Silencer Saturday #428: Should You Run A Silencer In Competition?

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to TFB’s Silencer Saturday, brought to you by Yankee Hill Machine, manufacturers of the new Victra 20-gauge shotgun suppressor. Last week, I participated in a practical rifle match and was shocked at the percentage of guns with suppressors. At least 90% of the competitors had a silencer on their rifle. But what are the pros and cons of that equipment choice?

Silencer Saturday @ TFB:

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• Silencer Saturday #424: Out-of-this-world Strategic Sciences Silencers
• Silencer Saturday #423: Silencers And Overpressure Risk, Part II

This was my first competition in the “Scoped Precision AR Competition” or SPARC Series. These matches focus on speed and precision. Each stage has a required number of impacts on various targets, with the goal being the fastest time to complete the target series. Failure to hit a target within the 90-second par time adds 20 seconds to the stage time. The lowest total time score wins. The equipment rules are very broad. Shooters must use a semiautomatic rifle. Almost anything is allowed in the open class, and most competitors are in that category. A few shooters in the GPR category, which is limited to 16” barrels and optics limited mostly to LPVOs.

My friends shoot in these matches and had been asking me to come shoot one, so I finally did. After some back and forth on equipment, I decided to shoot open class so I could use the Meprolight MVO 6-36x56 scope that I'm reviewing. I needed an accurate semi-auto that was not dedicated to one of my review projects. My spare service rifle for CMP High Power competition fit the bill perfectly.

That gun started life as a Bushmaster A2 competition gun that later became a flat top ( after a saga of removing a gas block that was neither pinned nor set screwed to the barrel, which earned an entire article). It was made during the Assault Weapons Ban era, and as a result, it is not threaded. The barrel still shoots well but has a questionable amount of life left, so it is not a great candidate for a threading job.

This gun choice raised eyebrows among my shooting companions, all of whom were running suppressed DMR-style rifles. Being the guy who writes Silencer Saturday and is always working on some suppressor project or other, choosing to run a gun without a can is a little incongruous. There are good reasons to run a can on your gun, but there are also reasons to go without.

Pros

Obviously, one of the great reasons to run a silencer is noise mitigation. If you spend time around guns, you probably have some level of hearing loss, even if you routinely use ear protection. Silencers reduce this risk by cutting off the noise exposure at the source. But they also make life better for everyone around the gun. The SPARC matches are shot as a squad, with one shooter on the gun, and the rest of the group running the timer and spotting hits. Loud guns do not make you many friends in these circumstances! It can also make it hard to hear instructions from the RO, the timer beep, or calls of hits or misses from the squad.

Most guns are more accurate with a silencer added. In a competition where precision matters, that bump in accuracy can be the deciding factor on its own. Exactly how much of an accuracy gain there is varies from noticeable to possibly measurable, but not really observable in standard use. I have seen guns drop group sizes by a quarter to half MOA when a suppressor is added, which could be enough to turn a miss into a hit.

Silencers also reduce recoil. In a game where seconds count, and you need to be able to spot missed shots to make follow-up corrections, less recoil is always an advantage. This perk increases in value the lighter the gun is. More and more silencers are adding external brake features as well, which makes this effect even more noticeable without the annoying muzzle blast redirection from traditional brakes.

Cons

The primary concern I had was the added heat mirage off the suppressor. Silencers get hot, and even with a protective sleeve or wrap, that mirage can make it hard to see a target or to spot missed shots. This issue gets worse the hotter the silencer gets, and I was acutely aware that I would be missing a lot of shots and needing follow-ups in my first attempt at these matches. That volume of shooting could lead to mirage issues.

Another known downside is the additional fouling that added backpressure causes. Several hundred rounds fired in a day could be enough (especially with an older silencer) to start causing malfunctions. And if the malfunctions became an issue to the point that I had to remove the silencer, the POI shift from taking it off would be something else to manage.

Finally, adding a silencer to a gun can worsen its handling characteristics. The added weight and length of a suppressor is almost never an improvement to the way the gun feels in the hand and moves between targets. This downside is more apparent the longer the barrel. This competition features a lot of moving between firing positions, shooting on, over, around, and through obstacles, and doing all of that with time pressure. None of that would be easier with a bulkier or heavier gun.

Conclusion

Ultimately, I did not regret my choice to go without a silencer. With a 20-inch barrel, rifle-length gas system, and rifle buffer system, the gun was very stable through recoil and was not unduly loud. Towards the end of the match, when it was dirty, cold, and full of rainwater, I started to have some failure to feed malfunctions. The additional fouling from a silencer probably would have started those failures earlier in the day, but it is also possible that the extra backpressure would have cycled the gun harder, giving it more “oomph” to feed a round and seat the bolt on the return trip.

I scored respectably in the match, though I was the only unsuppressed gun on my squad. If I were to build a gun dedicated to this game, I would probably build it around a suppressor. Adding a cover and opting for a low backpressure design resolves many of the downsides. A slightly shorter barrel and a reflex suppressor take care of most of the length. And on the upside, it would be quiet and more stable for easier spotting. Sounds like I need to get a real Mk12 setup. Thanks for joining up.

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