I've heard great stuff about Kurt's Kustom and the work he does.  My only hesitation is it looks like it would take about a month or more for the work to be done (he seems pretty busy!).
Can local gunsmiths replace or even remove this muzzle brake and replace it with another type that won't knock my friends down when they stand beside me?

Just a side note, Bushmaster says their compensators are pinned on yet mine has no external pin at all.  Is it some sort of internal pinning within the brake itself?

Thanks guys...

Ny local smith won't do it either.  he says the Bushy brakes are welded on so he can't do it.  This is a few months after I got mine back from Kurt, so I know it can be done.  I'll send mine out eventually to Kurt again 1) when I have the money and 2 in the winter when I won't be able to shoot as much, so I won't miss it.

They have pins, but they grind them down, weld over them and refinish the whole thing so you can't see the pin unless you look very hard.  you see a small circle that's just barely noticeable.  Some of the time they just pin the brake on and ship it out, but I think with the factory rifles (AK SHorty and the M4) they add this extra process to make it a cleaner looking install.  I have an AK Shorty with no pins visable and I've seen the M4 14.5 with no pins visable, but I've bought from the EE an M4 16 incher with an M4 tacked on to that with the pin showing and a 20 inch with an AK brake with the pin showing.  Why they do this, I'm not sure.  Probably just to save money.

My advise would be to send it to Kurt and let him do the work, it's better to be without your upper for a month, and be satisfied with the work and product when you get it back than to chance letting someone do it that might screw up your barrel.  Just my .02

What they said.

You don't want someone to do this if they don't know what they're doing.  At that point, you'd almost get out better with a hacksaw and dremel.