>>14787109A sniper does not suppress with volume of fire. It is not really his job to suppress, a sniper team is a surgical weapon. Go in, look for your target (or just about anyone the enemy is dumb enough to salute to in the open, failing that) and put a fatal hole in him.
A drum mag is much, much harder to maintain in the field than a convential box magazine. It also has a small limit on size than a box mag (as the ammo has to traverse the entire magazine, not simply feed upwards, so the bigger the ammo makes a much, much bigger mag) and it's a bad idea for pretty much the same reason every serious sniper rifle is bolt-action.
Automatics have this habit of throwing the weapon around a bit. Not a lot. But enough that when your job is hurling lead distances of up to a mile it means the difference between a follow-up shot that hits the other target, and a miss.
There are reasons that sniper rifles used and WWII and today share a lot of similarity in appearance. Rugger, simplistic and with manual loading of the next round is good for a sniper's rifle.
You don't just hand everyone and their mother a drum mag and calling it a good day's work. Otherwise every single soldier would carry one.
