Griffin Armament: Behind The Brand

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We sat down with Griffin Armament’s Marketing Director, Benjamin Kubek, to talk about the company, the industry and suppressors.

LH: It’s obvious that Griffin Armament is more than just another manufacturer trying to hop on the suppressor and AR bandwagon. How do you differentiate your brand in the marketplace?

BK: Griffin Armament is the manifestation of the American Dream, and we’ve been in business for more than 20 years. Our focus has always been suppressors, but we have been manufacturing our MK1 Rifles in-house for over 10 years, and our full-ambi line of MK2s for around 3 years. In short, we are not new to the AR game.

LH: How and when did the company get it’s start? Who was instrumental in the early days?

BK: Griffin was started in 2005 by two Wisconsin brothers, Austin and Evan Green. Both were active-duty Army snipers who later contracted with the State department, Triple Canopy and SOC, serving multiple deployments during the Global War on Terror. After transitioning to contract work and starting Griffin Armament, the brothers would trade off working in the Griffin machine shop, cutting parts and building products, while the other was overseas—they built the company with little more than blood, sweat, and tears, refusing to take outside investment in an effort to retain full control of the company they were building.

LH: What founding principles define what Griffin brings to the consumer?

BK: Griffin Armament has a strong commitment to making innovative products that solve real-world problems—and products that just plain work. We strive to sell them at as low a price as possible to the freedom-loving gun owner in America. Every product we make is an answer to an issue we see people having, and we do everything we can to get it in the hands of people at a great price.

LH: And how about today? Have things changed since the doors first opened?

BK: We’ve seen a lot of growth in the past 5-10 years. What started with two brothers and a dream has grown into a complete armament company with close to 100 employees and more than 900 unique products. Griffin recently completed a 40,000 sq-ft facility expansion at our Watertown, Wisconsin, manufacturing headquarters to expand our capabilities. For the first 10 years and continuing to this day, the company poured every cent of profit back into the company: purchasing new machines, hiring a talented workforce, and innovating and improving our product offerings.

LH: The Griffin tagline is “Engineered Silence.” What is Griffin doing, technologically, to differentiate its products in the marketplace?

BK: We don’t spend a lot of money on marketing and prefer to re-invest our profits into research and development, new processes and technologies, and ideas that move the firearm and suppressor industry forward. We are a silencer brand first and foremost, and that bleeds into how we make our rifles and our other product lines.

We keep all our processes in-house, allowing us to rapidly prototype and improve products at a pace many other companies can’t achieve, and we are always looking for every ounce of performance we can squeeze out of every single product. During our 20-year history, Griffin has pioneered numerous sound suppressor technologies and innovations that are now ubiquitous in the suppressor space, including tubeless suppressors, modular-length pistol suppressors, integral tri-lug mounts, universal multi-caliber suppressors, and even 3D printed suppressors—something we showed to the public in 2009. We have been at the cutting edge of suppressor design since our inception, and that continues today.

LH: Griffin offers a plethora of suppressor-mounting options. What advice do you offer the consumer to choose the best mounting option for them?

BK: Direct-thread mounting is the cheapest and simplest system, but it’s also the most issue-prone. It’s slow to put on and take off the firearm, and it’s prone to loosening during courses of fire—thus losing alignment with the bore and creating a high risk for baffle strikes.

Taper Mount is a step up. This system is extremely simple but does require a taper-mount muzzle device installed to the barrel. Once you have that piece in place, it’s as easy as screwing in a lightbulb. The improved threads make the can go on much faster and retain alignment better, while the taper interface vastly increases retention of the suppressor by fighting the natural urge for the suppressor to loosen up under courses of fire. This is also one of the most accurate, and lightweight systems available offering very low POI shift due to the natural forcing of alignment to the bore by the taper interface. Taper mount is ideal for users looking for a simple, yet secure, system that is highly accurate and not too expensive.

