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To really silence a firearm effectively, you’ll want to shoot subsonic ammo. The sonic boom — the actual “crack” sound made by the supersonic projectile — is really quite loud. On the downside, limiting bullet speed to under about 1,100 fps means putting a hard cap on muzzle energy for a given bullet weight. AWC is now making a bolt action, integrally suppressed rifle chambered for .44 Magnum (built on a Ruger 77/44). 340-grain subsonics? Sure beats the ft-lbs of most of the common alternatives. AWC also does integrally-suppressed 10/22s (including takedowns), 77/22s, PWS Summits, Ruger MKIIIs, and Browning Buckmarks. Booth tour above, photos follow. . .

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77/44
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77/44
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PWS Summit action
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PWS Summit action
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PWS Summit action
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Mark III
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10/22 Takedown
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Buckmark

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23 COMMENTS

  1. I don’t generally run standard velocity/subsonic ammo through my semi-automatic .22s, but I would think that a Ruger 10/22 or 22/45 would have issues running that stuff reliably.

    • Standard Velocity (like CCI Standard Velocity) should work in most cases and is usually subsonic from a 16″ bbl rifle. You can run high velocity (e.g. your standard ~1,280 fps-rated bulk box stuff) through nearly all pistols without it going supersonic. Hyper velocity stuff will probably break the sound barrier from most .22 pistols, though. After reviewing it, I bought a bunch of American Eagle Suppressor .22 LR. I’ve found it to run every semi-auto .22 I’ve tried it on and it has stayed subsonic for me even though rifle barrels.

      And here’s the difference with .22 LR (at least what the camera was able to pick up, as it’s honestly much more obvious “IRL” from behind the rifle) between subsonic and supersonic: http://youtu.be/dHj6c6Rq4is?t=3m56s …with larger bullets like 9mm, .300 BLK, etc, the difference is more extreme…

      • You clued me in to that AE subsonic ammo but it has been pure unobtanium for at least 6+ months. The search results also shows a bunch of other people looking for it also. Any leads?

        • Not really. Sorry. My FFL received at least one entire pallet full of it and a whole heck of a lot of other .22 LR and .22 WMR, but apparently they are not the type to put it up on GB and make a huge profit. Instead, it’s locals-only and they’re still limiting how much people can buy unless they’re members there. But… they’re selling it at legit MSRP so that’s nice. Normally I’d link to them and try to send some business their way, as they’re a really great shop and range, but in this case I don’t think they’d appreciate the phone calls since I don’t think they’d sell it over the phone and ship it anyway haha

      • Thank you and everyone else for the information. I have not shot my semi-auto .22s very much the past 2 years and have become more intrigued in learning to shoot my ammo-conserving .22 bolt rifle well. The standard and subsonic ammo that I find gets set aside for it.

    • With the barrel that I put on my 10/22 it actually likes subsonics the best. It cycles fine. I did polish the contact points a little but it didn’t need much.

  2. Since it is a “quiet barrel” instead of add on supressor, can one get away with avoiding the NFA crap?
    Given the current ATF “we can change our ules any time for any reason,” I suspect not. After all, these bastages put a guy in prison because they were able to manipulate and force a fail of his semi-auto only rifle to make it fire more than one round on one trigger pull one time.

      • Yes, these barrels have silencers integrated into them and are, therefore, silencers under the NFA law. They have specific features (baffles and expansion chambers, in this case) that are designed to silence the sound of the gunshot.

        Now, I think you probably could actually make a “quiet barrel” that was legal, but I don’t think anyone would really want it. For instance, if you made a .22 LR barrel long enough, the gasses would expand and cool off and the O2 would burn off sufficiently, etc, and it would be really darn quiet. But it would be weirdly long and since you’re counting on the gasses to ‘peter out’ then you start risking squib loads and whatever else. Still, certain calibers that don’t have much powder or pressure behind them (e.g. a pistol caliber like .45 or 9mm and certainly .22 LR) will be WAY quieter out of a 16″+ bbl than out of a pistol barrel and obviously that’s legal.

