hedgeless_horseman's E-Z Internet Way to Buy a Can

The Bride: I have vermin to kill.

Hattori: You must have big rats if you need Hattori Hanzo's steel.

The Bride: Huge.

Much like many if not most humans, our barn cats have become so fat and lazy, most likely from being fed processed food by our neighborhood cat lady, that they have lost any desire to hunt or kill.  My bride, mrs_horseman, does not like having rats in her barn as they carry disease and eat our grain, despite our best defenses.  I don't like them because the females make nests in the wet wall between the shower stall and tack room, where they gnaw pinholes in the copper pipe to create a convenient drinking-water faucet for their litters, and therefore plumbing work for me. Thank God for SharkBite push-to-connect couplings, or else I would have burnt down the barn by now trying to sweat copper, one of the skills I never mastered.

One day, after her continued failure to starve our lazy barn cats into a feeding frenzy, mrs_horseman had had enough of all this, and I received a call from her while I was at work holding a meeting in my conference room, and as I often do when she calls, I said to the other attendees, "It's my wife.  Let me put her on speaker, as it is usually quite interesting when she calls."  

mrs_horseman: I am sick of these rats.  Which gun should I use to kill them?

h_h: Hello, darling.  Please do NOT use your carry pistol.  The rounds will go right through the rats, through the barn, and probably through whatever is outside the barn, like one of your horses, God forbid. 

mrs_horseman: I know that.  It's the 4th Rule of gun safety.  That is why I am calling you.  Which gun should I use to kill them?

h_h: Please wait until I get home, darling, and I will get you set up with the S&W .22 revolver we use for dispatching raccoons, possums, skunks, and armadillos, but we'll load it with rat shot instead of hollow points.  We'll let you see how large the shot pattern is, and do a simple penetration test, before you potentially ventilate our lovely wood barn along with the rats.   

mrs_horseman: OK, but hurry home, because I want to kill them now!  

h_h: Of course, my love.  See you soon.  

The CCI rat shot did not penetrate even the thinnest parts of the barn, and even if it could, the 1/15th oz of #12 shot at 1,000 FPS from the pistols 1" barrel does not carry enough energy to damage anything too expensive outside.  I reiterated the requirement that she wear her eye and ear protection, and avoid shooting targets with a background of anything other than the barn's wood, the ground, or empty pasture.  Now, she waited for nightfall, because as Newt said in Aliens, "They mostly come at night...mostly."  

For a week or two things seemed to be going okay for The Great White Huntress.  Some nights I would be reading in bed and hear a soft pop, or two, from the S&W, but that is about it.  A few times, at breakfast eating our yard eggs, I received reports of a confirmed kill.  However, mrs_horseman was clearly not satisfied.  She explained that in the dark she couldn't see the iron sights on the old revolver nor the rats very well, and if she turned on the lights in the barn they all quickly scurried away.  One thing the_bride knows about night ops is the importance of light discipline.  I reminded her how she had been taught to toggle a Streamlight Polytac on and off with her support hand.  She said she had been trying that, had found it to be very, "fidgety," and wanted to know why she did not have a weapon mounted light and red dot sight on a .22 like she does on her FN 5.7?  Good question.

Well, the next thing I know, I am ordering an FN 502 with a Trijicon RMR Type 2 LED and Streamlight TLR-2 to match the setup on her 5.7, and I notice it comes with or without a threaded barrel, and that FN is now selling a titanium suppressor for it, the Catch-22.  Now, I know that I probably do not want to run the plastic ratshot shells through a suppressor.  I also know that in addition to its $500+ price there is another $200+ in taxes and fees.  Nevertheless, I do start to rationalize...I mean think ...that there are many excellent reasons I might want to have a .22 suppressor for the 502, that would also screw right on to my .22 bolt rifle with a 1/2" x 28 threaded barrel.  

