Silencer Saturday #348: Suppressing The Uzi

Welcome back to another edition of Silencer Saturday. This week we are looking at how to suppress the Uzi submachine gun. The Uzi is a legend, in part for its longevity. It entered service in 1954 and continues to soldier on around the globe. But with that age come some idiosyncrasies for suppressor use.

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Disclaimer: Silencers are highly regulated in the United States. Be sure you know and understand the applicable laws before you work in this space.

Dedicated Silencers

The Uzi was designed in the post-World War Two era. It is a simple, rugged, open-bolt submachine gun that prioritizes reliability over creature comforts. It also dates from an era when attaching accessories to a gun was the exception rather than the rule that it is today.

Uzi users had the choice of a wooden stock or a folding metal stock, and 25- or 32-round magazines. There was no provision for adding optics or muzzle devices. But subguns beg to be suppressed, and various companies figured out ways to make it work. Uzis remain one of the most popular transferrable machine guns, and there is domestic demand for compatible silencers.

The simplicity of the Uzi extends tot he barrel, which is held in place by a ratcheting screw. This is not a gun that needs a gunsmith to change barrels! This makes it easy to swap barrels, and it also provides a set of threads near the barrel that can be used to mount a silencer. Several suppressor designs have used the threaded barrel nut as an attachment point.

GSL currently sells one such suppressor, the Jericho. It is 10.7 inches long and fits the standard Uzi as well as the Mini Uzi. A separate model is also available for the Micro Uzi. The Jericho retails for $721. The old Gemtech’s Mossad Uzi silencer shares a lot of DNA with the Jericho.

Bowers Group does not sell a dedicated Uzi suppressor but does have an adapter that replaces the Uzi barrel nut. It is compatible with various Bowers suppressors.

Another Approach

My family gun trust includes a transferrable Uzi, and setting it up to run a silencer was one of the first orders of business upon acquisition. But rather than purchasing an Uzi-specific silencer, we decided to set the gun up to operate with the silencers already in our possession.

These days, muzzle threads are the standard mounting method for almost all silencers. Uzi barrels are easy to swap, requiring only the removal of the barrel nut. Rather than sending out the original barrel to be threaded, we bought another threaded barrel. Two is one, and one is none, right? But a standard-length barrel is so standard. Instead of the standard 10.2-inch barrel, we went with the 8.6-inch “FBI” barrel from Pike Arms. I am unsure why they call this an FBI barrel, when it was most prominently used by the US Secret Service in the 1980s.

This shorter barrel puts the muzzle threads just in front of the barrel nut. This barrel has 1/2×28 threads, and at this point we could add pretty much any suppressor via direct thread mount. One point of caution though, many pistol caliber silencers have booster assemblies that improve reliabiltiy on tilting barrel handguns. It is a good idea to disable the booster when used on a fixed barrel gun like an Uzi.

As an aside on Uzi reliability, this gun had some ejection/extraction issues when we first bought it. With ammunition below 147 grains, it would hiccup once in a while. I stripped the gun down to see what the issue could be and discovered it did not have an extractor! This was not a case of a worn extractor or bent ejector, there was no extractor at all in the bolt. The fact that it still was mostly functional though it was missing an important part shows that these guns were made to work when things were going wrong.

Back to Silencers

Rather than using a direct thread mounting system, I opted for a 3-lug mount. This attachment method is fast and simple, and does not work loose while shooting. The SilencerCo 3-lug mount looks fairly similar to the standard barrel as well. But with the lugs sitting at the rear (rather than up front like muzzle threads) the suppressor sits close to the gun.

A side benefit of running a suppressor is an increased rate of fire. A full-size Uzi has a slow rate of fire, but the added backpressure speeds up the cycling. This effect is more pronounced with a larger-volume suppressor. Faster cyclic rates may not be practical, but they are very fun, particularly suppressed.

Here’s some detail photos of the set up:

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