  3. If I were to buy an integrally suppressed rifle, would I need to register it as two NFA items, one sbr and one silencer? Or does an integral silencer qualify as part of the barrel, in which case I only need to register the silencer?

    • Only the silencer. If the “silencer” part removed from the “barrel” part, then it wouldn’t be integral 😉 …they do it for aesthetics but it’s also done in a big part so you can have a 16″ overall length barrel that’s suppressed, instead of having to tack a can onto the end of an already-16″ bbl.

      …btw there’s also a 10/22 barrel on the market (http://www.tacticalsol.com/x-ring-series/x-ring-sb-x-barrel) that’s like 12″ of actual barrel and then it opens up to a larger diameter and has like 4″ of shroud — permanently attached, of course — on it. The idea there is that you install your separate .22 LR suppressor onto the gun and the suppressor fits underneath the shroud and therefore doesn’t actually add much length at all to the whole firearm. It is definitely not as cool as a true integrally suppressed barrel like these AWC ones though!

      There are also lots of integrally suppressed barrels — just the barrel, none of the rest of the gun — on the market, should you already own a rifle like a 10/22. The barrel itself is typically considered to be the silencer (sometimes it’s a shroud that goes over the barrel and encloses the baffles), whereas the firearm is usually the receiver of the gun. I suppose when you buy a complete rifle from AWC, you could actually take the receiver home with you after doing the NICS check and your NFA dealer would just hang onto the barrel until your tax stamp came back.

  4. Jeremy –

    What’s that tiny little suppressed wonder that fits in her pocket???

    (I REALLY like that ‘Hollywood Quiet’ .22…)

    • Beretta Tomcat, I do believe.

      With silencers that small they typically only work well when run “wet,” which means some amount of water or other “ablative” inside (wire pulling gel is common, although I hear ultrasound gel is one of the most effective and cleanest things you can use). The ablative inside helps cool the gasses faster. Obviously a gel is nice since you can put some in and then do something like carry the silencer in your pocket without looking like you’ve peed your pants haha… plus it usually works for more shots than water does.

      I also really liked the “Hollywood Quiet” a whole hell of a lot. In fact, I dug the PWS Summit biathlon style action so much that I just committed to purchase a complete PWS T3 Summit rifle (I also love all of the rest of the parts they put on it. Fourth listing HERE). It looks like a heavy target rifle, but it’s shockingly light and maneuverable. The carbon fiber barrel and the stock weigh very little. I asked Lindsey @ PWS if it’s as accurate as it looks, and she assured me that it’s even more accurate than it looks. Needless to say, a review will be coming in the not-too-distant future. Now, this is absolutely not as cool as the integrally suppressed Hollywood Quiet AWC rifle, I admit. However, I already own a .22 suppressor and the Summit comes with a threaded muzzle, plus the bull barrel is basically the same diameter as my suppressor and I’m getting the all-black one so the can will look really sleek on there. So… going the inexpensive and no [additional] tax stamp route. If I didn’t already own that can (AAC Element 2) or had a bigger salary then it would be a tougher decision. Additionally, since PWS sells the Summit action in various degrees of assemblage, you could actually build your own by buying an integrally-suppressed 10/22 barrel from the dozen or more companies that make and sell just the barrel (AWC may do this also), then slap that on the Summit or any other 10/22 action, use whatever stock you want, etc etc…

  5. There is a guy at our range that has a break action H&R .44 magnum with a silencer at the end of it. He shoots 300 grain bullets at 1100 or so FPS. It is AWESOME.

    It is very odd to have it clap so quietly and hit the steel gong so hard. The poor guy spends much more time talking than shooting.

    Would be great to have that 77/44 set up like that.

    • For sure! The only thing I can think of that would be better is if AWC did a bolt action chambered for something like .458 SOCOM, which would allow for 600-grain bullets. Plenty of folks have built those, but I don’t know if there are any available commercially. You could do a .458 Socom AR but it wouldn’t be as quiet due to the gas system and such. At any rate, an integrally suppressed .458 SOCOM bolt gun would be completely and totally badass.

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