“Shooting without a suppressor is just uncivilized.” — Ethan Lessard
I know nothing about the process of obtaining a suppressor. I have never been through it, barely know what’s required—besides money, a headache-inducing load of paperwork, and a background check—and couldn’t, for the life of me, tell you where to start.
I have friends who own suppressors and it’s not a big deal, but I never got the play-by-play on the process they went through to get theirs, beyond hearing about how long they waited to get approved—and the can being “in jail” at their local dealer. There is, I’ve heard, a trust that’s involved, or can be, but that sounds like lawyers. And lawyers sound a lot like money.
For the most part I didn’t care about the process because with wait times measured in months or a year or more, just to get your paperwork through the federal bureaucracy, what was the point?
Somewhere in the COVID era that all began to change…for the better. Suddenly the paperwork processing times started dropping. At the April, 2023 NRA Show in Indianapolis, you could literally see the surge in suppressor demand in the Silencer Central booth where attendees were lined up several deep to buy.
Reflecting on that enthusiastic activity, I wrote:
But perhaps nothing compared to the frenzy at the Silencer Central booth where they were helping customers prepare and submit their ATF eForms for suppressor purchases. Customers were backed up into the booth as they waited their turn at the two banks of laptops and digital fingerprint scanners used to process paperwork which is now taking on average 270 days for the ATF to process.
Two years ago we were down to nine months, and that was shorter than in previous years when that same wait may have been closer to 18 months or more. Today it’s an absurdly short wait, just days in the low single digits. Once submitted, paperwork is getting approved in just, well, let’s just say it’s really, really fast.
Now that it’s down to the point where it takes less time to get approved for a suppressor than it does to get a cross country letter through snail mail, I suddenly see the value in getting one and joining the ranks of what my friend Ethan would call the civilized shooters.
Exactly how did we get from a bureaucratic eternity of a wait time to a few days? Nobody ever accused Washington bureaucrats of moving fast, and this certainly included the ATF. It’s pretty much thanks to the work of Silencer Central, and in particular its founder and CEO Brandon Maddox.
In a nutshell, Maddox wanted to buy a suppressor, and after facing the various hurdles to obtaining one, he decided to dig deep into the all the laws and processes involved in suppressor ownership.
Maddox’s background is in pharmaceuticals, and in case you didn’t know, that’s an immensely regulated industry where everything is tracked and highly controlled. He figured that if you can legally and effectively distribute legal pharmaceuticals with all the federal regulation and paperwork that goes with that, it should be possible with suppressors, too.
Maddox built Silencer Central to be a one-stop-shop for suppressor purchases, covering everything from the formation of a trust for the buyer (if they choose to go that way), the fingerprinting, eForm submission to ATF, 4473 submission, CLEO notification, transfer and shipment of the suppressor directly to the end-user.
That’s no small feat. It’s a sea change in how we now buy suppressors. This streamlined process has gotten us to the point where, in my case, I registered for eForms and reviewed the ATF documents that were submitted on June 16.
On June 17 I received notice that my suppressor was approved. Then on June 18 I eSigned the 4473. June 18 notification went out to the chief law enforcement officer in my county which started the requisite seven-day wait—which is time for local law enforcement to review and, presumably, address any issues.
Then on June 26 I was notified that Silencer Central was preparing to ship my suppressor to their licensed location here in Arizona. Silencer Central has this type of staffed facility in every state where suppressors are legal to sell.
And, most importantly, this was all done from the comfort of my couch. I had to get up off my ass to answer the door and sign for the suppressor when it arrived, but other than that I did the least amount of physical exertion required to buy one of the most highly regulated items a gun owner can own—and that’s without skipping a single regulatory step.
A couple of notes about the Silencer Central process: The communication from the company during this period was absolutely outstanding. There was never a time where I wondered when I was going to hear from Silencer Central. I got emails and text messages notifying or reminding me that I needed to complete, review, or sign a form.
I even dragged my feet on the front end of the process just to see what would happen. Silencer Central kept texting and emailing to make sure I knew what I needed to do. And, while I did almost everything from my laptop, I could have called their customer service team at any time and gotten the help I needed.
Another aspect of the process I gladly took advantage of was having Silencer Central set up a trust for me—which they do for free. The trust allows me to add friends so that I can give them my suppressor so they can legally have it in their possession at the range.
The trust also allows me to pass on the suppressor when, you know, I pass on.
If you’re thinking about buying a suppressor, but you were always intimidated by the regulatory process, you need to let go of that apprehension and head over to SilencerCentral.com.
And now is the time to do that, because through July 31 Silencer Central will cover your $200 tax stamp. But today’s the 31st isn’t it too late, you ask? Well, I have it on very good authority that this Friday, August 1, Silencer Central will announce a continuation of the $200 free tax stamp promotion, along with additional suppressor brand partners.
In other words, the summer of free tax stamp love continues to roll along.
Note: When you go to their website in the link posted in the article the age verification only goes back to the year 1945. E. g. I am 82 and my year of birth was 1942. Unless you click a year on the link that is not your year of birth you cannot access the website. I called and the lady said to click a year that would allow entrance. Seems to me that changing the 1945 to 1930 or something would be the proper thing to do; but she rejected that idea entirely.
FYI/FWIW: TTAG now requires a click in permission to save name etc before a comment can be posted.
And you’ll see this message:
Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access this resource.
“Going Silent Has Never Been Easier (or Faster)”
And you will not be going ‘silent’ with a suppressor purchase either no matter where you purchase it from, tax or no tax.
We need to stop doing this.
Suppressors are not ‘silencers’, no matter how you want to phrase it.
‘silence’ is the absence of sound or noise. Suppressors do not make the firing sound or noise ‘absent’. They ‘suppress’ (and even the term ‘suppressors’ has issues as well) firing sound in terms of reducing to a lower level only marginally.
The anti-gun love using the term ‘silencer’ to paint false pictures with words conjuring up images in ignorant peoples minds, feeding the confirmation bias of anti-gun people, of firearms use being ‘undetectable’ because they are ‘silent’ when a ‘silencer’ is used thus a great threat. Its a complete lie. We just had an article presenting such an ignorant picture from an anti-gun person.
We need to stop using the term ‘silencer’.
Agreed! Never ceases to amaze me how frequently “we” fall into the trap of using the language of our enemies. From headlines to rebuttals, if they control the language, they win before the argument even begins.