The Keefe Report: An Integrally Suppressed Ruger 10/22 Barrel—From the Factory

A couple of years ago during a meeting with top Ruger product managers, I suggested that, as nice as the then new Silent-SR was, what about the millions of Ruger 10/22 and Mark series pistol owners already out there? What about them? Most .22s with “Sturm, Ruger & Co.” rollmarked on their barrels do not have threaded muzzles to accept suppressors. Well, Ruger has addressed at least a large subset of 10/22 owners.

I regard the Ruger 10/22 Takedown as one of man's more useful contrivances of the past 20 years. It just got better. Ruger has announced a factory integrally suppressed barrel for the Ruger 10/22 Takedown called the Silent-SR ISB (ISB stands for “Integrally Suppressed Barrel”). And Ruger's testing indicates that the Silent-SR ISB drops the report from standard velocity .22 Long Rifle down to 113.2 dB—well within an ear safe range. All while maintaining the handy overall length of a 10/22 with a 16” barrel.

Once legally acquired (this is an NFA item after all), all one has to do is remove the original barrel from your 10/22 Takedown and attach the 16.12” long barrel, suppressor and fore-end assembly. At present, for Byzantine internal accounting reasons, Ruger is not selling the gun and suppressor together, but at a retail price of $649, it’s not a huge spend for the ISB accessory barrel. The cold-hammer-forged barrel, according to Ruger, has an induction hardened breech.

While the ISB has an overall length of 16.12”, only 10.62” is actual barrel—the rest is suppressor and housing. When you look at it, the ISB appears to be a 10/22 with an oversize tubular magazine or perhaps even an over-under 10/22 paying homage to the, sniff, sniff, now-discontinued Red Label. The suppressor guts six “pushed-cone” baffles looking a bit like figure-eights that extend ahead of and below the barrel, too. Ruger materials say they are “frenched” into the fore-end. The 17–4 stainless baffles are inside a Cerakoted housing.

The whole thing is held together by a 5/32” hex screw (tool supplied) and disassembly is a snap. Simply take the barrel off in the conventional manner, turn out the retaining screw, and the whole thing comes apart, baffles, spacer, sleeve and front cap. One of the bugaboos of integrally suppressed .22 barrels has been difficulty of cleaning. That's obviously not an issue here.

And if you don’t think this is a big deal, I suggest you have not attempted to clean the inside of an integrally suppressed .22 barrel often. Typically, they are very hard to get out and get to, and when you do manage to get in there, you find something akin to runoff from the La Brea Tar Pits. At the bottom of an ultrasonic cleaner one time, I was pretty sure we were going to find the remains of a smilodon fatalis.

When we tested the 10/22 Takedown, we found the return to zero claims were spot on. Ruger says you can remove the Silent-SR ISB and not have a change in zero. Odds are there may be a different point of impact between suppressed and regular barrels, but we won't know that until we receive one for testing. As a majority block of the Rifleman staff owns 10/22 Takedowns, including Charger Takedown pistols, I imagine there will be a lot of rock-paper-scissors to determine who tests the Ruger Silent-SR IBS.