The hassle of getting a tax stamp forces the entire purchase of a suppressor into a drawn out timetable and completely negates it being an impulse purchase. A younger shooters money burns holes in his pockets and he won't wait.
The mature shooter looks over the whole mess and thinks 1) Public perception is negative, my buddies will think I'm some kind of operator wannabe, 2) I don't really shoot it that much, so I'll just wear muffs for 5% of that cost, 3) my spouse isn't likely to agree with that kind of money spent with discretionary funds, we need a new living room couch and a set of tires.
On the maker's end, they can charge what they like, Mercedes Benz does - about a 35% markup just because, and the decline in truck sales is hurting Detroit the same - their large markup is diminishing.
C'mon, Nike athletic shirts aren't really $25 better than Starter at Walmart. It's the swoosh. The suppressor owners are completely to blame for their support of high prices because they pay them. It's a well heeled niche market.
Making one? After the research is done, baffles could be stamped out on a CNC turret press by the thousands per shift. The dies aren't that expensive when you can punch 100,000 baffles in just a few weeks. Tubes would be a no brainer. Nobody lathes parts on CNC machines when you can cast, forge, or punch them and get a 100X increase in production for the same setup. The reason they do is because that's the least expensive method for the few they make - like billet AR receivers, their special custom fences and contours won't cover the cost of a set of forging dies - or they would do that.
Quantities are very important in choosing production method, you don't unreasonably pick the most expensive just because you think it's cool.
Let's consider a major fielding of suppressors - the Koreans are issuing one per soldier, 653,000 active, and supposedly getting one for every rifle. Much less the 3.2 million reserves.
Who's got that contract, what's the contract price? Maybe it's me, I suspect it's cheaper than we think on a per unit basis. As said, it takes very little in material costs to do it, the freeze plug and tube garage version can be done for less than $30 AT RETAIL MARKUP PRICING. Bulk cost of those parts is pennies.
Priced by the 100,000, I speculate you could do it for less than $45 each, add 200% for administration, overhead, labor, and profit. I doubt the bidders did that, they are a small community, and wouldn't give away the farm just to put their name on the side.
$45? Am I freaking kidding? Well, how much does the average stainless performance car muffler cost? Not retail, cost? They retail for less than $60, right, with 50% markup.Those have to reverse gas pulses to quieten down multiple discharges, and handle a huge flow rate, totally exposed to the environment, for a decade of use, and meet a legal standard. They do it in the tens of thousands per year - which is what it takes to get the cheap pricing.
Exactly what we see in Europe. It's not economics - it's about quantities justifying production costs. And we don't buy enough to make cheap ones.
If I had to make a living selling silencers, I would starve.) Respectfully, there is a bit of design and precise machining that goes into one, and it isn't banged out in a matter of minutes
