With NFA Deregulation, Expect Designs to Change and the Lines Between Gun Makers and Suppressor Makers to Blur

Firearms are at the dawn of a similar leap in design clarity, brought on by the de facto repeal of federal suppressor regulation. Imagine designing a gun from scratch with a suppressor baked into it. Some things you’d do are:

• Bring the weight and bulk of the suppressor closer to the shooter, for better weight distribution
• Have a bigger suppressor, since you can spread its volume out over more of the barrel length rather than needing to hang it all off the end of the barrel
• Make pretty much all bolt-action rifles integrally suppressed
• Make the mounting system more reliable, because you can integrate the suppressor’s design into that of the gun instead of needing to rely exclusively on the threads on the end of the barrel.
• Replaceable baffles or wipes
• Better management of gas blowback, since you could design the gun under the assumption that it will only be shot suppressed

As an industry observer, you should also expect to see the line between gunmakers and suppressor makers get blurry. Some gunmakers will buy suppressor companies, or double down on their homegrown suppressor efforts. And some suppressor companies will start making guns, carrying on the tradition of the SilencerCo Maxim 9. In a few years, it will be rare to see a gunmaker that doesn’t sell suppressed guns from the factory.

A corollary is that integral suppressors will get a lot better over the next few years. To this point they’ve been a niche product, and they’ve gotten niche-level R&D investment. We’re excited to watch them go mainstream.

— Open Source Defense in Integral Suppressors are Coming