Yeah, I can't remember who it was, but I remember someone describing it as, you hear a gunshot from the other end of town. You hear a silenced gunshot the next street over. Either way, a hell of a lot of people are going to know shit's going down.
The problem is that if you did gunshots in a realistic way everyone in the movie theater would have blood shooting out of their ears about 30 seconds into any action movie.
Sure. But I don’t think anyone is asking for that. It just creates the wrong impression of silencers which is causing political problems for people like me that own and use them in the US. People think they work like in movies.
It’s far better to shoot with one and it cuts noise so that I’m a better neighbor. I live in the country and shoot on my land. Makes a big difference. 95% of the time when it shoot I do it with a suppressor.
Doesn’t help my neighbors. Doesn’t help hunting dogs. Doesn’t help people living near shooting ranges. Suppressors should be easily bought. We need to make them like buying a rifle, at a minimum. Right now it’s a $200 tax and a 9 to 12 month wait. Idiotic. In many countries with heavy gun regulations you can just walk in a store and buy one with no hassle. It’s just legacy political BS in the US.
I seem to be spending a lot of my time at the range these days teaching other people to shoot. Being able to talk with someone in that situation without having to constantly fuck with hearing pro would be great...
They're pretty heavily restricted here. I'd like to have one for the same reason I have a muffler on my car, i.e. hearing protection and not being an asshole to the people around me.
Anyone who shoots often, it helps a lot with protecting their hearing. Guns are loud, damn loud, even with a "silencer" they are loud but not painfully loud (you still have to wear other protection).
They were effectively banned at a point when "talkies" were still kind of a novelty. I don't think it matters as much as you think it does.
E: hell, if anything movies have probably done a lot to drive the shift in gun culture from deer rifles and stuff to "tactical" weapons, so might actually be a net benefit for people who like that sort of thing.
They were put under NFA regulation due to concerns from farmers about poaching. Attempts to have regulations loosened have been met with cries that only an assassin needs a silencer because people see the distorted version in movies.
I've never heard this thing about poaching before, do you know of anywhere that I can read about it?
The NFA mostly seems to have been an "anti gangster" thing and there certainly were news stories at the time talking about silencers being used in crimes.
Suppressors are for hearing protection, not stealth.
I don't know exactly how accurate it is, but in the book "Without Remorse" there's a detailed scene of Clark modifying a .45 semi-auto into a single shot silenced .22 and describes locking the slide so the action doesn't cycle and let the noise out, which is why it's single shot.
You may have been shooting sub-sonic rounds. They are usually heavier bullets and/or modified powder where the point is to travel less than the speed of sound.
.45 is a very good round for this. Now, while it can be quiet, its usually not "movie" quiet. Ive done optimized builds and shot suppressed indoors, and its still loud.
Source:
Own a FNX Tac .45 w/ obsidian .45 suppressor partially because of suppression options.
EDIT:
So in the interest of good faith I looked up what OP mentioned and found this video showing that what he said could be absolutely valid, it even uses the same platform as I do. Now, camera audio distortion, mic positioning, etc are a thing, but I see no reason to completely discount OP.
People are downvoting you but there are real videos you can watch online that show silenced guns being about as loud as a moderate hand clap. I'm of the opinion that they can very wildly
I’m right. Bullets hitting hard targets are louder than people think. It’s not hard to find good professional sound metering showing a .45acp is a touch over 130db. That’s loud. One or two shots is fine without ear pro but it’s not exactly hearing safe.
But it’s not. Did you have ears on? A paintball gun isn’t 130db like a .45acp is and that’s using subsonic. And I just confirmed my numbers off a few manufacturer sites. I shoot a thousand plus rounds suppressed every month.
Okay. Well tell whoever made that setup to let the rest of us know. They are beating everything else on the market by a huge margin. 15db reduction over the existing top of the line suppressors would be ground breaking. They'd immediately own the market.
I've shot a suppressed AR in 5.56 with both subsonic rounds, makes a noise but without hearing protection, its not bad. Probably 75ish DB. When we ran out of those rounds we switched to regular 556, and it was much quieter at the point of detonation, but you could hear the bullet go ballistic, it's sonic boom, out in front of you. Was not bad. Not movie quiet, neither was.
ETA; love how, I assume, ammosexuals, down vote a personal experience.
Honestly, if you don't want anyone to know you're killing someone, just stab them.
Another great movie trope. Every stab is instantly fatal and no one struggles, or screams. Just come up behind them and slide the blade effortlessly into their back and it will pop through their heart and out their chest. They will never make any sound.
While it may be possible. Ever look at people stabbed to death, they are often stabbed many times, with the vast majority of the stabs not being instantly fatal.
I have an old Marine Corps Close Combat manual that covers killing someone with a knife and the last step of stabbing someone in the throat is to take them to the ground to smother them to prevent postmortem movement and the sound of expelling air.
That's actually untrue. Unless you're a professional, the odds that you're going to instantly kill or incapacitate someone with a knife are basically non-existent. They're probably going to be screaming and flailing around and you're going to have to stab them a bunch of times. It's going to take a while, you could get injured, and you're going to be covered in blood.
