Americans bought 1.4 million suppressors in the first half of this year

[cigarskunk2]

NSSF: Americans Bought 1.4 Million Silencers in First Six Months of 2024 - The Smoking Gun | The Smoking Gun

That's more than the 1.3 million purchased in the first 83 years of the NFA.

So why the sudden binge of suppressor purchases?

Speaking of NFA purchases, apparently NOW is the time to purchase a suppressor/silencer: cigarskunk2 - LiveJournal

Comments

[dalesql]

What is the ATF doing with the 2.8 billion dollars they collected for the supressors?

[cigarskunk2]

Likely wasting it on DEI and sex change operations.

[cigarskunk2]

Actually, they don't get that money - it goes into the general pool for Congress to waste.

[fervid_dryfire]

Suppressors are essentially threaded pipes with baffles inside them- it would NOT take long for any company that wants to make them, to get them produced in quantity to keep up with demand. The biggest cost would probably be all the lathe work for all the various thread diameters they'd need (if they want to supply multiple calibers with suppressor options). I predict lots of people- myself included- making homemade "good enough" suppressors for pennies on the dollar should they become untaxed, unregulated parts...like they always should have been. Thus, it'd be hard for a manufacturer to demand high prices unless the demand spikes to something crazy, like 80% of gun owners or something.

[cigarskunk2]

The demand can only spike for so long as you honestly only need so many suppressors since they are interchangeable...unless they're cheap enough that you can afford to commit one to each individual firearm.

There's also the issue of firearms being compatible with suppressors - most of my firearms don't have threaded barrel tips, as such, that further limits my suppressor purchases until I can score threaded barrels for those guns...assuming they're even available for that particular gun and/or I want to spend the money on one.

As for DIY suppressors, I rather suspect most folks think like I do in that they are concerned about getting the alignment off and having the bullet clip the inside of the suppressor.

Now we both know enough about guns to know that you're not going to have the gun blow up in your face if you don't get things right, but a lot of folks don't.

That said though, I can easily see the good ones dropping to the $100-200 range within a year and the Hollywood grade ones all being under $500 thanks to competition.