Why it matters: A suppressor manufacturer has started producing episodic competition content rather than product demonstrations, and it is doing it in the first year that buying a rimfire can no longer carries a $200 federal transfer tax.
SilencerCo has published the first episode of Rimfire Ruckus, a competition series the company describes as brand new, built around a .22 LR match run at High Bar Homeland in Wyoming alongside the retailer Tobacco Tactical. The episode runs roughly nine minutes and is billed as Episode 1 of a hunt for what the title calls the best .22 gun slinger in the land. The video's description puts the field at eight shooters, and one participant says the same on camera while correcting a running joke that only three people had entered.
How the Rimfire Ruckus .22 three-gun format works
The host opens by framing the event as a three-gun challenge covering pistol, rifle and long-distance shooting. The first stage puts 20 steel targets in front of each competitor with the fastest time winning, and the host says it will be run twice. In the leaderboard segment that closes the stage, the same host calls it "the two-gun .22 challenge," a description that matches what the footage shows: pistol and rifle work on the near steel, with the long-range portion held back as its own stage.
The second stage is introduced as "the equalizer." Every competitor gets five shots at a distant target, and hits pay back time against the overall clock on a sliding scale — 20 seconds off for a first-shot hit, 15 for the second, 10 for the third, five for the fourth, and nothing after that. The stated rule set gives shooters their elevation but no windage, with the organizers saying on camera that the goal is to make competitors find their own impacts because .22 gets "pretty squirrely" at distance. Shooters run in reverse standing order, last place first.
Stage times, reshoots and the on-camera penalties
The one set of hard numbers the video reports is the stage-one leaderboard, delivered to camera between segments: Will Hutch first at 28.75, Mem second at 42.94, and Mike Allen third at 48.62. The video also documents its own rule drift. One competitor says he had planned to shoot the stage clean but requested a reshoot after another shooter got one, and the host responds by announcing that anyone running after that point has five seconds added to their time.
The closing results are played as banter rather than a read-out. Allen says on camera that he finished fourth; another competitor says he was second and adds that he "gave it to the guest." No overall champion is announced in plain terms in the episode's audio. Two sponsors are thanked on camera by a competitor, Zap Technologies and Tobacco Tactical, and the video closes with the host saying to expect more Rimfire Ruckus content this year.
Sparrow 22 and Switchback 22 stay in frame throughout
“There is no decibel figure, no side-by-side, and no cleaning demonstration; the cans are simply on the guns in every stage.”
Tess Marlowe, The ReticleThe hardware is introduced in the first minute and then left to run in the background. The host holds up the Switchback, noting that it can be configured shorter than the length shown, and the Sparrow, which he calls the world-famous and "easiest cleaning can on the market" — a claim the video makes verbally and does not test. The stated premise for the whole event is the host's line that of all the cans a buyer can invest in, a .22 is one of the most fun.
Nothing else in the video makes a performance claim about the suppressors. There is no decibel figure, no side-by-side, and no cleaning demonstration; the cans are simply on the guns in every stage. The Switchback 22 is SilencerCo's modular rimfire design, sold in four configurations from about 2.5 to 5.75 inches with a titanium tube and stainless baffles on 1/2x28 threads. The Sparrow 22 is the older and simpler of the two and has been in the catalog for well over a decade.
A branded series in the first year of the $0 tax stamp
The timing sits against a changed market. The $200 federal transfer tax on suppressors dropped to zero on January 1, 2026, under legislation signed in July 2025; buyers still file an ATF Form 4 and still pass a background check, but the cash barrier that shaped rimfire can purchases for decades is gone. Rimfire suppressors, already the cheapest entry point in the category, are the products most directly affected by removing $200 from the transaction.
The venue is a familiar one for this kind of shoot. High Bar, a private facility of roughly 250 acres in northeastern Wyoming with more than 20 ranges, operates largely as a host site for industry launches, media events and professional training rather than as a public range. SilencerCo has run other content from the same summer-camp trip on its own channels.
For context
- The $200 NFA transfer tax on suppressors went to $0 on January 1, 2026, though the ATF Form 4 and background check requirements remain in place.
- The Switchback 22 is SilencerCo's modular rimfire suppressor, rated for .22 LR through 5.7x28mm and reconfigurable between pistol- and rifle-optimized baffle orientations.
- The Sparrow 22 is the company's long-running fixed rimfire can, marketed on ease of disassembly and cleaning.
- High Bar in Wyoming is a private 250-acre range complex used primarily by the firearms industry for product launches and media events.
