Silencer
Glen T. Brock said:
Hello folks,
A .32 is a woman's purse gun. For that matter the .38 was too until it became the standard issue for police side arms. At the turn of the 20th century the .44 revolver was the bad boy on the block. During the Spanish-American War in 1898 the .45 automatic was introduced for the army. It was designed to have a quarter ounce bullet travel at a relatively low speed (about 600 ft. per second), giving the bullet the foot pounds of energy to not only cause hydrostatic shock on impact but to knock the target down as well. This was important, considering the Army was fighting Moros in the Phillipines, who would habitually dope themselves up into suicide charges with machetes.
The best homemade silencer I've ever heard of is the good old propholactic (non lubricated rubber) tied over the end of the barrell. It's only good for one shot but that's all it was designed for. A suppressor works by dissapating the gasses coming out of the barrell when the pistol is fired, thus reducing the shock wave. The trick is to suppress the gas just enough to keep the barrell from bursting. If the gun is silenced too well it will backfire. Not good. The Heckler & Koch 9mm. is a favorite weapon for silencing because it has a portruding barrell that may be threaded for easy installation of a muffler.
Best wishes,
Glen T. Brock
I'm not sure I'd use "dissipation" to describe how a silencer works, though I suppose you could say that. What you're really doing is goiving the sound more wave more room to be absorbed.
A quality weapon won't backfire, no matter how well it's silenced, and high quality commercial silencers do a really impressive job at quieting things down.
The trouble with silencers such as a prophylactic, or a potato, or most other home remedies, is that they don't work very well, especially with large caliber rounds, most will interfere with aiming, and they can only be used once. In real life, one shot seldom does the trick. I saw a man shot six tijmes with a .357 Mag who lived, and another who was shot five times with a .45 Colt ACP who lived.
The only absolutely certain one shot quick kill is right where the spine and brain join. Some will die almost immediately with one shot anywhere near the heart, but other men take a lot of killing. You have to shoot them six times, then beat them with a club, then hang whatever's left. And they'll still spend half an hour trying to untie the noose to get at you.
When you pull the trigger on someone, you have to be able to keep pulling the trigger until he's dead, or he might live long enough to kill you. If the person is armed, even with a knife, or with a handy nearby hard object, you do not want to be close enough to him for a spur of the moment silencer to do it's job. It takes less than one second for a good man to cover ten feet and kill you with almost anything he has at hand, and he can do this with a bullet, or five bullets, already in him.
In the movies, the script is usually written so the first well placed shot drops the person in his tracks, and the murderer calmly walks away. In real life, the first shot, or the first two or three shots, even well-placed, may just make the person mad.
If you're really up close and personal, the best silencer is the person's body. Jam the muzzle of the weapon
hard into his abdomen right under the ribs and pull the trigger. There's very little sound at all except a big
whump as the gases expand inside him.
Of course, as they say, if you REALLY want to kill someone, forget the noise. Get a shotgun, get close, and get messy.
