Muzzle Brake? Please Help!!

[Rocky Raab]

Both gentlemen are correct - but that's to be expected: they're Texans

Seriously, both have valid points. American shooters suffer from the "bigger is better" syndrome, and perceive that a mega-magnum must be best because it's biggest.

I won't address that, but in choosing a mega-mag, you get other results besides higher muzzle velocity. Just one of those is higher muzzle pressure - the pressure of the remaining gas when the bullet exits. Two things result from THAT: much higher noise level, and much higher "jet" effect.

Translation: magnums are louder and kick more. Now, adding a muzzle brake (and that's the correct spelling, not "break") can do wonders for the recoil, but can actually seem to intensify that noise even more. There's no free lunch.

Muzzle brakes aren't evil, nor are they a panacea for all problems. They may well allow some shooters to shoot better - or even shoot at all. In that, they are beneficial. But they also may encourage, to some degree, shooters to pick a rifle that's much more powerful than they should be shooting - or need to.

Like guns themselves, muzzle brakes are just inanimate objects, neither good nor evil on their own. It's how they're used that draws the line.