definition of “close enough” for grenades.

Resisting the urge to make bad puns about grenades and their attendant proximity capacities, we have before us a problem. Using only an M203, how can we place a fragmentation round in the middle of a band of bad guys on a moonless night, hidden behind rocky outcroppings, uphill at 300 meters? Oh yes – and make it a first-round hit.

Even the most experienced grenadier has trouble shooting a 203 at night. Assuming he can see a crouching, ducking, scampering target, distance is much harder to judge in darkness and ladder sights are not illuminated. A tough problem. And then there’s factoring in an angle of inclination for an uphill shot. A first round hit? At night? Uphill? Fat chance.

Unless, that is, the 203 is equipped with a Rapid Acquisition Aiming Module (RAAM) from Wilcox Industries. The RAAM is a day-night sight specifically addressing the problems of the 203 with its low-velocity, high-trajectory munitions. The RAAM incorporates a sophisticated range finder which feeds data to a processor that automatically calibrates the system for a selected munitions’ trajectory, setting in motion a motorized gimbal mounted with an Aimpoint Micro T1 sight. Put the red dot on the target and fire.

For night-time targets, the grenadier can either use his NODs with an IR setting on the Aimpoint or use the RAAM’s built-in IR laser. The motorized gimbal also positions the IR laser for the correct trajectory. In testing with the Navy SEALs based in Coronado, Calif., first-round hits at night on unknown distance targets were boringly routine.

The RAAM is almost an oxymoron: “high tech” and “grenade” not usually appearing in the same sentence. However, the device is no contradiction of terms; it solves a very real and persistent problem with good old fashioned Yankee engineering.

The Wilcox Connection

Wilcox Industries developed the RAAM in a teaming project with Swiss manufacturer Vectronix, best known for their state-of-the-art range finding technology. The RAAM is currently being fielded by the UK MOD (Ministry of Defense) and testing is proceeding apace with select elements of SOCOM in this country.

Wilcox Industries is not (yet) a household name, but the New Hampshire-based company is very much a player in a variety of high-tech products for military small arms as well as related products. Company founder and CEO Jim Teetzel describes Wilcox as a “skunk works for the Special Forces” with a unique engineering and manufacturing capability to pretty much build anything.

That’s a broad claim, but a brief scan of the company’s website (www.wilcoxind.com) reveals they manufacture several categories of products: night vision mounts (more on that later); small arms systems and support products; chem-bio breathing apparatus; weapon mounts; aerial support products; and that wonderfully mysterious catch-all, “special projects.”

Wilcox developed the RAAM in response to a call from certain military units that prefer not to be named. The goal was simple: first round hits with any suitable munition at night, uphill, downhill, on the level, doesn’t matter. The stated requirement for a “hit” was an impact within five meters of a target at 300 meters, which corresponds to the kill radius of 203 frag and HE munitions.

RAAM Operation

Looking at the RAAM, you’re greeted with an 8-position “mode selection” knob, three rubber-covered buttons and a small LCD display. It sounds more complicated than it is. Once you make a couple of basic decisions, it’s fire and forget.

The most complicated setting on the main control knob is labeled Function. This is similar to a digital camera or smart phone in that once you set the “functions,” you don’t need to revisit them. Here are the settings:

• Disp: for the LCD display: day mode, night mode or automatic (using a photo sensitive cell); sets the brightness of the display.
• Tact: factory test function, not for the operator.
• Star: stands for Single Target Auto Rotate in which the gimbal adjusts automatically as soon as the range finder gets a good reading (instead of separately pressing an Engage button to move the gimbal)
• Range: a built-in safety, factory set at 40 meters, the RAAM won’t function if the range finder shows the target is closer than this number.
• Suer: software version, not for the operator.
• Buer: shows what ballistics are loaded, not for the operator
• Test: verifies the unit is working by cycling through a programmed series of tests of all functions; if Test blinks, it’s self-diagnosed as good to go.
• Cant: turns on and off the cant indicators; cant indicators let the grenadier know if he’s canting his 203
• Lite: manually sets the brightness of the display
• Bat: shows the remaining battery life (operates on two CR-123A lithium batteries)
• Dflt: factory default settings

Having dispensed with the basic function settings (trust me, just leave them on factory defaults), you need to set the RAAM for the munition you’re using. Dial the switch to “ammo” and select from the memory of programmed trajectories, most likely a chalk practice round or, in combat, HE or frag.

