How I test gear

I review suppressors, optics and other shooting gear. The reviews are published on NFA Watch; this page is the method they follow. It uses the same measurements and the same analysis as the free ladder test tool on this site, so anyone can check a result the way I checked it.

The accuracy test

• At least three 5-shot groups for each item or configuration being judged, at a stated distance, from a stated rest.
• The average group size and the spread between groups are reported, never only the best group. A single best group says what happened once; three groups say how much of it was luck.
• Each group is measured center to center (group size, height and width), with calipers on paper or from an electronic target, and the review says which.
• When two things are compared, a difference smaller than the disagreement between repeat groups of the same thing is reported as no measurable difference, not as a winner.
• A shot I believe I pulled, or that a gust caught, stays in the numbers and is marked as a called flyer. A target that doesn’t measure the gear, such as one another shooter’s bullet landed in, is left out and the review says so.
• The review states the distance and the conditions that could have mattered. When a chronograph is used, velocity statistics come from the shots actually fired, with the shot count stated.

Some things can’t be tested in a loan period or at a given range, such as long-range tracking or thousands of rounds of durability. When something wasn’t tested, the review says so plainly rather than filling the gap with an opinion.

The raw numbers

When practical, every group behind a review is published as a CSV file. It opens in the ladder test tool, which recomputes the averages, the spread and the comparison above from the raw measurements. Some tests don’t produce measurable groups (a reliability or fit check, for example), and then there is no file to publish.

How each item was acquired

Every review states how the gear came to me, using exactly one of these four sentences:

Bought it

I bought this at full retail with my own money. Nobody gave it to me and nobody was asked.

Bought at a discount

I bought this at a discount the manufacturer offered me. I paid for it, but not what you would pay.

Provided free

The manufacturer provided this free of charge for review. They saw no part of this page before it published, and nothing here was subject to their approval.

On loan

The manufacturer loaned this to me for review and it goes back. They saw no part of this page before it published, and nothing here was subject to their approval.

A loaned item goes back at the end of the loan. Under U.S. rules, gear that was provided or loaned is a material connection, which is why the disclosure sits on the review itself and not only on this page.

What a review never does

• Publish a charge weight or a handload recipe. Load data belongs to the published manuals.
• Report only the best group, or call a difference smaller than the noise a result.
• Let a manufacturer see or approve a review before it publishes.

The limits, stated up front

This is one shooter’s testing, not a lab. Three groups is enough to show how much a result varies, not enough to settle small differences. Reviews written before this page was published (October 2026) state their own round counts and distances, and some predate the three-group minimum.

For gear recommendations, see the kit list. For how this site handles data and commissions, see privacy, terms and disclosure.