{"id":24,"date":"2006-12-11T02:56:28","date_gmt":"2006-12-11T02:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/consumermaven.wordpress.com\/2006\/12\/11\/target-pistol-browning-buck-mark-22-with-gemtech-outback-ii-suppressor\/"},"modified":"2020-01-04T19:02:24","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T00:02:24","slug":"target-pistol-browning-buck-mark-22-with-gemtech-outback-ii-suppressor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/2006\/12\/target-pistol-browning-buck-mark-22-with-gemtech-outback-ii-suppressor\/","title":{"rendered":"Target Pistol: Browning Buck Mark .22 with Gemtech Outback-II Suppressor"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Browning<\/a>Quality .22 ammunition is under $.03\/round and offers both negligible recoil and great accuracy.\u00a0 Which makes it the ideal cartridge for target training.<\/p>\n

Of course, since it’s hazardous to shoot a gun without a suppressor<\/a>, you will probably want to buy a pistol that can be easily adapted to use a suppressor.\u00a0 I actually shopped for my suppressor first.<\/p>\n

Suppressor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Given the hassle and cost in acquiring a suppressor, I figured it would be wise to get a removable (threaded) can in case I wanted to use it on different guns.\u00a0 Which made this\u00a0an easy choice: The current standard in removable baffle .22 suppressors is the $300\u00a0Gemtech Outback-II<\/a>.\u00a0 As with any “Class III” NFA<\/a>\u00a0device, you have to pay an extra $200 to the feds and wait months for the BATFE<\/a> to review your fingerprints and transfer application.\u00a0 And if you live in one of the sixteen states that forbid\u00a0private ownership of suppressors<\/a>, all\u00a0you can do\u00a0right now is petition\u00a0your government to stop\u00a0restraining\u00a0your right to own this safety\u00a0accessory.<\/p>\n

Gun<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lot of people buy Walther P22’s, which cheaply and easily accommodate a threaded end for attaching a suppressor.\u00a0 But after reading some\u00a0reviews criticizing\u00a0the accuracy and trigger on that model, I decided to step up to either a Ruger Mark III or Browning Buck Mark.\u00a0 And between these two the deciding factor was the following: The Ruger design integrates the receiver with the barrel, which means that the barrel itself falls under all of the federal firearms restrictions, and therefore any replacement threaded barrel would have to be purchased through a FFL dealer.\u00a0 In contrast,\u00a0the Buck Mark barrels completely detach from the gun so they aren’t regulated.<\/p>\n

I bought a Buck Mark Camper \u2013 the model with the cheapest barrel I could find \u2013 for $275.\u00a0 Then I paid another $200 for a 4″\u00a0aluminum-clad “Trail-Lite” barrel with a threaded end, from Tactical Solutions<\/a>.\u00a0 I could have instead paid $100 to have Gemtech (or many other gunsmiths) thread the original barrel, but the Trail-Lite has the distinct advantage of significantly reducing the weight forward of the trigger, so that gun stays\u00a0very balanced even with the silencer hanging off the front.<\/p>\n

I was originally thinking of getting a longer barrel to increase accuracy.\u00a0 The problem is that longer barrels increase muzzle velocity.\u00a0 Regular .22s\u00a0shoot right\u00a0around the speed of sound, and as soon as a bullet breaks the sound barrier it adds a “sonic crack” to the sound signature, which a suppressor cannot control.\u00a0 The goal with this gun is to keep the bullet subsonic, and my final configuration delivers: I chronographed dozens of\u00a0Federal 40gr Champion High Velocity\u00a0rounds at just over 1000fps, with a stdev of just 7fps.\u00a0 (The speed of sound in standard atmospheric conditions is 1100fps.)\u00a0 And in the end,\u00a0this setup seems to be as accurate as a shooter can be with conventional notch-and-post sights.<\/p>\n

In order to enhance indoor, low-light shooting I upgraded the standard black front sight post\u00a0with a $30\u00a0HiViz fiber sight<\/a>.\u00a0 It stands taller than the regular sight, but still within the range of the standard rear sight’s adjustment.\u00a0 For practicing at home I bought a $50\u00a0“Do-All Bullet Box<\/a>“, which reliably\u00a0traps .17 and .22 rimfire bullets.\u00a0 I shoot only in my garage, and would seriously recommend against shooting in living spaces: .22 bullets are typically\u00a0unjacketed balls of soft lead, which spall when they impact anything, leaving shards\u00a0of lead everywhere.\u00a0 It’s easy to dump\u00a0this out of the bullet box, but some of it is going to be vaporized into\u00a0the air.\u00a0 Also, even though the suppressor traps most of the propellant gas that normally blasts out the muzzle, there is plenty of leakage out the ejection port and one can smell it\u00a0when I’m done shooting in the garage.<\/p>\n

The gun itself is a pleasure to shoot.\u00a0 It has nice beefy grips (though these would not be well suited to shooters with smaller hands), and a light, crisp trigger with minimal travel and reset.\u00a0 The magazines can be painful to load without a $4\u00a0speedloader<\/a>, so be sure to pick one up.<\/p>\n

Shortcomings<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Browning<\/a>This is the hardest gun I have to clean, which is a shame because it’s also the cheapest to shoot, and also because\u00a0unjacketed .22 rimfire seems to be the dirtiest ammunition this side of black powder.\u00a0 Cleaning requires unscrewing two screws and dislodging the recoil spring from the rear post and then the plastic firing-pin assembly\u00a0from the slide.\u00a0 None of these steps are\u00a0easy to do.\u00a0 And you’re still left with that rear post on the frame, which prevents you from easily cleaning the barrel from the breach end without undoing a third screw to completely remove it.\u00a0 (And I read reviews that said\u00a0this is easier to clean than a Ruger!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quality .22 ammunition is under $.03\/round and offers both negligible recoil and great accuracy.\u00a0 Which makes it the ideal cartridge for target training. Of course, since it’s hazardous to shoot a gun without a suppressor, you will probably want to buy a pistol that can be easily adapted to use a suppressor.\u00a0 I actually shopped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arms"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/po3d1-o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1732,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24\/revisions\/1732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/david.bookstaber.com\/Interests\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}