towel silencer

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theicemanmpls

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Watching Godfather II again.
During the annual San Gennaro festival, the character Vito Corleone wacks the neighborhood Black Hand extortionist Massimo Fanucci with a .38.

Vito has a towel wrapped around the barrel and its supposed to silence the weapon.

Afterward, Vito breaks up the weapon, and disposes of it on the roof. It must of been a Taurus. It fell apart rather quickly.

I can understand the flames, but I am not sure the report was a pfffft.

Any comments about towel silencer?
 
I believe it would have to be attached to the firearm instead of just draping it over it. I'm not saying it's a good idea but it would be hard to prove your intent. If I'm wrong them someone please correct me.
 
Actually, an old trick was to put a snubby under a rolled up news paper and get close enough to pull the trigger. Also a shoe box stuffed with tissues. The issue is suppression of the sound which is caused by the rapid expansion of the Gas and the slug breaking the sound barrier. Suppress these effects safely and you have effectively suppressed the weapon.
I know of a few suppression techniques from reading about them not from actual practice. no one ever said a suppressor had to be a metal tube on the end of the barrel it is not a hard and fast rule.
 
The gun used to kill Fanucci was a .455 Webley Mk VI. The towel was wrapped around the gun to disguise the fact that Vito Corleone was carrying a gun. I don't recall a "phhtttt" sound.

ECS
 
No, it won't work. Neither will a shoebox full of tissues. At least, not outside of Hollywood and dime novels.
 
A pillow will in fact work, but you would have to be pressing the pillow against the victim. With a revolver it would also have to come up far enough to cover the b-c gap.

The question of suppressors always depends on how quiet you have to be; during Mardi Gras (at least in New Orleans), anything smaller than a 16 inch naval rifle probably wouldn't be noticed. At other times, it is often enough to keep a gunshot from sounding like a gunshot.

Jim
 
I'm sure there are many ways to suppress firearms. Even tho some might not be things like pillows. Like how the snipers would wait until bombers went over to shoot. Kinda like how a gun doesn't seem as loud when you shoot while the wind is blowing hard
 
Well, it would take an unusual sniper to hold a pillow to the victim's body while pressing the gun into it. Not exactly long range work.

Jim
 
Jim K said:
A pillow will in fact work, but you would have to be pressing the pillow against the victim.
Click to expand...

If you're holding the muzzle up tight against the victim sandwiching the pillow between, then it's not the pillow silencing the shot, it's the victim's body
 
FIVETWOSEVEN said:
Does a potato on the muzzle actually work?
Click to expand...
I was told by a guy who actually used sweet potatoes to suppress the sound of a .410 shotgun that it does silence well enough. Followup shots with the potato suffered drastic reductions in silencer effectiveness, though, as there was little but the skin of the potato left, and that tended to be hard to find.

He also used baby bottle nipples to suppress .22 rimfire (not sure if it was short, long or long rifle), but this was back in the '30s when he did these things.

If I remember the "Godfather" movie correctly, the towel was wrapped around the whole gun (and his hand, too). At the time, supersonic bullets out of a handgun were vanishingly rare and as theicemanmpls points out, there was a rather loud festival going on at the time. I have no doubt that the report of that revolver would be muffled quite a bit and unlikely to be noticed.

Alec, as far as the towel being expensive, I have some cheap terrycloth that I might try out my next trip to the range.

Lost Sheep
 
I was always under the impression that the only thing that would remotely come close to effectively concealing a gunshot without a suppressor is using the gun while some other loud noise is in the background. (Concert, party, fireworks, construction sounds, helicopters/planes above, etc.)
 
I wonder if--Homemade supressors

:DI've noticed in a few gun parts supplier mags advertisements for "fake" suppressors. They screw on the barrel just like the real ones,looks like the type of metal used on the real ones and look like the real deal except for these words priented on the side "not a real suppressor".

Looks like the only difference is these don't have the (guts) baffle chambers inside. From what I've read alternating rubber and stainless steel washers with appropriate hole and a funnel shaped spacer with a hole and an average Joe could easily build a suppressor comparable to a $1,400.00 store bout one.

Federal, state, and Local laws and tax stamps still apply.

If I were to try this I'd have to do something about the trail of burning rubber.;):);):D
 
"I made him an offer he couldn't refuse."
 

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I always thought that stuffing a potato in the Barrel would cause it to peal back like a banana and cause your bill to fly around to the back of your head while your face turns to char and bugs gets away.
 
The towel was to disguise the fact that he was aiming a gun so he could get his first shot off at a stationary target. It was not, IMHO, for sound suppression.

In that scene, he unwraps the flaming towel from around the gun and delivers a final coup de gras to the Don, proving that he wasn't worried about the noise. The fireworks out in the street provided enough cover.
 
Sweet potato to silence a .410? Aside from blowing up the potato, what was he trying to hit?

Baby bottle nipples don't silence anything, except maybe a crying baby.
 
The escaping pressures are so high that a pillow, towel, or any other simular method will result in very little silencing effect, while completely exploding the pillow, towel, or vegatable being utilized.

Occasionally a person will get their hand too close to the end of the barrel or cylinder gap, this commonly results in a loss of fingers, or very badly damaged ones. To wrap a towel or other object around the barrel and then hold your hand around it to keep it in place would be pretty risky in this respect.
 
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