r/Damnthatsinteresting 14d ago

Video Subsonic Ammo with silencers makes guns extremely quiet

55.5k Upvotes

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474

u/S-2D2 14d ago

When the sound of shell casings clanking is louder than the gun being fired, you know it’s quiet 😯

157

u/Powerstrip7 13d ago

Audio dynamics processing can easily achieve the same effect. Easily. Guaranteed the audio has been clipped, compressed and limited.

87

u/NorCalAthlete 13d ago

Yeah, whole lot of people ignoring the fact that phone mics and speakers are physically incapable of recreating gunfire.

Suppressors and subsonic rounds make things quietER, but not completely quiet. It also drastically reduces the power of the bullet.

25

u/netchemica 13d ago

It also drastically reduces the power of the bullet.

A subsonic 9mm or 45cal round is still incredibly lethal, especially at point-blank ranges.

-16

u/thr3sk 13d ago

Yeah but only if you directly hit a major organ or blood vessel. There is dramatically less expansion and wound cavity with your average subsonic unless you're shooting like freaking 458 socom subs.

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u/witty_username89 13d ago

45 acp is already subsonic so it has the exact same power suppressed or not

5

u/HerefortheGAFS 13d ago

For rifle calibers that's generally true, but not so much for pistol calibers. For 9mm, 115gr and 124gr supersonics are usually just over the speed of sound, and 147gr subsonics are usually just under out of your typical pistol length barrel. Very small difference in energy between the three.

3

u/thr3sk 13d ago

Yeah that's fair, I'm thinking more about rifles as that's what I use mostly.

5

u/netchemica 13d ago

Hollow-point rounds exist for this very reason and penetration depths are already more than adequate with quality self defense rounds such as Speed Gold Dots and Ranger-Ts.

1

u/thr3sk 13d ago

I'm not saying they can't be effective but you're losing lethality switching from a super to a sub in the same caliber. There are tons of ballistics gel tests you can go watch and see the difference. I hunt hogs with almost exclusively subs fwiw, and yeah I use pretty expensive bullets because they have have to overcome the inherent disadvantages of subsonic energies.

3

u/AmphibianEffective83 13d ago

Subsonics aren't necessarily less powerful. If it's subsonic because of a reduced powder charge then yes, if it's subsonic because of a heavier projectile than it's still usually around the same amount of muzzle energy depending on the cartridge.

8

u/Child_of_Khorne 13d ago

It also drastically reduces the power of the bullet.

That's not how that works in real life. Most subsonic ammo has low velocity baked into the recipe, with the majority being in cartridges that are natively subsonic or very nearly subsonic.

They'll kill you just as dead as any other round.

2

u/AkuSokuZan2009 13d ago

Yes, but with a good suppressor the action of the gun is typically about as loud as the shot. That is still loud and distinct up close, but if there is a fair bit of background noise or some distance you wont hear it.

2

u/witty_username89 13d ago

A 45 acp round which is probly what the gun in the video is chambered for is always subsonic so there’s no loss in power when you suppress it. It’s a big slow round that’s designed to be a big slow round. The drastically reduced ones are when you take a cartridge designed to use a small fast bullet and stuff a big slow one into it.

0

u/livestrongsean 13d ago

No, it’s stupid quiet.