An answer to why silencers are illegal

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   Paintball Silencers

December 27, 2004

Quoted from 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 

<breaking wind>.

Edited by nauzerlvr - 09 March 2006 at 3:51pm