5 Pros and 5 Cons of Rifle Suppressors

Overview:

Suppressors can be a great addition to most rifles, but there's pros and cons to adding a suppressor. In this Suppressor 101 video, Rob breaks down the pros and cons that he's learned over the years from his experience in the Marine Corps, as a firearms instructor and as an owner of a multitude of suppressors. Rob covers topics surrounding suppressor length, weight, heat, back pressure, costs, technology, velocity, signature reduction, recoil anticipation and long term hearing protection.

Suppressor Testing Playlist:

Trueshot Ammo
Help support our channel by using the link below to buy ammo at True Shot!
https://alnk.to/a43rAPp

Skip To Video Topic:

00:00 - INTRO
00:28 - CON 1 - LENGTH
00:47 - CON 2 -WEIGHT
01:02 - CON 3 - HEAT
01:46 - CON 4 - BACK PRESSURE
02:16 - CON 5 - COST & CHANGING TECHNOLOGY
02:54 - PRO 1 - SOUND SUPPRESSION
03:33 - PRO 2 - INCREASED VELOCITY
04:38 - PRO 3 - SIGNATURE REDUCTION
05:59 - PRO 4 - REDUCED RECOIL ANTICIPATION
06:55 - PRO 5 - LONG TERM HEARING PROTECTION

Transcript:

Hey everybody, Rob Orgel. In today's video, I wanted to zoom out and talk specifically about the pros and cons of rifle suppressors. I'm going to give you five cons and five pros in no particular order. Mistakes that I have learned over years of playing with NFA items and figuring out what I like and dislike about suppressors, and hopefully this information once it parts it upon you will help you save money and make good choices in your purchase and application of suppressors. Let's start with the drawbacks. The first one is going to be the length. When I add a suppressor to my rifle, I am obviously increasing the length of my rifle. Now you can get some of the micro or mini suppressors, but they're not as quiet as I would like. So I'm usually talking mid-size or long suppressor to get the sound reduction that I'm looking for. So I'm adding the length to the end of my weapon. Number two, I'm adding weight to the end of my gun. It's one thing to hold the weight in front of you. It's another thing to hold the weight a foot in front of you. It becomes very taxing very quick. So if you're going to have your rifle up for prolonged periods of times, you might not love having a suppressor on the end of it. Number three, heat. Your barrel gets warm. Your suppressor gets a whole lot warmer. Now there are ways to mitigate this, but we need to know when firing our rifle, if you're finishing up on the range and you want to dump that last magazine, that suppressor gets real hot. And you'll need to prolong your pack up time in order to not have your suppressor melt your gun bag or something silly like that. Also, if we're not careful, we can burn ourself with our suppressor. I have a lot of buddies that I know what kind of suppressor they use by the burn mark on their hand or foot or ankle or otherwise. So be real careful when you're doing a high schedule of fire that you'll give that suppressor time to cool and hang it off the edge of the table facing downrange so you don't damage any of your equipment. Number four, back pressure. Now, as you've seen in our other video where we tested back pressure, it's easy for us to find out how much back pressure our suppressor has. But know that back pressure is not just increased felt recoil. It's a ton of gas to the face and it can be momentarily unpleasant to tear up and choke up, but it's also really bad for our health to be sucking in that added back pressure and chemicals. In addition to that, you can cause malfunctions and undo wear and tear onto your weapon.

Five, time, money, and technology. When you submit to get your suppressor, you've got to give $200 to the government and then wait your turn to get your suppressor. Now, this might take a week, a month, a year, but once you have it, it's yours. However, a year later, silencer technology may have evolved and it might be that the newest, latest, and greatest of today isn't quite the same in six months or one year. So the biggest drawback about suppressors is we can't really stay on par with technology. This doesn't mean don't buy. This just means buy knowing that two years after you have it, there might be something even better than what you currently possess. And then you end up being a nut job like me with a bunch of suppressors. Now let's roll into the pros. Number one, suppressors make guns quieter.

