Watched a film last night and one of the bad guys shoved the barrel of a pistol into a potato and used it as a silencer.
Would this work?
Also: How exactly do silencers work?
Well, as for a potato silencer, I have no idea, and it probably depends upon the type of pistol, etc etc. But my guess is that for any pistol that wasn’t a dinky .22lr, it would either still be noisy, blow up your barrel, or both.
How does a silencer work?
Well, first off, the accepted term these days is “Suppressor” rather than silencer.
Guns make three noises when they fire. First, there is the loud bang as a bunch of hot gas leaves the barrel and expands at high speed, just like a firecracker makes.
Second is the sonic boom caused by the bullet traveling faster than the speed of sound.
Third is the noise of the mechanical operation - the characteristic pistol cocking-type noise.
A suppressor generally operates by reducing the first factor. Instead of letting a bunch of hot expanding gas rocket out of the barrel, a suppressor is like a big can with baffles in it that slows down the gas and allows it to expand. It works on exactly the same principle as a car muffler. The slowed gasses, when they exit the suppressor, are much quieter, though rarely silent.
The second factor is the bullet’s sonic boom. In almost all cases this is easily solved by using bullets that are travelling less than the speed of sound as they leave the barrel. Some weapons use supersonic ammo that slows down to subsonic before it leaves the barrel, but this is limited to a few weapon types (including the one in the second vid below).
The mechanical noise of the gun can be reduced by a couple of methods. First is putting some sort of sound insulation over the bolt to make sure no gasses escape that way. A second method is to have a closed bolt or delayed blowback action and maybe rubber dampers or some other system to reduce but not eliminate the clack-clack sort of noise. The third method is to shoot a weapon in single shot mode – there are no moving parts other than the firing pin, and thus no mechanical noise. In any case, the cycling of the action is pretty quiet, so it’s not as important to worry about it.
This is a crappy silencer on an open-bolt gun. Very loud, but not as much as a regular shot. Note the gasses escaping out of the chamber as the casing ejects – this is a source of noise.
Here is a vid with a well-designed supressor (in Japanese). The sound reduction is quite large, and there is little echo. There is still the mechanical cycling noise, but compared to a normal shot, it is very quiet.
Finally, there is this guy who is kind of a DB, but has a very quiet suppressor. The click in this is just the action moving. It could also be reduced, but there’s not much point.
BTW, the classic TV “silencer noise” is something I have never ever heard in real life. Suppressors either sound like a quieter gunshot or a typewriter.
Just to add one thing: because they have a gap between the cylinder and the barrel, revolvers can’t be suppressed- with the exception of the Nagant M1895 Russian service revolver, which, due to a quirk of its mechanism, could be silenced quite efficiently.
ivn1188:
The pistol used in the film wasn’t a little dinky one, it was a big bugger. I’m not familiar with guns of any type but it appeared to me to look something like one of those sidearms that US soldiers used in WW2.
What you said about the the potato blowing up the barrel is exactly what I thought
And suppressors are made so gun users don’t have to carry around bulky ear-muffs, right?
Seriously, I can appreciate the skill and engineering that goes into the manufacturing of tools designed basically to kill something, but I just wish that expertise was being applied to something more useful to society.
We pretty much just did this topic: Homemade silencers
Some jurisdictions place restrictions on the possession of silencers, so if potatoes really were effective sound suppressors there would have to be radical changes in the Vegetable Laws.
You’d need a licence to buy them, and your choice of retail outlets would be restricted to Government Authorised Potato Dealers. Furthermore, all your potatoes would need to be registered on a National Potato Database. If you ate any of them, you would have to fill in a form to confirm they have been disabled and are no longer capable of muffling loud noises.
Naturally, these laws would be vigorously enforced by police raids on those people suspected of flouting the law. That said, there could be periodic Potato Amnesties whereby people who own potatoes they have forgotten about can hand them in at their local police station without being charged for unlawful possession of a potato.
All well and good but what about chip shops?
Could we expect gangs of crooks targetting chippies instead of banks/armoured security cars/jewellers shops etc. etc.
These dastardly crooks intent on stealing spuds before they became chips
Huh, huh, could we?
A buddy of mine has a suppressed 10/22. We shoot subsonic ammo through it. You definitely do not need ear protection. But that’s a special case… I’m thinking you would still want to wear ear protection when shooting a suppressed .30-06, for example.
I disagree - guns are very useful, and suppressed guns are even more useful. But this is GQ, so I’ll stop right there.
Some time back professional marksmen were used to thin out a deer heard that had moved into an urban area and were causing all sorts of problems.
Suppressors were used on their rifles so as not to bother nor frighten the local residents and to keep other deer from running away from the noise.
A justifiable use of a suppressor I say.
Oh man, oh man. I so wish this wasn’t GQ.
Is your thread-starting finger broken?
At least in the US, a device doesn’t have to be effective to be a silencer; it only has to be intended to silence a firearm.
So if someone were to use a potato or any other object (soda bottle, pillow) to try to muffle the report of a firearm they would be guilty of a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison (assuming they hadn’t gone through the process to get permission to manufacture a silencer).
Still on the subject of silen…suppressors.
What effect, if any, do they have on accuracy?
I believe Tim Russe®t was fond of using a potato silencer. Although I’ve never heard a potato make all that much noise.
It depends on the design. Some older designs used elastomeric “wipers” that contacted the bullet and degraded accuracy noticeably, though they tended to be very effective at sound reduction when the wipers were new. Such designs are not currently in vougue.
Designs that have no contact with the bullet have very little effect, and in some cases improve accuracy. As the bullet leaves the barrel in a non-suppressed firearm, the gas behind it passes the bullet along with the shock wave of the report. If the end of the barrel (“crown”) isn’t finished exactly square to the bore, then this can disturb the bullet’s flight. Suppressors “catch” this gas and shock wave, and in some cases will improve accuracy. “Compensators” which reduce recoil, but not noise, do a similar thing, and are usually thought NOT to degrade accuracy.
In addition, the loud blast can be a factor in the shooter flinching and throwing off the shot. Cutting down the noise can make an inexperienced shooter quite a bit better. For this reason I always have new shooters wear overkill in terms of ear protection…plugs and muffs both. So I can imagine that not expecting a painfully loud noise probably causes the shooter of a supressed weapon to be a bit better shot…and a lot better if they are not well trained.
Oh, as for the OP: Potatos and pillows do very little to reduce noise.