Pick a silencer, any silencer, and add it your typical 300 Blackout AR-15. What you end up with is an overly long platform. Buy a $200 NFA tax stamp and you can run a shorter barrel to bring the overall length back down to something familiar. But what if you could start from scratch, designing an AR-15 intended to host your favorite .30 caliber suppressor? What if you could retain the benefits of a suppressed Short Barreled Rifle (SBR) while eliminating the hassle of NFA rules, regulation and the cost of tax stamps? The Tactical Solutions TSAR in 300 Blackout is that gun. I’ve hunted with mine and shot it for groups. This outside the box Tactical Solutions AR-15 surprised me and I’m about to tell you how.
At first glance, you know the TSAR is different. I thought it was the spawn of a X Products Can Cannon and a standard forged AR-15. My buddy who served in Iraq did a double take. The Tactical Solutions design reminded him of a 40mm grenade launcher.
Reality is this: for all practical purposes the TSAR is an eleven inch barreled gun with a permanently attached shroud technically extending the barrel length out to a full 16.1 inches. If you’re like I was, you want to stop reading at the word “shroud.” I’ve since learned better. It’s actually ingenious.
The shroud, and the surprising accuracy coming from this Tactical Solutions configuration, are why you’d buy this gun. No gimmicks here, just a purpose driven design matching the characteristics of the 300 Blackout cartridge. Past about nine inches on a 300 Blackout barrel you’re just wasting barrel length. You don’t need it for accuracy as I’ll show shortly. You don’t need it for velocity as the powder has already burned. Consequently, eight, nine, ten inch and other sub-sixteen inch barreled builds are quite popular as AR Pistols and SBRs.
Beyond that, the 300 Blackout round is ideal for shooting suppressed. Subsonic bullets seem almost Hollywood movie quiet. Even supersonics suppress quite well. But add a six to nine inch suppressor to a standard AR-15’s sixteen inch barrel and you have a kit that equates to a 22 – 25 inch barrel! Shall we say, “Not handy!”?
Ideally, we’d all have suppressed 300 Blackout rifles built with eight to eleven inch barrels. We wouldn’t have pay a $200 tax stamp for the silencer and another $200 tax stamp for our Short Barreled Rifle (SBR). And we wouldn’t be restricted by state and local SBR ownership restrictions, nor encumbered when traveling outside our own states.
The ideal world doesn’t exist. At least not now. So we file the paperwork, pay the taxes and limit our travel with our short barreled guns. Or, we turn to this shrouded Tactical Solutions TSAR AR-15 rifle to alleviate some of the pain and inconvenience.
Let’s talk practicalities. My TSAR gives me the advantages of a suppressed 300 Blackout SBR, but saves me one $200 tax stamp and leaves me free to cross state lines without notifying the BATF. And, I can use my own choice in .30 caliber silencers. In short, it simplifies my life.
Granted, since the shroud is permanently attached, you cannot reduce the overall length to that of a true unsuppressed SBR. Oh well. In a less than ideal world of rules and regs, that’s not a huge concern for 99% of us.
With an inside diameter of 1.75 inches, you can fit any of a wide variety of suppressors under the shroud. Tactical Solutions says, “Not all .30 caliber suppressors are compatible with the TSAR-300. Suppressor cannot require access to the threads to detach/attach.” I talked to Rugged Suppressors about using their Surge 762 which mounts via a quick attach/dethatch mechanism. No problem, they tell me. Just mount the silencer to their break/muzzle device and then thread the can on as you would a standard thread mount silencer. Sounds good to me.
Once I had the preceding sorted out in my head, I got excited about the concept. Short of the unique design though, I didn’t expect anything special from the TSAR. It’s just another AR, right?
It does have some nice Hogue furniture and comes with a fake silencer. As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather pass on the fake can and save a few bucks. My TSAR came with a Tactical Solutions M-LOK two-piece rail. KeyMod is also an option. It looks like a decent AR-15 that Tactical Solutions sells complete for $1395. It comes with an ALG Defense QMS Trigger that creeps a bit, albeit smoothly, breaking at 6.75 pounds. That’s not exactly ideal for shooting precise little groups.
Well, surprise!
I took my TSAR to the American Sportsman Shooting Center in Dallas/Fort Worth to test its accuracy in their high tech 100 yard tunnel. The rubber target at the end of the tunnel looks like paper, but scoring is in real time, compliments of a computer screen at my left elbow.
I imagine the 1:9 twist barrel will produce one to one and a half inch groups at 100 yards. This would be fine for hunting, home defense and ringing steel, not to mention acceptable at the retail price point. I thread on my Liberty Mystic X suppressor and commence shooting.
