Paintball Silencers

December 27, 2004
www.specialopspaintball.com

Not long after the invention of the direct-feed paintball gun, players began to tinker with the idea of making their paintguns quieter. Paintball silencers have been around almost as long as hoppers.

In the mid-1980s, Sheridan released a paintball long gun that just begged to be turned into a "sniper" rifle. Almost every Sheridan rifle you saw carried a homemade silencer on the end of its barrel. All paintguns, in those days, were pumps. Pumps, unlike semi-auto paintball guns, don't have as much machine noise with each shot and this makes a silenced paintball gun especially quiet. As we were fond of saying in those days, paintball silencers sounded "like a gopher farting."

Commercial paintball silencers flooded the market, though they weren't a whole lot better than the homemade ones. They began appearing in magazine photos and on store shelves. Basically, a paintball silencer was a large tubular chamber that slid over the end of the paintball gun's barrel. The inside of the chamber was usually a porous material that allowed the paintball gun's gas to dissipate into the chamber before "popping" into the environment. Inside the silencer's chamber, manufacturers usually packed loose material such as insulation or brillo pads to further help deaden the sound.

Most of the "pop" that a paintball gun makes is the result of the paintball leaving the barrel with a burst of gas with sound behind it. The paintball silencer creates an intermediate airspace that traps much of the gas and sound while leaving the paintball to exit the barrel untouched.

But the glory days of paintball silencers were numbered. Firearm silencers are a controlled device under federal law. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) regulates the ownership and manufacture of a number of firearm devices including machine guns and sound suppressors (otherwise known as "silencers.") In the early 1990s, the ATF ran tests and decided that paintball silencers could be used to quiet a true firearm and they notified all manufacturers of paintball silencers that they were in violation of federal law. The reach of big brother was fast and final. All paintball silencers disappeared from the market.

Currently, the best option for a paintball sniper is to buy the quietest barrel possible and marry it to the quietest paintgun possible. The carbon-fiber barrels manufactured by Stiffi are just about the quietest thing out there. Attached to a DM4, they make a combo that's no louder than the silenced pumps of the old days before the ATF came a knocking.

To own a paintball gun silencer legally, you must live in one of the states that allow private ownership of sound suppressors. If so, you can purchase a silencer (paintball or firearm,) from a licensed firearms dealer (if such a thing were actually manufactured.) Then, you would have to get the signature of your local law enforcement officer on a form that requires a two-hundred dollar tax stamp. After waiting between two and six months, if you're not a felon, the transfer of your paintball silencer would come through and you could go back to your dealer and pick it up.

Since the whole system is really hard, really expensive and takes a really long time, legal paintball silencers are almost never seen.

As a side note, Special Ops Paintball is a Class II Firearms manufacturer and dealer so, if you want a paintball silencer bad enough, we can make you one and have it transferred to you. Again, it'll cost you an extra $200 on top of the cost of the suppressor and you'll have to wait a few months for the transfer, but it's possible.

Otherwise, you're left using one of the many "fake" paintball silencers (which don't work to deaden sound), or you can make your own and be illegal. If you buy a "fake" paintball silencer and it DOES actually dampen the sound of your paintball gun, it's probably illegal, both for the manufacturer and for you. Every year, a few paintball tinkerers come out with illegal paintball silencers and the ATF shuts them down. Even if the manufacturer claims their paintball silencer is "legal" that doesn't mean it's true. Ask to see their letter from the ATF approving their design. Often, they'll just blow the question off. To our knowledge, the ATF hasn't approved of any paintball silencer designs as of this writing. If you possess an illegal silencer, and you're caught with it by your local law enforcement, it probably won't matter that the manufacturer led you to believe it was legal. You'll still be in a lot of trouble.

And, the same goes for homemade paintball silencers. If you possess a silencer or even silencer parts, you are probably committing a federal felony. This is a very, very big punishment for something that shouldn't be a crime at all.

We have never heard of someone being prosecuted for owning an illegal paintball silencer, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Many take the chance, but it's probably not worth it (unless you're a Class II manufacturer and the you can own all the paintball silencers you want. Sweeeet!)

The bummer is that paintball silencers work great and they make the game much more fun. With a good paintball silencer, a sniper can take close shots and still not give away his position. Silencers are long and a little awkward, but they give great advantage to that long-ball, one-shot sniper.

Hopefully, someday soon, someone will figure it out with the ATF so that paintball fields will once again resonate with the brrrp! of gophers farting.