Second, decide if you want night or day lasers, infrared or visible. Four of the eight switch settings control the RAAM’s lasers (plural): IR Low, Vis Low, IR High and Vis High. These refer to targeting lasers. The ranging laser (separate) is always IR. Bear in mind that when set on High, the emitted laser is not eye-safe (10 milliwatts, up to 25 on special order). The visible laser is primarily used for bore sighting the RAAM during installation on an M203-equipped rifle, however, in certain lighting conditions, it can be used to sight the target.

The next step in operating a RAAM is to lase the target for distance. Because of the low-velocity, high-trajectory nature of a 203’s munition – you can leisurely watch a round in flight, so lethargic is its lazy arc – the biggest problem for a grenadier is accurately judging distance. A goof of only 25 yards in distance estimation is a clean miss with a first shot. The RAAM removes distance judgment from the equation. You range the target by pressing the bottom-most button on the RAAM unit, the one with a big R, or using a remote switch you’ve Velcroed to your 203.

Functioning with a 1,550 nanometer IR laser (invisible even with night vision), the range finder determines distance and feeds the data to the RAAM’s ballistic computer. The RAAM’s temperature sensor has simultaneously entered the ambient temperature into the computer. If the target is inclined or declined, an accelerometer in the RAAM adds the target’s angle and the ballistic computer gives a firing solution. (There is no provision for altitude because a 203’s munitions are unaffected up to 10,000 feet.) You have two options at this stage: you could have programmed the RAAM to automatically move the gimbal as soon as the range is detected and the computer has derived a solution (instantaneous) or you can manually press the center button on the RAAM marked Engage (or a similar button on a wire-tethered remote switch).

The gimbal now rotates. Again, you have options. You can use the Aimpoint Micro (best for day-time) or the 850 nanometer IR laser for night-time. As an interesting aside, grenadiers score better with the RAAM at night using NODs with the IR laser than in the day with the Aimpoint.

Shooting the RAAM

The RAAM attaches either to a 203’s tube directly or (better) to an M1913 rail forend. Either mounts are available, but the rail-mount is stronger and easier to remove or install. When a RAAM is first mounted, it must be bore sighted to the 203’s tube. A bore sighting kit is sold separately with a rubber O-ring fitted insert for the 203’s tube which emits a laser. Using a special target at 10 meters, you then dial in adjustments to the RAAM using the unit’s visible laser as a reference to the bore sighting laser. Once set, the RAAM is good to go.

There’s a slight difference in the trajectories of 9-inch and a 12-inch 203 tubes. This is programmed into the munition library that you’ve chosen from the Ammo setting on the main control knob. You’re ready to shoot.

I recently accompanied Wilcox engineers Gary Lemire, director of R&D, and Bobby Marcinkowski, senior software programmer, on a 500-round test firing protocol of a RAAM. The purpose was to verify ballistic data in the real-world, shooting up and down real mountains. We gained the cooperation of Marc Halcon of Covert Canyon in Alpine, Calif. and proceeded to paint the place orange with chalk practice rounds.

Using a table and a steady rest, Bobby and Gary were able to drop rounds into a three meter circle at 300 meters. Shooting uphill at an 11 degree angle at a distance of 183 meters, five of the blue-tipped rounds plunked into a one meter circle.

“It’s point-of-aim, point-of-impact. We’ve almost gotten to the point where it’s more like a rifle than a grenade in terms of accuracy,” Gary quipped.

To meet a UK MOD specification, an 8×12 foot “wall” of plywood was constructed with a door and window marked with spray paint. From a distance of 275 meters at a downhill angle of 8 degrees, the two engineers peppered the “door” and “window” with accurate hits.

One of the chalk rounds failed to “explode” when it hit the plywood, cutting an impressive bore-size hole clear through the plywood. Don’t ever mistake “practice” rounds for toys!

I’ve fired a RAAM dozens of times now and I continue to be amazed at how accurate it is, especially compared to ladder sights. This is a game changer.

Affable, cheerful and humorous, the doctor appears to be a wonderful real-world example of Marcus Welby – except he carries a gun. His name is Dr. Phil Dater and it might have been his fascination with how things work that led the curious physician to first experiment with sound suppressors in the 1950s, and later in the basement workshop of a hospital where he worked. Given his interest in firearms and his understanding of the scientific method – form a hypothesis, test it through repeatable experimentation and modify accordingly – Dr. Dater naturally took to sound suppressors and has been involved in many of the seminal sound suppressor companies in the modern era. Of all the arcane areas of firearms, suppressors are the most firmly rooted in a “trial and error” design processes because no amount of computers can possibly calculate all the variables at work when a gunshot erupts.

