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Silenced firearms Silencers work by suppressing the gases that leave a gun barrel when it is fired. Special ammunition used with silencers travels slower than the speed of sound, avoiding the sonic boom caused by ordinary bullets. Silenced firearms are not entirely silent -- they do not muffle the mechanical sounds of a gun's moving parts -- but they do reduce the sound to a level that is not noticeable in a crowd or from far away. The silencer also hides the bright muzzle flash that usually appears when a gun is fired. The miniature gun pictured was in the possession of KGB assassin Nikolai Khokhlov, who opted to defect to West Germany in 1954 rather than kill Georgi Okolovich, an anti-communist emigre in Frankfurt. The gun -- one of two issued to Khokhlov -- could fire poisoned bullets to make sure of a kill. The collapsible barrel had a built-in silencer, and the gun when fired made "a sound less than the snap of a finger," according to press accounts at the time. Because of the slower bullet speed, guns with silencers are most effective at close range. |
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