Green Shoots

There’s been a lot of chatter about what the weakening of the NFA has in store for American gun owners. The legal status of suppressors is a little confusing right now, with some people being able to buy them with a regular 4473 and others can’t.

Myself, I’m holding off for a bit. There’s nothing I need right now. I could use another .22LR can (as I kinda trashed the one I currently own), but that’s a want, not a need. I can wait for the legal dust to settle and suppressors (as well as SBRs and SBSs) can well and truly be bought without the extra hoops of the NFA.

But that got me thinking. When suppressors leave the NFA, what does that do to homemade models? Currently, there’s a thing called “constructive possession” which stops you from even owning things which MIGHT be turned into a suppressor. What happens when that goes away?

There’s also the matter of suppressors which use wipes. Wipes are disposable disks which the bullet punches through on its way out of the suppressor. They are a very efficient way to quell the noise of a gunshot, but very few people use them now because the ATF, in its infinite wisdom, says that owning a replacement wipe means you want to build another suppressor all by yourself.

No, I don’t get that either.

Suppressors that use wipes tend to be smaller than suppressors which rely on baffles to quiet the noise of a gunshot. They’re cheaper to build, too, but you do need to replace the wipes on a regular basis (like every 30 shots or so). This is currently a real pain in the patootie because you have to send your can back to the manufacturer to replace the wipes. But what if you could replace the wipes as easily as reloading a magazine? Now you’re looking at an easy, efficient and CHEAP way to mitigate the noise of a gunshot.

Which brings me around the gun pictured at the top of this post, the SilencerCo Maxim. It was introduced a few years ago as the first integrally suppressed pistol designed for daily carry by the armed citizen, but it didn’t really catch on because the darn thing was huge, got dirty really quickly and wasn’t easily compatible with red dot sights. But what if we tweaked that idea a bit?

First, rather than supersonic 9mm, let’s chamber it in subsonic .380 ACP. Right now, I’ll bet that a bunch of you reading this are absolutely blanching at the idea of carrying a gun in a “mouse caliber,” but I know some very switched-on individuals who are carrying either a S&W Bodyguard 2.0 or a Ruger LCP Max on a daily basis. Bullet location trumps muzzle energy, and as long as your round of choice makes 12 inches of penetration into gel on a regular basis (I like Hornady Critical Defense for that role), go for it.

Secondly, rather than a suppressor with baffles, what about using wipes instead, for reduced size without compromising sound reduction?

Lastly, rather than a because we’re using .380 ACP, we can go with a fixed barrel blowback action rather than a tilting barrel delayed action. Doing so allows us to easily integrate the silencer into the pistol, which will further reduce the size of the suppressor. Add all of this up, and I’m guessing this pistol would come in a something about the size of a Glock G17, but with the shorter grip of a G48-sized pistol for even better concealment.

Now all of a sudden we have something that goes from being a range toy to something that is practical to carry on an everyday basis. Will somebody make this gun? Dunno.

But it would be cool if they did.