Conversations with Brandon Maddox, #1 : How Silencer Central Came to be

Brandon Maddox at Silencer Central, 2024 

Brandon Maddox and Silencer Central is an American success story. Brandon went from a Federal Firearms License  (FFL) in his home to the largest silencer dealer in the USA. Today, Brandon's companies dominate the silencer/suppressor market, regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA).

This correspondent met Brandon Maddox at the 2024 SHOT Show. Brandon had read several AmmoLand articles, recognized this writer, and started a conversation. Brandon graciously agreed to be interviewed. This is the first in a series of articles resulting from several interviews.

Brandon was born in Alabama. His father spent a tour in the Army after a Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) commission. Brandon was born in a Fort Rucker, Alabama hospital in 1972. Both sides of his family were born and raised in Alabama. His first shooting experience was on his uncle's farm with his uncle's .410. Brandon was eleven years old. They were looking for squirrels, and Brandon saw a snake going across his uncle's pond, and his uncle said "shoot it", so he did. He was hooked on guns and hunting.

He spent eleven years in Atlanta, Georgia when the family moved. Then they moved to a rural county in North Carolina.

Every summer he would stay with his grandfather in Alabama and spend quite a bit of time shooting Marlin .22 rifles, plinking and hunting local varmints.

He graduated at the top of his high school class of about 120 graduating seniors. This set a pattern for Brandon: Top of his class, top salesman, top sales manager, president of volunteer organizations. He met his wife at a pharmacy convention in DC. She is also a pharmacist. She is from South Dakota. His father-in-law, mother-in-law and father are also pharmacists.

In 2005, Brandon and his family moved to South Dakota to be closer to her family, as they were starting their own family. Today they have two daughters in high school. Brandon maintains pharmacy licenses in North Carolina, Florida, and South Dakota.

In South Dakota, Brandon found his wife's family were passionate about  firearms and hunting. Much of the hunting in South Dakota was for pheasants and varmints, such as prairie dogs and coyotes. Brandon became a passionate South Dakota varmint hunter.  He quickly learned prairie dogs don't keep showing themselves after a few gunshots take out their neighbors. Always working for improvement, he saw a suppressor displayed at a gun show. He thought it might help. He went through all the complicated paperwork to purchase a suppressor. It worked so well, he ran out of ammunition the first time he used it.  The process to obtain the suppressor was laborious and Byzantine. To streamline things, he obtained an FFL and a Special Occupational Tax (SOT) to deal, make, and sell silencers, so he wouldn't have to wait so long.  The forerunners of FFL123 and Silencer Central were established as Limited Liability Companies in late 2005, as he was applying to obtain the FFL and the SOT. The cost of the FFL with an SOT was over a thousand dollars a year.  He decided he had to sell some silencers to justify the cost of the license. His expertise in sales and marketing came into play.  Brandon's extremely successful sales career was foundational to the success of Silencer Central.

Brandon began selling silencers on the South Dakota gun show circuit. It was a part time affair, while he continued a stellar career in management of pharmaceutical sales. On the gun show circuit, he concentrated on learning about his customers, what they wanted and needed. Most silencer customers in South Dakota were hunters. The silencer market at the time was oriented toward a "tactical" image. 95% of the people encountered at gun shows thought silencers were illegal.

FFL123 was becoming a success at teaching people how to obtain an FFL from home. South Dakota Silencer (then Dakota Silencers) was gaining customers in South Dakota. Brandon was looking to expand his NFA business to North Dakota. Brandon believes a disgruntled employee in the pharmaceutical sales side contacted the corporate HQ in New Jersey. They were told: Do you know Brandon is selling silencers on the side?

Brandon was fired in 2009, as a "reputational risk".  His wife was not happy. He had just lost "the best job in South Dakota!" They had two young children. He was the number one sales manager in the company when he was fired. As a talented and proven manager and salesman, Brandon was quickly offered jobs in pharmaceutical sales and management.  He turned down a job which was better than his previous job. His wife lost it. She demanded he provide for the family. Brandon told his wife:

The feedback from my attorney is: You have to pick one or the other.  Either you do firearms or you do pharmaceuticals. All the pharmaceutical companies are pretty much based out of the North East, which are anti-firearms. You are not going to be able to do both. It will come back and bite you. You have to pick one and move forward.

Brandon picked the gun culture and NFA sales.  From Brandon:

In my mind, I said Obama is in office. If I can't make a firearms business work with Obama in office, I have bigger problems.

To transition, Brandon took a job managing a mail order pharmacy distribution company in Sioux Falls with the proviso: only 40 hours a week. Later, it was renegotiated to 20 hours, then none.

As Brandon was in the process of adding North Dakota to his silencer territory, he realized much of what he read about NFA regulation was confusing and contradictory. He hired a retired Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) manager, Wally Nelson,  who worked for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), to come to Sioux Falls and look at his operation. He wanted Wally to show him how to avoid problems and help his customers.  From Brandon:

"He (Nelson) did a magnificent  job of scaring the hell out of me, basically saying:

Nelson:  You are going to be in an orange jumpsuit if you don't figure out this bushiness. You can't rely on ATF to tell you how to run it and you can't rely on what you read which was written in the '30s. You just got to immerse yourself in this because you are not going to be able to grow your business and take it to the next level and continue to stay compliant where you are at without some more insight.

Brandon: So it created a sort of life learning. I want to know everything I can about NFA compliance. So if there is an ATF Meeting where ATF is at, and they are talking about NFA, I am officially on the front row. I take notes and my goal is to learn to think like them, because sometimes, I think it is open to their interpretation. Whether we like it or not, they kind of have a monopoly on interpreting the rules."

Brandon took it to the next level... and the next until Silencer Central now has FFL licenses in all 42 states where silencers are legal. Silencer Central will take care of you and make sure you are compliant as they do all the work, then mail the silencer to your door. Silencer Central and Brandon's corollary businesses such as FFL123 and Banish Silencers dominate the silencer market. Brandon says they are selling more than one third of the silencers made in the USA, over 150,000 silencers in 2023.

Brandon believes the NFA will be gone in 10 years, at least for silencers/suppressors. More in the next installment.

 

©2023 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

Gun Watch