Suppressors have intrigued me too, which is how I’ve come to be sitting in the front row of Dr. Dater’s two-day class on Suppressor History, Technology & Testing conducted at the GSA training contractor, Long Mountain Outfitters in Henderson, Nev. The class is open to anyone, although Dr. Dater insists his students be vetted to assure no one of dubious motivation sneaks in. His information is protected by ITAR regulations, so only DoS qualified foreign nationals can attend and Dr. Dater understandably prefers his competitors to not attend.

Our class consists of firearms engineers, enthusiasts who want to learn what they can, suppressor dealers who want to enhance their sales ability, and several U.S. government employees from various military branches. Unbeknownst to me at the time, a celebrity is sitting in the back of the room, Pulitzer Prize winning author Stephen Hunter.

Dr. Dater displays an assortment of suppressors – “cans” in the vernacular – and immediately makes full disclosure that he’s one of the principals of Gemtech, a suppressor manufacturer. He assures us that his class is non-brand-specific, but that he wants everyone to know he has an interest in Gemtech. “I’ll try not to flog our product as this is not a sales presentation,” he says amiably.

Suppressor Background

Suppressors date to the turn of the century when Hiram Percy Maxim, son of the legendary machine gun inventor of the same name, started the Maxim Silent Firearms Company. Our class later tests one of Hiram’s original cans and surprisingly performs right up with “modern” designs.

Dr. Dater mentions some other famous suppressor inventors such as Mitch Werbell, Mickey Finn, Reed Knight and Doug Olson, pointing out that all of their designs came from trial-and-error experimentation along with scientific and engineering principles. It’s clear he has respect and admiration for these pioneers of silence.

We then jump right into the subject. Dr. Dater explains the basic science of sound. Sound is a form of over-pressure which is measured with a ratio of pressures – reference pressure to measured pressure – expressed in a unit of measure named for another well-known experimenter of sound transmittal: Alexander Graham Bell. The unit is called a decibel.

A gunshot, Dr. Dater tells us, is the sudden release of hot, high pressure propellant gases exiting from the muzzle of a firearm. A second component of a gunshot, the sonic crack, is caused by the bullet travelling faster than the speed of sound, like the sonic boom of a high-speed jet.

Going back to high school physics, Dr. Dater asks the class how to decrease pressure. I brush back the fog of time and remember that pressure is equally affected by temperature and volume. “That’s right,” says Dr. Dater, “If you lower the temperature and increase the volume, pressure decreases. In its simplest form, that’s all a can does to reduce sound – decrease temperature, increase volume.”

Now comes the technical part. Sound is not only a factor of loudness – decibels – but also of duration. Think of tapping your car horn versus an ambulance blaring its siren. The duration of the siren is more damaging than the short toot of a horn, even if they’re the same number of decibels. This leads to a discussion of what constitutes “harmful” levels of sound, which in turn brings us to the U.S. military’s definition of sound measurement as defined in Mil-Std 147 4D.

We will hear a lot more about Mil-Std 147 4D before the class is over. It’s the gold standard of suppressors, the only acceptable measurement of performance. Because the scientific method of trial and error is so important to suppressor testing, having a defined standard like Mil-Std 147 4D is imperative.

Reasons For Suppressors

Thanks to Hollywood, suppressors are widely perceived as only being used by assassins. It may be true that some cans have been used to snipe an enemy (we dropped suppressed .45 ACP rifles to the Resistance during World War II) but in today’s tactical climate, the suppressor has far more benign uses.

With law enforcement switching to patrol rifles such as Colt Commandos, the number one reason for a suppressor is to protect the shooter’s hearing. Additionally, cans serve to enhance command-and-control, confuse or deceive the target, to shoot out street lights or guard dogs on drug raids, to conceal the origin of the shot, muzzle flash minimization and a host of other tactical reasons.

Suppressors are a restricted item in the U.S. because when the National Firearms Act was passed in 1934 in the middle of the Depression, where Fish & Game determined that suppressors were used by poachers trying to feed their families, as well as an unfounded Hollywood stigma that suppressors were for assassinations. The Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army decreed that suppressors are a part of military equipment. Be that as it may, suppressors can be acquired by paying a $200 federal transfer tax and going through all the Form 4 paperwork associated with NFA weapons.

