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ARMAG

Search matches names, aliases and the text of every page. An arm found by its service designation is found by its alias, not its title.

Suppressor

A tube of expansion chambers fitted to a muzzle to slow and cool escaping gas, reducing the noise of the shot.

Also called Silencer, Moderator

It does not silence anything. A suppressor reduces the muzzle blast — the bang made by high-pressure gas leaving the barrel into open air — by giving that gas somewhere to expand and cool first. It has no effect at all on two other noises: the mechanical clatter of the action, and the crack of a bullet travelling faster than sound, which is a shock wave produced along the whole flight path rather than at the muzzle.

That is why subsonic ammunition exists, and why a suppressed weapon firing supersonic rounds is still loud enough to need hearing protection.

A suppressor also adds mass and length at the muzzle, which is sometimes the actual reason one is fitted: the MAC-10 was sold with one partly because the weapon is close to uncontrollable without it.

Suppressors are accessories and this site does not catalogue them. This entry exists so that captions and specifications elsewhere can refer to one.