If movies were to be believed,
you’d think that all it takes to almost completely stifle the sound of a gunshot
is to screw a small metal tube onto the end of one’s firearm. Doing so will deaden the loud,
characteristic bang of a gun down to a near inaudible ‘pew’,
making it an essential piece of everyday carry for international spies and cold-blooded assassins.
But is this all that realistic?
Or is the film industry telling porkies yet again?
I’m Stu, this is Debunked, and we’re here to sort the truths from the myths,
and the facts from the misconceptions.
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about your favourite silencers sound in a movie - realistic or ridiculous!
Sound-reducing devices that are mounted onto the business end of guns - known variously as
“silencers” or “suppressors” - date back to at least the beginning of the 20th century.
The first commercially successful silencer was
patented all the way back in 1909 by the American inventor
Hiram Percy Maxim, son of Hiram Stevens Maxim,
who invented the first ever fully automatic
machine gun - the eponymous Maxim Gun - over 20 years earlier.
Since its invention, depictions of silenced gunfire in films has had a long and frankly
amusing history, with examples ranging from somewhat realistic to downright absurd.
One of the earliest examples comes from the 1933 film Corruption, released only a few years after
the end of the silent era. They started things off with a slightly bizarre ‘puff’ noise.
The sounds of silenced firearms continued to develop through the latter half of the 20th
century; the 1961 adventure war film The Guns of Navarone, opted for a distinctive popping sound.
The following year saw The Manchurian Candidate,
“IS THAT A SILENCER?
in which silenced guns make a noise closer to a crack.
The 80s and 90s integrated the iconic ‘pew’ sound effect,
like here in the classic 1995 Bond movie GoldenEye.
And more famously in the N64 game.
Nowadays, filmmakers appear to opt for a more realistic sound,
but at an equally low auditory volume. Like this hilarious scene from John Wick:
Chapter 2 where the characters wield silenced firearms so quiet that they
are able to have a full-blown shootout amongst a crowd of people in secret.
So that’s Hollywood, but what about reality.
Today, silencers can be either detachable or integral;
detachable silencers are a separate accessory that are screwed onto the muzzle,
preferably while standing in the shadows wearing leather gloves.
Integral silencers on the other hand are built directly onto the gun and can’t be removed.
Silencers are also not only available for handguns, but for a wide variety
of larger firearms, such as rifles, submachine guns, and even shotguns.
So how exactly do silencers work? Well,
to answer that, first we need to know what causes that classic gunshot sound.
Aside from the noise produced by a gun’s internal mechanisms when fired,
the loud bang of a gun is caused by shockwaves;
these are generated both by the rapidly expanding gases exiting the firearm itself,
and the tiny sonic booms that occur when bullets are propelled supersonically.
Though designs vary, silencers generally operate on the same principle; the inside of
a silencer is divided into a number of separate chambers by internal walls called ‘baffles’,
each with a central hole that allows the bullet to pass through unobstructed.
When the gun is fired, the bullet flies through the silencer and out towards its target,
while the exiting gases are redirected into the chambers and rapidly decelerated.
Thus, the gases exit through the silencer at a slower speed and over a longer period of time,
resulting in less noise upon firing. Simple, right?
Well, not that simple.
If you thought that this was all you need to deaden a gunshot down
to a sneaky, muffled pop, you’d be wrong.
First of all, silencers can only suppress the sound of
those expanding gases we keep harping on about.
Very little can be done about the whip-crack sonic booms that bullets
produce when fired faster than the speed of sound.
The aforementioned mechanical noise can also be deadened,
but is extremely difficult to eliminate entirely.
Consequently, it is almost impossible to completely silence any firearm.
Indeed, while silencers certainly do muffle the noise that firearms produce,
they generally only reduce the loud bang of a gun down to a quieter, but still fairly loud crack.
Unsuppressed gunfire - even from not particularly powerful firearms
- can reach volumes of between 150 and 170 decibels,
roughly as loud as fireworks or even rockets taking off.
While the sound of a gunshot only lasts a split second,
they are more than loud enough to cause hearing damage with prolonged exposure.
Multiple studies into the efficacy of silencers have shown that they reduce
the volume of gunshots by no more than around 30 decibels, lowering the volume of
many firearms down to around 120 decibels; certainly quieter, but by no means quiet.
Indeed, this is actually part of why there exists two names for the device;
‘silencer’ and ‘suppressor’.
‘Silencer’ was the original name, coined by H P Maxim himself back in the 1910s,
while ‘suppressor’ is the newer term intended to more accurately
reflect the level of achievable noise reduction.
The latter term gained traction particularly as a defence against
potential litigation from those who might claim that ‘silencer’ constitutes false advertising.
Still, there are some firearms made specifically to be as quiet as possible,
which can operate at even lower volumes.
For instance, a British-made firearm known as the De Lisle [duh LY-ull] Carbine,
which saw limited use during the Second World War, combined an integrated suppressor
with the use of subsonic ammunition, preventing those pesky bullet sonic-booms.
Another technique for quieter gunfire, known as ‘Captive Piston’ silencing,
was developed by Soviet Russia in the early 1980s.
This method doesn’t actually involve muzzle silencers at all,
instead utilising specially-designed rounds with the bullet positioned on top of a piston.
When the gun is fired, the propellent gases push the piston forward,
simultaneously launching the bullet and sealing the end of the cartridge,
trapping the gases inside. Like the De Lisle carbine, this results in subsonic bullets and
far less escaping gases, lessening the operating volume significantly.
However, even such specialised weaponry can only achieve so much.
The De Lisle fires at about 85 decibels, about as loud as a car wash or food blender,
while estimates of the sound produced by captive-piston
rounds range from roughly similar levels up to around 120 decibels,
comparable to the sound of a hammer striking a nail.
Again - quiet for a gun, but certainly not silent.
You may be wondering what is even the point of silencers
if they don’t actually make guns, y’know… silent.
Thing is, silencers don’t have to fully remove the sound of a gunshot to be useful.
Whether they’re being used in combat or by hunters,
sometimes it’s enough to make the gunshot unrecognisable or difficult to pinpoint.
Very often silencers are used simply to reduce the risk of hearing loss
that comes with frequently firing loud weapons.
They also grant benefits beyond just noise reduction;
by adding weight to the end of the gun,
silencers reduce both recoil and muzzle lift, making the weapon easier to hold and fire.
Still, the stereotypical, muted “pew” sound you hear from silenced guns in action movies
is pretty much an outright falsehood. If there do exist weapons that can fire as quietly as
Hollywood makes out, they are likely to be unknown and unavailable to the general public,
and certainly cannot be replicated
by simply screwing a commercial silencer onto a regular firearm.
Hey - don’t shoot the messenger.