Or, better yet, make one at home. Dr. Dater told the class about experiments with seized and home-made suppressors that he performed with properly calibrated sound equipment at the California Criminalists Institute. First came the oil filter, nothing more than a common, everyday oil filter fitted to the end of a Ruger 10/22. “That one worked pretty well,” Dr. Dater laughed. “We got a 22 decibel reduction.” He tried a sprinkler head with a wadded up piece of cloth inside, a 2 liter pop bottle, a tennis ball can of three balls and, the best of all, a potato. “The potato worked really well, probably because of the high water content, but the bullet came out with what I’d guess was 30 degrees of yaw. Very unstable,” Dr. Dater said.

How Suppressors Work

The reason why potatoes and tennis ball cans don’t work so well is because they’re not addressing the three ways in which a suppressor works. First, a suppressor decreases pressure by increasing volume so that a bullet driven down the rifling of a barrel exits the muzzle into a tube of (ideally) 20 times the volume of the gun’s bore. Second, the tube serves as a heat sink to lower the temperature of the propellant gases, again serving to lower pressure. Third, the internal system of baffles in a suppressor tube serves to create turbulence to delay the exit of propellant gases, again allowing for more heat transfer and volume expansion.

When the bullet leaves a suppressor, just as it would from an unsuppressed muzzle, an “uncorking event” occurs. An uncorking event is the appropriately named term for what happens when a balloon bursts or a champagne cork pops. It’s the sudden release of pressure, the uncorking of the projectile exiting the muzzle crown, which makes a gunshot as loud as it is.

All suppressors rely on these three factors to work. However, there are two main types of suppressors. We’re most familiar with the muzzle suppressor, a pipe-like device that attaches to the end of a barrel but there is also a category of integral suppressors in which the barrel itself is totally enclosed within a shroud.

With an integral suppressor, the barrel is vented with holes to bleed gases into the shroud, which serves to suck away heat, increase volume and stir up turbulence. A good example of an integral suppressor is HK’s MP5 SD. Several companies make Ruger 10/22s with integral suppressors. The advantage is you’re not adding any length to the barrel; a disadvantage is you’re losing a lot of velocity and thereby giving up considerable terminal ballistic performance, plus you can never remove the suppressor. Integral suppressors are generally quieter than muzzle suppressors.

Additionally, a suppressor can be “wet” or “dry” meaning that an ablative agent, usually water or grease, is used within the can to further decrease sound. Dr. Dater noted that some unscrupulous manufacturers rig their testing by pouring water into a dry can to enhance its performance.

Baffle Stacks

All cans look pretty much alike from the outside: a piece of hollow tube. Granted, there’s a lot of engineering in the tube with calculations based on the pressure of the propellant gases to determine the material (steel, titanium, inconel, aluminum) for the tube and its wall thickness. Factors such as hoop stress and yield stress are figured as well.

But tube construction is really not what separates different designs. The baffle stack – the shape and arrangement of a set of washer-like constrictions within the tube – are what make one design work better than another.

Baffles are certainly not new. Hiram Maxim used them. Your car’s muffler uses them. The K-baffle, so named for its cross-sectional shape, was developed in 1909. It features a large surface area for heat dissipation and achieves increased turbulence for “frequency shifting” by acting like the closed end of a whistle or pipe organ. “Frequency shifting” is a phenomenon whereby a sound wave is reflected back on itself to cancel some of the energy, like swirling your hands in a bathtub in opposite directions.

The M-baffle is another type, also named for its shape in cross-section. There’s a coned baffle and a pinched cone baffle. There are concave and convex baffles. There are slant baffles and mysterious sounding Omega baffles. No one type is inherently superior and, Dr. Dater told the class candidly, of the six different brands of suppressors he routinely uses in testing, any one of them can show the most decibels of sound reduction on any given day. “There’s a lot of atmospheric variation,” he says.

So far Dr. Dater has focused on the technology used to suppress the sound of a gunshot, but what if there is no sound to suppress? The idea of silencing the cartridge, not the gun, has long been a focus of Soviet suppressor technology and is called captive piston technology.