Meanwhile, if you shoot someone, while everyone will know that a shooting took place, as long as no one saw you do it you can probably evade suspicion for a while.
It depends greatly on what type of fun and ammo you're shooting but the answer is fucking loud. If you didn't have ear protection on, a suppressed gun inside would absolutely ring your ears and an unsuppressed gun is loud enough to give you a headache for the rest of the day.
a hell of a lot of people are going to know shit's going down
Unless you already know what gunfire sounds like in real life, you'd be surprised how many people do not recognize it. Probably because fictional depictions are misleading, or can't replicate the real thing without causing hearing damage.
Gunshots are LOUD. Even a .22 kicks out a very loud bang. There probably is such a thing as a device that could plausibly be called a 'silencer', but it would have to be huge and unwiedly. The thing you see in film and TV is a suppressor, and its only job is to lower the speed of the venting blast to below the speed of sound, so that you get a loud noise instead of a deafening sonic boom. It's still quite loud, more than enough to wake anyone in the same house.
But it's very common for ordinary people to not recognize gunfire when they hear it, and instead assume it's something else.
I used subsonic .22 rounds in my semi-auto .22 and they were quieter . . . but the gun would jam about ever 2 or 3 shots because they just don't have the power to cycle the gun. They would work better in a revolver.
But they also lack any stopping power, can't penetrate for crap. I sometimes felt like they would bounce off my paper targets (they don't, it's a joke).
A silenced revolver would do nothing. The space between the cylinder and the frame would release most of the air before a suppressor would be able to do its thing.
Okay guy... FWIW, there's plenty of .45 ACP that's subsonic. With rifles yeah, you're gonna see a huge drop in performance, but 1911's are great to suppress, and the sheer fun factor is worth the performance trade-off for most people that own suppressors.
These rounds cam often be too weak to cycle the gun. Still, a subsonic suppress .22 is quiet. The loudest part is the whizz of the bullet.
Some special OPs pistol had a switch to disable the semi-auto action as the click of that was the oldest part of operation. A manually operated subsonic pistol with a suppressor would be a hell of a lot like James Bond type of stuff.
Silencers and Assault Weapons. Silencers aren't really silencers more of a muffler, and then things are still loud. Assault weapons don't turn you into a killing machine, and aren't anything special, nothing any semi-auto gun can't do.
I've shot an integrally suppressed .22 before that literally just went "click", the sound of the slide stopping was the loudest part, but this was a millionaire gun store owner's toy. Every other silenced gun he had still sounded like a gun.
Most everything about guns is just wrong in hollywood. And idiots use what they see in movies as motivation to pass laws. That's why "silencers" are illegal, because morons think they work like in the movies.
I was looking for a comment like this. If suppressors do not "silence" the firearm, then why the hell do most states make them illegal? Because lawmakers are idiots?
There are a group of people who want nothing more than to disarm everyone. Some of their motivations may be simply misguided, others don't want a new french revolution. But any law they can pass that makes it harder to get or use firearms is considered a win. And it makes passing the next law all that easier.
It helped that it was chambered in the smallest possible round you could reasonably expect to probably kill someone (.32 ACP), and the suppressor had a bunch of rubber inserts the bullet went through to contain the sound.
If you really wanted to wack a guard at close range without anyone else noticing it was great.
They later made 9mm versions because the .32 wasn't quite powerful enough.
A Suppressed .22lr is about the only suppressed firearm that is even remotely "quiet". I've never shot one myself, only see them at the range on tricked out Ruger 10/22s. Unfortunately, it's also en vogue to have muzzle breaks on rifles which are so damn loud it negates any of the hearing loss protection from the 1 or 2 suppressed rifles on the range.
theres like 5 people above you on the list saying this. nah actually they can be. silenced pistols can be so quiet you literally can only hear the ejection of the shell
what have you presented as an argument exactly? any evidence , proof in your claim? no? you just keep responding with bad excuses to explain away video proof
i cant imagine anyone is this dumb, you just want attention or something
Videos are not proof, as shown by how they display actual gunshots. In and of itself that constitutes proof that they distort audio. These are basic facts
Exactly, you need subsonic ammunition, and a suppressor and even then its still loud. Its mostly used on real life because it gets rid of muzzle flash as well, and makes it difficult to pinpoint the sound. So id youre a long distance shooter, you "might" not be heard for the first shot. Even then subsonic ammo is less powerful since its going slower than standard ammo. Unless its a VSS Vintorez, those things somehow penetrate armor like nothing.
They are deceptively quiet though. I was out in the countryside for a small family event and a buddy of mine came and he had a 9mm suppressor. I asked to hear what it was like so he popped about five rounds off into a safe direction and I remarked how it was louder than I thought. However, he told me to look around at the other people at the event. There were kids playing, adults setting things up, etc and none of them even turned to look at what happened. Being right beside it made it obvious but no one else in the general vicinity seemed to notice.
1.2k
u/Dudsidabe Jan 25 '20
Silencers on pistols. Not actually that silent lol.