Much to my surprise my groups are sub MOA (Minute Of Angle), or groups smaller than one inch at 100 yards. This, with both supersonic and subsonic loads. Shooting Gorilla Ammunition’s subsonic 208 grain Hornady A-MAX loads, I get .91 inches. Shooting supersonic Remington 125 grain OTM I shoot .83 inches. I’ll confess to a goofy grin crossing my face at this point.
I also shoot Gorilla’s supersonic 110 grain Controlled Chaos Lehigh Defense loads down the tunnel, but not as well. With the sub MOA results above I actually feel let down by the 110 grain 1.32 inch grouping. I know, that’s pretty fickle since it actually does meet my original expectations. I guess I got spoiled. Either way, I’m quite happy with the accuracy I see in the TSAR.
The wild hogs on my last hunt, however, probably feel differently. Actually, they don’t feel anything now. I loaded the TSAR with the Gorilla 208 grain subsonics and zeroed an IR Patrol thermal optic from IR Defense. I had a great night! Hunting with a suppressed 300 Blackout is fantastic. You’ll enjoy reading the full story, but for now I’ll just say I can’t wait to take this rig back out! If you’re considering suppressing a 300 Blackout AR-15, this one needs to be on your short list. See what I did there? “Short” list. As in, overall length….
I’m confused. Please explain when stated that the suppressor can’t have access to the the barrel threads.
It’s so much that the suppressor can’t have access to the barrel threads… Stated differently, the threaded portion of the actual barrel sits far recessed under the the elongated shroud. The ramification is that users don’t have a good way to access those threads. The only reason that is noteworthy is that many suppressors on the market use proprietary Quick Disconnect (QD) mounts that require rotating a locking ring of some kind to secure the suppressor to the mount/gun. Since you cannot reach in to the shroud, you cannot lock such suppressors. The work around is simply to lock such a suppressor to its mount and then thread the assembly onto the threaded barrel as if it were a direct thread-on suppressor. It’s pretty straight forward.
The Witt Machine & Tool Integrated Uppers are my choice for ISR consideration and in my opinion superior suppression (noise reduction) and cool factor. They are a few dollars more (if your counting that they only sell the complete upper BUT that bolts to ANY AR15 you already have in the closet too, admit it; you have one or more).
Same deal though – its only one Tax Stamp , you can be shooting your other rifles while your waiting for the upper to clear the Form 4 and then pin it on and go hammer hogs.
Thanks for posting that! Witt is only three hours down the road. I need to test some of their gear!
While there is nothing wrong with buying a completed gun, I’d prefer they sell the barrel as a stand alone and I could build the gun around it. Perhaps they do and I’m not aware of it. It would make it nice to have an actual SBR without the hassle and something I could shoulder without “Changing the gun” by doing so.
Agreed! As a left-handed shooter, I have a crusader that I have modified to fit my personal needs. Mounting this configuration, very similar to the Daniel defense ISR ( but, again, without the lower ) would make me one happy camper.
This makes no sense. A suppressor added on to the barrel does not increase the bullet speed. This is why you can’t just add a suppressor and say its part of the barrel. So why can a shroud avoid a SBR tax stamp? It is definitely not part of the barrel and it does not enhance bullet speed.
You are confusing two unrelated issues.
Velocity is effected by barrel length. You are correct.
Velocity has nothing to do with SBR laws.
SBR laws exist because in 1934 congress wanted to outlaw certain types of firearms through taxation.
One of those types was pistols.
When legislation was drafted to include pistols as NFA firearms, the language was added to prevent pistol-sized firearms being built from non-NFA rifles or shotguns.
It was erroneously believed that barrels shorter than 16” served no military purpose and would, therefore, be unprotected under the Second Amendment.
When it was apparent that the bill could not pass with pistols included, pistols were removed from the scope of the legislation, but the SBR/SBS language was inadvertently left in and it passed.
This is why a rifle made from a pistol is ok, but a pistol made from a rifle is an NFA firearm.
So the original intention was barrel length as it relates to concealability, not as it relates to velocity.
Therefore, the ATFE has ruled that a permanently attached muzzle device (attached via their specifications) that extends the barrel to 16” or longer keeps the rifle from being classified as a short-barreled rifle.
Therefore, permanently attaching this device on a rifle on which the combined length of the barrel and this device is 16” or longer prevents it from being regulated as an NFA device.
Shroud is welded & pinned & therefore not removable. That makes it part of the barrel.