1. Concern for our neighbors' right to quiet enjoyment (ignoring that they are far enough away that they probably cannot even hear an unsuppressed subsonic .22 round)
2. Protection of my own and innocent bystanders' hearing (ignoring that a pair of inexpensive shooting earmuffs does this very well)
3. The SHTF and we are WROL and some big rats...huge...need killing without making too much noise (BINGO!)

So, I do the rational thing, and order the 502 Tactical model, with the threaded barrel, the Catch 22 suppressor, and a stainless steel guide rod to replace the shitty plastic one that comes with it.  A week later, after a couple hours of fun at the local private range with mrs_horseman sighting in the RMR and familiarizing ourselves with the pistol, we returned home and I was almost immediately blessed with success.  I walked in the barn and lo and behold, four feet away on the floor, there was a rat eating some leftovers in front of the stanchion where I was milking our cow that morning.  I slapped in a magazine of the ratshot, ran the slide, placed the red dot on his little head, disengaged the thumb safety, slowly pinned the trigger, and one shot-one kill.  Real sniper stuff.  MALE Magazine will probably want to write an article about it with a Mort Kunstler illustration for the cover.  Until then, here is a photo of me and the beast.

Now, for those ZH readers that may have never purchased a suppressor, you might be intimidated.  Fear not!  Please allow me to very briefly walk you through hedgeless_horseman's E-Z Internet Way to Buy a Can:  

HOW TO BUY A SUPPRESSOR IN 5 SIMPLE STEPS

1. Purchase a Silencer
2. Complete Your Silencer Shop Profile
3. Sign the Electronic Document
4. Create an ATF eForms Account
5. Ready to Certify and Submission to the ATF

I have had very good experiences with Silencer Shop, a Texas company.  It is a good idea to choose their Single Shot Easy NFA Gun Trust, so you can easily have friends and family share ownership.  Start with just your name on the trust, and these days it should get approved in about a week or two.  It is simple to add others later after your tax stamp gets approved and you can take possession of the suppressor.  It's that easy for anyone who lives in the 42 states where silencers are legal.  It is even easier if you live close to one of the gun dealers with a Silencer Shop Kiosk.  

However, before you buy one, please understand that, in my humble opinion, suppressors are definitely NOT a must have item.  They add unnecessary weight - made worse by being at the end of a lever arm.  They add unnecessary length - an especially bad thing when attempting extremely-difficult high-level CQB tactics such as opening a fucking door and walking through it.  They usually reduce the reliability of semiautomatic firearms and increase their maintenance burden.  They almost always add your name and data to yet another stupid fed.gov list.  And maybe most importantly, they don't really silence a firearm very well, unless paired with subsonic ammunition that often causes stoppages in semiautomatics, and in most situations they don't really function as a flash suppressor any better than a simple A2 birdcage. 

So why would I buy a can?  Mostly because I like to be able to a shoot vermin and other targets at home with cheap ammo and without much chance of anyone knowing it. 

And in addition to these paper targets in a bullet trap and rats in the barn, we also have tree rats, aka squirrels, that love to strip the bark off the branches of the many big and beautiful oaks that God has blessed us with, killing the limbs and sometimes the whole tree. I know of no better way to economically relocate a tree rat's soul to Varmint Valhalla than with my Springfield Model 2020 bolt action rifle, a Leupold scope, FN Catch 22 suppressor, and CCI's subsonic hollow points.  Any nosy neighbor or passers by are none the wiser.  As the guy in this video illustrates, a suppressed .22 bolt rifle with subsonic ammunition is quieter than a stapler.

But wait, there's more!  Although the soul may go to heaven, the body goes to the table.  Dinner.  As my longtime ZH readers know, there is no better 100% organic chili meat than free-range squirrel. 

Paired with my homemade jalapeno cornbread, habanero hot sauce from our garden, plus a St. Margarita to wash it down.   Yes, beans, as I am not a native Texan.  Bon appétit!

Peace, love, prosperity, and liberty,

h_h