Movies frequently show people firing silenced weapons that make little more than a “pfft” sound when fired.
But, a pistol with a silencer is far from silent. This guy says a silenced pistol is in the 130 decibel range. Not quiet at all. Just more quiet than one without a silencer on it.
So, has anyone ever built an actually silent (or nearly so) firearm? I assume governments might want to see one made for various uses.
Gyrojets of Man from U.N.C.L.E fame?
I know nothing about guns. But I did glean two fun facts about silencers on this board:
1.) They’re only good for ONE shot.
2.) They’re still loud as the OP notes.
There’s this. No decibel readings.
Subsonic .22.
And here’s a cool video of the Gyrojet being fired!
Both pistol and a carbine version.
We’ve done this question before. IIRC, we came up with the Welrod pistol and the DeLisle carbine, as being among the quietest of the quiet. Still coming in above 70 db, and I want to say over 80 for the DeLisle, so hardly silent. A lot really depends on the types of microphones, where they’re placed, and the response of the sound gear.
I dunno whether the Welrod was firing .22 LR, or .22 Short, or CB caps. Less powerful ammo will be quieter, but the point is still to kill the target, right?
For comparison, how loud is a modern compound bow, or crossbow, or old-fashioned long bow?
That seems pretty silent to me.
Of conventional firearms in common use, a suppressed subsonic .22 or even 9mm is fairly quiet, even hearing safe. In general one of those in a semi-auto will have the mechanical noise of the action cycling as louder than the shot itself.
And then there is this little wonder our friends the Russians have come up with that eliminates the gas and smoke of the shot altogether by not letting it escape from the cartridge:
Well demonstrated below.
Any videos of a handgun being that quiet?
There are some pretty powerful airguns that could kill. They arent small tho.
Mostly, subsonic .22 rounds thru a silencer.
Yeah, a pistol with a subsonic .22 would not really sound at all like a gunshot, but it wouldnt be like in the movies. OTOH, if I had a choice of common guns to be shot with a subsonic .22 would be #1. Not being shot at all would be a much higher vote, of course.
Try this one: It’s a .22 pistol and it is also hearing safe in the configuration shown.
[22plinkster review of suppressed Ruger 22/45]
(RUGER MARK 4 22/45 LITE - YouTube)
That seems kind of loud to me. Maybe the video had bad sound?
9 hole review of Ruger MK IV Tactical Suppressed
This is a similar pistol, and you may find the sound a little cleaner. They are using a different suppressor on it, and you can hear the action cycling when they aren’t hitting steel targets. Plinkster likes to shoot steel and that can sometimes overwhelm the audio. He was also shooting a less expensive can on his pistol.
That does sound more like the movies.
How do pellet guns and bb guns compare in volume?
They make gunpowderless .22 rounds, in this video so the only actual noise you hear is the actual primer firing. It sounds like someone snapping a rubber band.
This is not true at all. At best you might be thinking of wipe-based silencers, which do degrade over time but still are effective for multiple shots, typically 10-20 but still somewhat effective after that. Baffle silencers have no specific lifetime, effectively indefinite. As seen in the videos posted above, the users fire a large number of shots with their silencers functioning perfectly well.
Slap a can on a .22LR, and you’ll definitely hear the difference. And if you’re shooting sub-sonic… Man. It’s weird, but it’s stupid fun to shoot.