Muzzle Breaks vs. Compensators
by James on Mar.04, 2010, under Personal
A month or so ago, I had a conversation with my brother (on Xbox Live, of all places) about muzzle breaks. He had recently had the opportunity to fire a ported pistol and wanted my opinion on them.
First, while poking around the internet for this, I discovered that there is some variation in terminology. For our purposes, a muzzle break is (either built in or added to the barrel) porting that direct some of the projectiles gases upwards and/ or backwards in order to control muzzle climb.
A compensator is a weight added to the end of the barrel to reduce muzzle climb.
Now my personal opinion on compensators is that they are a bad idea. Support for this is that it is very difficult to find pictures of them. While the extra weight does reduce muzzle climb, it also increases the weight of the barrel which forces the barrel down when you are aiming. Training could get around this to a certain degree but eventually hand fatigue would get the better of you. In my opinion, there is only one person can pull one off.
 Springfield XD40 with ported barrel |
 Colt 1911 compared to S&W 500 |
As for muzzle breaks, it depends. For pistols, they are purely for competition. The fact that you are having searing hot gases escaping from your barrel in your general direction is a bad idea if you ever except to have to fire it when it is not pointed straight ahead and at arms length. Muzzle breaks also radically increase the perceived noise of the weapon. This is due to the the explosion of the round being partially redirected towards the shooter. Finally, the foot or so of flame that erupts from the muzzle break wreaks (worse) havoc on your night vision, makes you a wonderful target, and, if indoors, can set the ceiling on fire (a bad thing). There are of course exceptions to this.
There are a few pistols that fire a powerful enough round that a muzzle break is required. The Smith and Wesson Model 500 which fire the massive .500 Magnum round (I have the urge to use the word shell) is an excellent example of this.
So far I have just discussed pistols, rifles make more liberal use of muzzle breaks because they typically fire much more powerful rounds than pistols. My personal favorite example of this is the M82 sniper rifle. This behemoth fires the .50 BMG anti-materiel round. This round is capable of reaching out and touching someone at a distance of 2.5 clicks.
Needs a muzzle break
Muzzle breaks on rifles suffer from the same drawbacks as those found on pistols, such as added noise and increased visibility and catching the overhanging foliage on fire. Of course in the case of such large caliber rifles, a muzzle brake is a necessity to control the muzzle climb. Notice in the video how the escaping gases are directed backwards and noticeably push the shooter backwards.
So what’s the take away from all this? Compensators are useless since a muzzle break serves the same function but does not cause barrel drop and hand fatigue. Muzzle breaks are only for pistols if they are meant for competition or fire such massive rounds that the recoil would otherwise be unmanageable.
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