The end of the tax stamp on suppressors wasn’t as good as we wanted, but it was a big step forward. Suppressors, often called “silencers,” aren’t the devices of spy movie infamy. They don’t deaden the sound until you can’t even hear it above a whisper, but they do work. They’re better thought of as safety devices, since they reduce the noise down enough that you probably won’t have as much hearing loss.
And with the Big Beautiful Bill, we don’t have to pay an extra $200 to Uncle Sam if we want one.
Not to be deterred, the regular suspects claimed that suddenly, bad people would use suppressors left and right, and no one would know because every inner-city gang-banger is really James Bond.
The end of the tax stamp has, predictably, created increased demand.
America’s gun buyers are quietly making big noise when it comes to their shooting preferences. They are buying items regulated by the National Firearms Act (NFA) in huge numbers. That includes suppressors, short-barrel rifles (SBRs) and short-barrel shotguns (SBSs).
These figures aren’t in the hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands. The number is creeping up toward 1 million for this year alone, according to data provided to NSSF from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). And there are still seven months of purchasing data to collect this year.
That data shows over 845,000 suppressor applications were submitted and 768,000 were approved from January through May this year. Those totals include both Form 1 applications to manufacture suppressors and Form 4 applications to possess a suppressor either as an individual or in a trust with several parties.
In fact, NSSF reported a 177 percent increase in NFA checks in June 2026 over the previous year. That number jumped to 166,677 last month compared to 60,147 last June.
That’s a lot of suppressors.
But do you know what you haven’t heard? The thing that would be in tons of news reports if it were to happen, but hasn’t?
Why we’re not seeing tons of criminals using suppressors.
Understand that they can still be stolen, still be straw-purchased, or still be manufactured by an individual, so why aren’t they everywhere like we were told they would be? Why aren’t the bad guys using them to shoot up neighborhoods and perhaps avoid systems like ShotSpotter?
Because criminals have little use for such things, that’s why.
A suppressor is a fairly long device, on average, that you put on the end of a firearm. It makes it harder to conceal, and they don’t work as they do in the movies. There’s a reason Luigi Mangione (alleged) had to rack the slide of his gun with each shot. He didn’t know there was a separate device he needed if he wanted his “ghost gun” to cycle.
Even with a different style or model of gun, though, we’re simply not seeing suppressors all over the criminal arrest stories that populate our news feeds.
Companies are selling hundreds of thousands of them this year, possibly millions, and the bad guys aren’t using them. All the doomsaying didn’t pan out. Yet again.
In fact, this is becoming something of a habit for them. Unfortunately, the mainstream media won’t mention it.
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