If you’ve ever watched an action movie, you’ve probably seen a suppressor turn a gunshot into a barely audible pfft—almost like a whisper. Hollywood magic has led to many myths, one of the biggest being that suppressors reduce a firearm’s range.
Here’s the truth: suppressors don’t decrease range—if anything, they can slightly improve performance.
They often increase muzzle velocity, tighten shot groups, and help with long-range precision. They also control and slow down escaping gases, reducing noise and muzzle flash without affecting the bullet’s performance.
So, where did this myth come from, and what happens when you put a suppressor on a gun? Let’s break it down.
The Science Behind Suppressors
Suppressors function through a series of internal chambers that capture and cool expanding gases before they exit the muzzle. As a bullet is fired, high-pressure gases propel it through the barrel. Without a suppressor, these gases explosively escape once the bullet leaves the muzzle, creating the characteristic loud report.
A suppressor provides additional volume for these gases to expand and cool before reaching the atmosphere. This process reduces both sound pressure and visible muzzle flash. Modern suppressors use various baffle designs, mesh screens, and sometimes specialized materials to optimize this effect without significantly impeding the projectile’s path.
The fundamental physics don’t change — the bullet still receives the same initial energy from the burning propellant. What changes is how the remaining gas behaves after the bullet has been accelerated. This distinction is crucial to understanding why many assumptions about suppressors reducing range are incorrect.
Effect on Muzzle Velocity: The Surprising Truth
Contrary to popular belief, suppressors often slightly increase muzzle velocity rather than decrease it. This phenomenon occurs because the suppressor effectively extends the barrel length, allowing propellant gases to push on the bullet for a fractionally longer period.
Studies have documented velocity increases of 10-30 feet per second with properly designed suppressors. These gains might seem minimal, but they directly contradict the notion that suppressors reduce a firearm’s effective range.
However, it’s worth noting that results can vary based on ammunition type. Subsonic ammunition, specifically designed for quiet shooting with suppressors, does travel slower than standard ammunition — but this is a property of the ammunition itself, not a limitation imposed by the suppressor.
The suppressor generally maintains or slightly enhances velocity when standard ammunition is used.
Impact on Accuracy and Precision
Suppressors often improve shot-to-shot consistency by regulating gas flow and reducing the disruptive effect of muzzle blast. The additional weight at the end of the barrel can also dampen barrel harmonics, particularly in lighter firearms.
Experienced shooters frequently report tighter groupings when using quality suppressors, especially at longer ranges where any improvement in consistency becomes magnified.
The added weight does change how a weapon is handled, requiring some adjustment to the shooting technique. For inexperienced shooters, this adjustment period might temporarily affect accuracy until they become accustomed to the altered balance.
This adaptation requirement sometimes leads to the misconception that the suppressor reduces accuracy or effective range.
Trajectory Considerations
Suppressors can improve a bullet’s trajectory. The slight increase in velocity changes the ballistic curve, typically resulting in a slightly flatter trajectory and potentially less wind drift. For precision shooters familiar with their unsuppressed weapon’s ballistics, this change necessitates re-zeroing optics and possibly creating new data cards for various distances.
The weight of the suppressor may also affect barrel harmonics and potentially the point of impact. Once measured, this shift is usually consistent and predictable, allowing shooters to compensate accordingly. Far from reducing range, these adjustments often enable more precise long-distance shooting once properly calibrated.
Practical Considerations for Shooters
When evaluating suppressors for any firearm, shooters should consider several practical factors beyond just sound reduction. Quality suppressors from reputable manufacturers are designed to minimize point-of-impact shift and maximize performance. Materials matter significantly—titanium and stainless steel offer different weight and heat resistance balances.
The mounting system deserves careful consideration as well. Quick-detach systems provide versatility but may introduce slight variations in alignment.
Direct-thread suppressors typically perform consistently but take longer to install or remove. This choice affects not just convenience but potentially long-term accuracy as well.
Conclusion: Setting Expectations Correctly
When used with appropriate ammunition, suppressors do not reduce a firearm’s effective range.
In fact, they often slightly enhance ballistic performance while providing significant benefits in sound reduction, recoil management, and shooting comfort.
