Silencer Saturday #354: SHOT Show 2025 Predictions

Welcome back to another edition of Silencer Saturday. Last week we took a closer look at the SilencerCo Velos LBP. This week we will be talking about what we may see from the silencer world at SHOT Show 2025. Both the blog and TFBtv teams are gearing up for our full coverage of the upcoming event, and I have a few guesses about trends and new products we may see.

Silencer Saturday @ TFB:

Silencer Saturday #351: The DIY De Lisle Silencer Saturday #350: New Direct Thread Gemtech Silencers Silencer Saturday #349: Angstadt Arms Prophet Integral Silencer Silencer Saturday #348: Suppressing The Uz i

Low-Cost Options

One area where we may see some new action is in the budget-priced tier. With ATF Form 4 approval times dropping to as little as one day, buying a silencer is not as much of a time or opportunity investment as it once was. It can even be more of an impulse purchase for potential buyers. I cannot count the number of times I have explained silencers and the applicable laws to a customer, but once we got to the topic of waiting many months or a year for approval the sale was dead. Why buy something today if you will have to wait for months and months to actually take it home? But now that turnaround times are measured in days for many transfers, buying a suppressor on a whim makes more sense.

Another scenario where short wait times and more affordable silencers could work together would be making silencers a point-of-sale add-on. Much like adding an optic or quality weapon light, adding on an inexpensive, dedicated silencer makes more sense when approvals are fast. Direct thread mounts also make sense in that use case as there is less need to move the suppressor between host guns.

In either of these cases, there is still the hurdle of a $200 tax stamp. That’s still a fair amount of money, even if the suppressor is cheaper. But if the underlying suppressor is less expensive the total cost of admission can be lower even with the stamp included. And maybe, just maybe, that would be enough.

Even More Additive Manufacturing

Traditional manufacturing methods are generally “subtractive” in nature. A piece of metal is machined down into another shape by cutting away portions of the raw material. In contrast, additive manufacturing (aka 3D printing) builds up layers of material to create a solid piece without cutting anything away.

This new type of manufacturing has some very interesting applications in the silencer world. Rather than the old way of making baffle stacks, which were more or less washers welded into an outer tube, additive manufacturing allows for complicated structures that would be difficult (or even impossible) to make with other processes.

2025 will not be the first time we see additive manufacturing in suppressors, but I would hazard a guess that we will see even more of it than in prior years. I also think some of that progress will be in new and interesting ways of using the tech, like the PTR Vent silencer. Rather than being truly solid, the Vent is manufactured with intentional porosity in the material. That allows gasses to flow through the inside of the silencer in new ways. Testing on the Vent has shown a lot of promise, and that is only one creative approach to making suppressor innards.

So what else might we see with additive manufacturing? Possibly new materials, or maybe a new idea for more efficiently slowing down all those rapidly-expanding gasses. I am very curious what other new and original ideas we will see with this manufacturing technique at SHOW Show.

Reduced Backpressure Options

Finally, I would be surprised if we don’t see more silencers with improved flow characteristics, particularly from bigger manufacturers. Once again, designs with reduced backpressure are not a new thing. Companies like HuxWrx, B&T, SilencerCo, and PTR have all introduced silencers that cut down on backpressure, with its attendant fouling and heat. Cutting out backpressure helps the host gun run more like it does without a silencer, too, so it can allow for suppressing guns that do not play nice with suppressors.

This is already a design trend, but I think it will continue to expand this year. Look for both more manufacturers offering this kind of suppressor and for new ways of achieving this goal. Perhaps some of these will roll all three of my predictions into one, with a budget, 3d-printed low backpressure suppressor being the star of the show!

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