Now that we know that, that's number one. I like my gun to be a little bit quieter. Why? Well, on some of these really short 10-inch guns with the Melds-A-Break, they're obnoxiously loud. Putting a suppressor on that doesn't make it necessarily hearing safe, but it makes it much more tolerable with the addition of my hearing protection. When I'm on a hunt, certainly I can fire one or two rounds through my bolt action or longer-barreled rifle and get away with it without doing any damage to my hearing. But if you're going to train all day, do keep the ear protection on, but it does substantially reduce the sound of your weapon, obviously. Number two, unlike what many people think that suppressors reduce accuracy and range, that is completely untrue. Once upon a time, that was true. Science and technology has come a long way since that time. So our rifles don't become more accurate or further range or reduced accuracy or reduced range. But if you want to get finite and argue over it, okay, fine. I have found that some rifles do increase their velocity by a little bit by adding a suppressor. Rather than reduce accuracy and speed, no, it might increase your speed. Does that increase accuracy? Eh, once you accommodate for point-of-impact shift, which may happen and it doesn't reduce accuracy, and it is repeatable, but once you accommodate POI shift, then you might find that your bullet has gained 15 to 25 foot per second coming out of the muzzle. So this can gain a little bit extra range. It's finite. It's a small degree of it, but just know that the misnomers aren't true about reduced accuracy and range. If anything, it would increase accuracy and range. So I guess my point is it doesn't help or hurt, and if anything, it maybe helps a little bit. Number three, signature reduction. Now, I've broken this one into two separate categories. One is muzzle flash and the other is concussive wave. So it sounds like they would be the same, but they're not. So with that 10-inch example I gave you earlier, like say a Mark 18, when I come to a room and I'm blasted with a Mark 18, nobody's happy about it. That is a serious concussive wave. Even if you're not looking my direction, just that little flash bang going off next to you is enough to be disorienting. Now, as the shooter, of course, I'm seeing the muzzle flash and that also is obtrusive to my sight. So there's two points of interest here, that when I'm clearing rooms in teams, I'm muzzle blasting my team and that's distracting. And to myself, I'm creating a large muzzle flash. Now to the enemy, I'm kicking up dirt if I'm in the prone and I'm throwing a fireball out there. By adding a suppressor, I am now not kicking up dirt around me. I'm not obstructing the thought of the guy who's the number one man as I go into the room as the number two man, and I'm maintaining my night vision and not flaring out my night vision when these muzzle blasts take place. So the suppressor reduces not just the observation of the enemy seeing you shoot or the deer or the whatever you're shooting at observation, but also you as the shooter are having a reduced signature overall. This gives a lot of gains in several situations that I'm sure we'll talk about in a later video. Number four, recoil anticipation. As a firearms instructor, when I'm introducing new shooters to AR-15s, what I will do is give them a suppressor appropriately gassed AR-15 because people will anticipate the recoil and the sound of that weapon. And if I can make that rifle bark just a little bit less, make it just a little bit less intimidating, people slide into that water a lot easier. So the first thing I'll do is demonstrate with a suppressed rifle so that they say, "Oh, well, that's pretty benign." And then they shoot and they go, "Oh, that's not bad." Then I take the suppressor off and they go, "Okay, it's louder, but it doesn't bother me." If I start them straight to an unsuppressed rifle, there's a lot of intimidation that comes with that. Having said that, even advanced shooters further down the rabbit hole in their career, if we can reduce that recoil and the bark of that rifle, it might be that they mentally anticipate recoil just a little bit less. So it helps with the psyche of that shooter. Number five, the long-term effects of what happens under your hearing protection. Even if you wear hearing protection, you're still doing damage with one of those 10-inch guns with a brake. It's still obnoxious. It still gives me a headache as the instructor. When you put a suppressor on that gun, it's much more benign to you and to me. But you being closer to that muzzle blast, it helps you a lot. Think of sound suppression like, I don't know, like sunscreen. If you're going to a concert and you're going to be in the sun all day, you should probably wear sunscreen. If you're just walking the park for a half hour, you might not need sunscreen. So know that hearing safe, sure, people will argue it's 140 decibel, but that's like the concert and it's blaring in your ears. If you stay there for the whole three hours, you're going to be ringing when you leave that concert. Versus somebody slamming a car door for a single exposure. If it meets 139, it probably won't offend your ears, but the habitual offense does cause damage. So if you're getting into shooting, you got a long career ahead of you, suppressors really help you preserve your hearing. I have hearing loss antonitis, not just for my overseas operations, but also from state-side playtime with these type of devices. So the other piece of advice I'll give you is buy good hearing protection. If I could go back in time 10, 15, 20 years and talk to Rob, I would say, "Rob, protect your ears. Get good hearing protection." Hopefully this video gave you some good insight as to the pros and cons of suppressors. And then when it comes up in conversation, we have solid points to bring up about why you will or will not put a suppressor on different weapon systems. There are pros and there absolutely are cons. If you enjoyed this video, gain some good intel from it. Please, it's free. Like, comment, subscribe. Don't be stingy with those. They don't cost anything. And help us beat that 2A algorithm that says guns are bad. They're not bad. I know you know that. Comment in the section below saying, "America, I love guns." Or something to help us boost this video. Thanks for your time and as always, stay safe.