Dual-Lok is built to eliminate unintended loosening of the suppressor. We have never seen a Dual-Lok suppressor come loose when used properly. Dual-Lok has an integral taper and has an active-locking collar that engages with splines on the rear of the muzzle device that locks the suppressor in place when actuated. It has no metal-on-metal ratcheting parts and is wear-free.

Gate-Lok allows the user to attach a suppressor to any mil-spec, colt-pattern A2 birdcage, by locking the suppressor into the BFA groove on those types of muzzle devices. It’s incredibly versatile, extremely fast and can be installed and removed one-handed faster than you can say “Wow, that’s pretty cool!” This system is ideal for anyone looking for the most QD offering, or a system that doesn’t require proprietary muzzle devices.

Our integrated 3-lug mount is also an industry-first and improves on the classic tri-lug system most people know from the MP5 platform. This is an incredibly fast and secure system, ideally segmented for PCC-type applications.

Finally, we have EZ-Lok, which is a mini taper mount designed for handgun and PCC applications. It vastly increases suppressor retention and speed of installation over direct-thread options and creates a universal thread pitch across your host firearms, eliminating the need to swap out pistons or parts.

In summary, if you have a pistol, use EZ-Lok. Taper Mount is ideal for precision shooting, and the general user trying to keep cost down while improving performance. Dual-Lok is intended for the most discerning customers who aren’t willing to compromise on a mounting system. Gate-Lok is ideal for the shooter with ARs all equipped with A2’s and no desire to change that.

LH: Let’s talk a little about materials and manufacturing processes, such as additive manufacturing.

BK: Historically, we manufactured most of our suppressors out of 17-4 stainless-steel. We found this material had plenty of strength for the application while being relatively low cost and easy to machine, resulting in lower prices. You see a lot of materials being used today, like Inconel and Haynes 282, which are stronger materials in many ways but are also more expensive and harder to work with.

There seems to be a misconception that exotic suppressor materials are superior, and many consumers are willing to overpay to get it, when cheaper materials are more than sufficient for 99 percent of users. For instance, we ran a 17-4 stainless-steel can through a 17-mag full-auto dump in less than 6 minutes with zero issues, catastrophic failures or excessive wear.

Titanium is a material we dabbled in years ago and axed due to a list of negative attributes that make it less than ideal for sound suppressor applications. It’s expensive, difficult to machine and requires extreme levels of manufacturing control and inert gas shielding to keep the material from becoming brittle. From our perspective, titanium suppressors, if not made perfectly correctly, can be weak and introduce unnecessary levels of risk to the end user.

That being said, the future waits for no one, and when we brought additive manufacturing in-house, we decided to develop our own proprietary alloy to use for our 3D printed suppressors. This is the first metal alloy designed specifically for sound suppressor use, and we call it Nickel 625X. It’s 68 percent stronger than Inconel 625 at 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, has a 100-degree higher service temperature, higher corrosion resistance, rapid heat treat process, and is lighter. One of the biggest reasons we opted for our own material is heat treatment regimen. Alloys, like Inconel 625, require a lengthy and expensive heat treat process to achieve its stated strength metrics, whereas Nickel 625X can achieve higher strengths at significantly lower heat treatment cost and time.

LH: How does a shooter look at the Griffin product offerings and determine what’s right for them?

BK: We’ll use rifle suppressors as an example. With our additive lineup growing this year, that’s the first decision to make: Do you want an additive suppressor or a conventionally-machined can?

Once you’ve made that decision, choose a mounting system.

Then you need to decide what your priorities are. We have more than 60 unique models, and each one is geared toward a different type of shooter. If you’re a super hard shooter, you’d benefit from a beefed-up, low backpressure can such as the HRT-556 AM. If you’re suppressing a bolt gun or hunting rifle, a lighter suppressor, such as a Sportsman, EXPLORR or PSR, will keep barrel flex to a minimum with minimal point-of-impact change. If you are a competition long-range shooter, the PRC family features a brake in the end cap, allowing you to see bullet trace and splashes downrange. For general carbine usage, it’s hard to beat our managed backpressure Dual-Lok AM cans, whereas the Recce line is ideal for users desiring a more conventional baffle system, or on under-gassed guns where a little extra backpressure is beneficial.