Instead of a propellant igniting to create pressure to push a bullet down a rifled barrel, a captive pistol cartridge retains the propellant in a chamber that pushes a piston into the base of the bullet. The “sound” of the propellant igniting is contained within the combustion chamber of the cartridge so it never escapes into the atmosphere.

In practice, a Soviet SP4 captive piston cartridge generates 124.6 dB, which is about what an integrally suppressed Ruger Mk II .22 LR pistol creates.

At The Range

Dr. Dater set up his sound testing equipment at the Desert Hills Shooting Club in nearby Boulder City to demonstrate the theory he’d explained to us with real guns and real suppressors. He started by showing us how Mil-Std 147 4D calls for the microphone to be placed 1 meter to the left of the muzzle, 90 degrees to the bore.

The sound testing equipment itself is highly specialized. The microphone is an LD2530 that’s been certified to a “rise time” of no more than 5 microseconds. The rise time is the time from the start of an event to the beginning of the microphone recording the event – think of it as “response time.”

The microphone is about the size of a pencil eraser and costs $1,000 a copy. It’s connected to a Larson-Davis 800B Type 2 sound pressure meter that in turn is calibrated to a rise time of 20 microseconds. Before any actual sound testing can begin, the unit must be calibrated with another device that produces exactly 400 Hz at 114 dB.

Without this type of precision equipment being properly calibrated and set in accordance with Mil-Std 1474D, any test data is invalid. Some suppressor manufacturers simply concoct “data” from thin air without making any valid tests at all, picking a number that makes their products look good against the competition. Dr. Dater derides such unscrupulous business practices as “specmanship,” the use of fabricated specifications to enhance a flawed product.

As the testing begins, the class experiences firsthand a phenomenon called “first round pop” in which the first round fired registers a higher decibel level than subsequent rounds. This is due to a secondary detonation within the suppressor from superheated, incompletely burned powder entering an oxygen-rich atmosphere. After that “first round pop,” the oxygen is burned off, so subsequent rounds register normally.

The next phenomenon we see in action is how suppressors increase the cyclic rate of full-auto weapons by as much as 200 rounds per minute. This is because the baffle stack in the suppressor delays the gas exit and therefore increases gas pressure back through the gun’s gas port. ARs are known to “run hot” with a suppressor to the degree that gas blow-back through the charging handle can sting the shooter’s eyes, even with eye protection. Accordingly, it’s a good idea to run a PRI “gas buster” charging handle on suppressed ARs.

When the numbers start coming in, we see that sound levels are far more consistent than muzzle velocities. As a longtime handloader, I’m used to chronographing loads that vary as much as 200 feet per second, a significant amount, but the decibel levels from all the guns we’re testing are remarkably consistent. Less than two or three decibels variation isn’t unusual.

The other thing we note is that different brands of 5.56mm suppressors show very little variation. For instance, a Knight’s Armaments M4 QD, SureFire 556K, Gemtech G5 and Advanced Armament M4-2000 were all so close – around 135 dB – that any difference would be statistically irrelevant. We’re talking less than 3 dB difference from the “best” to “worst.”

Which brings us to an important point: suppressor brands shouldn’t be judged solely on their sound reduction. What’s more important are their method of attachment and their point-of-impact shift. Additionally, the dynamics of a weapon are altered substantially with a suppressor making the gun more muzzle heavy, slower to transition between targets and harder to manipulate in close confines. Some brands over-hang the muzzle more than others.

As we shot various weapons – rifles, subguns, pistols, World War II era Welrods, even a pistol used in a murder – several things became clear:

• For pure performance, you can’t beat a .22 LR. The ratio of suppressor volume to bore diameter makes the little rimfire ideal to suppress, along with its low noise signature to start with.
• Suppressors are the world’s best muzzle brakes. Recoil is virtually eliminated.
• Suppressors are great for the guy who hates to clean guns. Dr. Dater says a suppressor should never be cleaned.
• You can minimize the gunshot – the uncorking – but you can’t get rid of the sound from a bolt slamming home or the sonic crack of a bullet. Yes, even suppressed guns make a noise. (The bolt of an M4 slapping home to an empty chamber registers 117 dB.)
• You can’t effectively suppress a shotgun; No Country For Old Men notwithstanding. There’s no safe way to allow the shot column to pass through a baffle stack.

Dr. Dater’s class is a fascinating addition to any tactical shooter’s knowledge base. It’s a classic example of “You don’t know what you don’t know” until you get there and take the highly informative class. For more information, log on to www.longmountain.com.