The myths surrounding these devices largely stem from Hollywood and media portrayals and misunderstandings about their mechanical function.
Why do they make the ends of a suppressor look like a chicken’s but hole?
“….suppressors often slightly increase muzzle velocity rather than decrease it. …”
There’s that myth again and one I have pointed out before.
Simply put, the below: Muzzle velocity is the speed of a bullet with respect to the muzzle at the moment it leaves the end of a gun’s barrel.
When it leaves the end of the barrel muzzle velocity is done. All the ‘propelling’ energy a bullet will ever have at that muzzle velocity moment in time when the bullet leaves the barrel is all its ever going to be due to muzzle velocity, period. You can not increase muzzle velocity by putting a supressor on the rifle, it would be a violation of the laws of physics (i.e. conservation of energy and a few others) for it to do so. If it were possible we would have time travel and faster than light space travel. You can not add back (or subtract) energy to an event that has already happend in the past – the muzzle velocity energy has already happend when the bullet enters the supressor, the muzzle velocity energy is in the past.
The (sometimes) ‘slightly increased’ velocity effect on a bullet leaving the suppressor is not due to a supressor ‘increasing muzzle velocity’.
And the same is true for a decrease in ‘muzzle velocity’ as a suppressor does not cause that either.
Correction for: “You can not add back (or subtract) energy to an event that has already happend in the past…”
Should have been…
You can not add back or add to (or subtract) energy to or for an energy event or instance that has already happend in the past …
Correction for: “You can not increase muzzle velocity by putting a supressor on the rifle,…”
“rifle” should have been ‘firearm’ as the same is true for pistols as well.
Allow me to join the nit picking.
You are technically correct, but only in a very specific sense. You are correct that adding a device to the muzzle will have no effect on projectile velocity at the specific point of the muzzle. Unless you add a slug of mud or some other blockage, in which case you have other things to worry about.
However, the phrase “muzzle velocity” is generally accepted in the shooting world to mean projectile velocity as measured a short distance from the muzzle. 10 feet seems to be a common distance. The average youtuber doesn’t have the necessary equipment for measuring muzzle velocity as the term apparently is used in your world.
Far be it from me to prefer looser, fiddle faddle language, but loosen up, dude. That being said, consider a question, from a soft sciences guy to a hard sciences guy. Can swapping suppressors or other muzzle devices affect velocity 10 feet from the muzzle, with other variables being equal?
“You are technically correct, but only in a very specific sense. You are correct
I didn’t say “that adding a device to the muzzle will have no effect on projectile velocity at the specific point of the muzzle.”
I said “The (sometimes) ‘slightly increased’ velocity effect on a bullet leaving the suppressor is not due to a supressor ‘increasing muzzle velocity’.” (which I explained in my original post)
This was the myths claim: “….suppressors often slightly increase muzzle velocity rather than decrease it. …”
It is a myth that “….suppressors often slightly increase muzzle velocity rather than decrease it. …”
Do they sell suppressors for spears that are used in conjunction with a magic helmet? It’s not the spear that causes the noise. It’s the north winds blowing, the south winds blowing, the thunder roars, the lightening strikes… that cause the noise.
You know what, disregard. I probably don’t need a suppressor for rabbit hunting….
Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit. Huh huh huh uh!
Ah. Good old Warner Brothers and Looney Tunes. They don’t make cartoons like that any more. The writers, directors, illustrators, voice talent, and orchestral arrangements were pure genius. They were/are so good that they still appeal to the current generation today.
I wish .22 Shorts were cheaper.
You know, it’s weird. Supply and demand, I suppose. Take your average 22LR range ammo, like Remington Thunderbolts, can be had for 4-5 cents per cartridge. The price goes up for more powerful versions, and it also goes up for less powerful versions. 22 Colibri runs 10 cents or more apiece, if you can find it, and the standard Colibri is just priming compound and a 20 grain bullet, about as light a load as you can get. The Super Colibri, with it’s super hot load of .25 grain of powder (that’s 1/4 grain) under that same slug, is running 40 cents a pop right now. Go figure.