I shot a seemingly rabid raccoon in my backyard this very morning with my Silencer Shop Host. This is exactly why I own the darn thing. With its threaded, three-inch bull barrel and Picatinny optic rail, the SSH Ruger Mark IV 22/45 Tactical is designed specifically to be a suppressor host. And what a great host it is.
I got my SSH from the very first batch of ’em when they were brand spanking new just over three years ago. I thought, “This gun is pretty sweet, I’ll drop it off at Cerakote and then do the review of it when it looks even cooler.” Fast forward to a few weeks ago — quite literally right on the third anniversary of making the GIF above — and I finally got the darn thing back.
I mean, it looks pretty good, right? Granite camo kinda look. To be fair, I told our Cerakote guy that it was a personal project and he needed to prioritize our customer jobs ahead of it. Apparently that queue never got down to zero. Eventually I remembered (again) that the gun existed and I got it put in the line with the rest of the work.
That 1-inch barrel diameter looks pretty dang good with a ~one-inch diameter suppressor, which describes the majority of 22 LR rimfire cans on the market. I guess I’ll have to Cerakote a suppressor to match?
It looks shorter, but given where the chamber begins — basically at the front of the ejection port — the gun you see here does have a three-inch barrel.
Naturally, that stubby barrel is threaded 1/2×28 for use with rimfire suppressors.
If you’re tempted by a Silencer Shop Host 22/45, keep this in mind: less barrel = more silencer. It’s really tempting to run a tiny can on a short barrel, but if you’re looking for a Hollywood-quiet setup you’re going to need more suppressor than that. A shorter barrel means more gas, higher gas pressure, and more unburned gunpowder compared to a longer barrel. Your suppressor has more work to do.
At the same time, that fact makes this is a uniquely fun suppressor host as it really highlights the performance differences between .22 cans. On a 16-inch or longer barrel, a suppressed .22 LR is really quiet with just about any halfway-decent suppressor on the market, and it can be hard to differentiate between them. That absolutely isn’t the case here.
The three-inch barrel makes this a perfect test platform for, let’s say, an outlet like Shooting News Weekly that reviews rimfire suppressors and wants to know how they stack up against each other. For that reason you’ll be seeing a lot more of this pistol in future silencer reviews.
I’ll have to do something about the magazine, though, as 10 rounds just ain’t cutting it for me with a gun that’s this fun to shoot. It’s a standard Ruger Mark-series magazine, of course. I gotta pick up a few more, plus some extendos.
Manual thumb safety and bolt lock/release grace the left side of the Mark IV. That white dot signifies that it’s on “safe,” while a red dot is visible with the safety snicked down into the “fire” position.
The safety lever is mirrored on the right side of the pistol as well for ambidextrous use.
As a 22/45, the SSH’s grip size, angle, and grip panels are all 1911-style. The pistol isn’t as heavy as an all-steel 1911, but at 29 ounces it has more of the feel of real steel than the polymer boys.
I love the wide trigger shoe, though I think it would be nicer if the 22/45 Rugers came with a trigger shoe that looked and felt a little more like one on a 1911.
All hail the Mark IV! With an extremely simple press of the Ruger-logo’d rear button, the upper receiver pivots upwards and slides right off the front of the lower receiver. Pull the charging handle and the bolt slides cleanly out of the upper. No tools, no muss, no fuss, no swearing.
Ruger took one of the most difficult field strip processes in the industry (you need tools and an engineering degree to field strip a Mark I through III) and turned it into one of the easiest there is with the Mark IV.
Simple. Excellent. That single action only internal hammer system results in a great out-of-the-box trigger, too. It’s light, it’s smooth, it’s pretty crisp. Clean reset on it, too.
In this photo I have the brand new ZeroTech HALO aspherical lens green dot on top (coupon code SNW20 for 20% off), but in the rest I have the multi-reticle Thrive HD mounted up. From making hits on steel at 100 yards (see the video embedded at top) to taking care of my raccoon problem to assassinating larger animals in the wild, this setup has proven extremely capable.
I also love that, with its short barrel, I can shoot basically any ammo on the market and it stays subsonic. Six inches of barrel length is the point where some bulk box supersonic stuff just starts to break the sound barrier, so this three-inch job is perfect to keep things really quiet without worrying about purchasing ammo designed specifically for subsonic suppressed use.
It’s a misconception that shorter barrels are less accurate. Less velocity in most cases, yes (though most .22 LR ammo hits full velocity by 9 to 10 inches of barrel length), but not less accuracy. The SSH Ruger Mark IV 22/45 Tactical is just as accurate as its larger peers, and my success on a small silhouette at 100 yards (and a rabbit at about 40) proves that out for sure.
Find the Silencer Shop Host over on the Silencer Shop website HERE. It’s a great little suppressor host! I’m so happy to have the dang thing back in my hands, and y’all will definitely be seeing a lot of it over on the Shooting News Weekly YouTube channel. Every time we review a rimfire suppressor, at minimum.
Two thumbs up! Well . . . one-point-eight-five thumbs up. I need more magazine capacity.