LH: Like any firearms industry company, you must endure and balance external influences and factors. Which ones have impacted your brand the most?

BK: The three biggest for the gun industry are politics, manufacturing skillsets and the economy. Politicians are changing laws at a local and federal level, requiring constant attention to make sure we remain in legal compliance with the ATF. On top of this, things like tariffs and wars can further stretch companies thin by disrupting supply chains of critical components and materials. Lastly, America has sadly undervalued capable machinists and manufacturing. Many of these sectors were shipped overseas decades ago, so it’s sometimes hard to find well-qualified and highly skilled machine operators to produce products to the level of quality our customers demand.

LH: How would you describe the current state of the suppressor industry? Where do you see it going?

BK: As of January 2026, the ATF eliminated the $200 tax stamp fee on suppressors, which was a huge development. Suppressor demand went up overnight, and with that came a lot of new companies jumping on the bandwagon. It’s an exciting time to be in suppressors, but also the most competitive it’s ever been. Established brands, as well as smaller startup brands, are coming out with suppressors now, which has a notable impact on the market. The sector will continue to grow, and I think the long-running suppressor brands will do very well in the future as trusted names in the business. Smaller brands may struggle to compete, but overall competition breeds innovation, and we’ve been seeing that.

Also, it seems that additive manufacturing is the future of the industry. The advancements allowed by that technology are hard to ignore, and brands that don’t adopt it and use it to their benefit will likely struggle. Griffin has invested heavily into our in-house additive lab, which puts us in a good place to compete for the next 20 years and beyond.

LH: Technologically speaking, where does suppressor design go from here? What’s the next big thing?

BK: The big hurdle everyone is trying to figure out right now, and many are achieving (ourselves included), is how to combine low flash, low sound and super-low backpressure. In the past, you could typically pick two but couldn’t get all three. A few companies seem to be figuring it out, but that is the cutting edge of suppressor design right now.

I think our Dual-Lok 5 AM is one of the best examples currently available of a silencer that performs highly in all three of those metrics.

LH: With the optics and optic mount side of your business, has Griffin become a one-stop shop?

BK: We launched the optics line because we noticed an obvious hole in the market. We wanted to offer capable, feature-rich optics at a reasonable price for the average consumer. The reality is that most optics in the affordable range are made overseas, with U.S.-made units typically garnering a hefty price tag. This is out of the realm of possibility for many gun owners, and we felt offering these optics at a great rate would allow them to have more budget-to-buy quality, American-made firearms, parts and silencers.

LH: As it is with suppressors, most ARs tend to look a lot alike. What sets Griffin apart from others?

BK: Our ARs are designed from the viewpoint of a suppressor company, meaning every part and component is tuned and manufactured to sing when suppressed. Our buffer systems, gas ports, and bolt-carrier groups (BCG) are all enhanced to perform ideally suppressed, but also to be reliable and soft-shooting in the unsuppressed configuration. We offer many upgrades to the components to further enhance the shooter’s experience, such as our Gas Pocket BCGs designed to reduce port pop and gas to the shooter’s face, a two-position adjustable gas block, and two-stage triggers. Every part of the rifle is made in-house at Griffin Armament for a premium fit and finish, and colors can be customized during checkout.

LH: Anything else you want consumers to know about your company, your people and your products?

BK: Griffin might not have the same hype marketing strategy as a lot of brands, and that is partially because we hate it. We choose to let our products speak for themselves, and it’s hard to find people who aren’t impressed with our ARs and silencers once they get their hands on them. We have an incredibly low return/warranty rate, which is a testament to the pride and quality we pour into every product we produce. Our Perpetual Lifetime Warranty is the best in the business, so you can rest assured you will be taken care of—no matter what issue you’re having.

We hope you get the chance to experience our products, because we know you will be impressed.

Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in the July 2026 issue of Gun Digest the Magazine.

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