Are they cops?
Are the ICE?
Are they cosplayers?
Source: https://redlib.northboot.xyz/r/LosAngeles/comments/1lfe5gb/ice_brandishing_silencers/
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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THE POLICE PROBLEM
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Police who break the law must be prosecuted like anyone else, promptly fired if guilty, and barred from ever working in law-enforcement again.
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Silencers aren't actually silent, they're still quite loud, it's nothing like in shows and movies
In real world usage, they're really only useful for reducing the decibels a bit for hearing protection reasons
Suppressor is a more apt term for them
Subsonic ammunition is definitely quiet
The ammunition is, but the mechanical parts of the gun are still fairly loud.
You can get the sound down to maybe 100 dBA. That's much quieter than the 160ish that you get without a suppressor. But, that's still loud. Things that are around 100 dBA include blenders, electric drills, motorcycles, etc. It's only a very brief sound, but it's loud for that moment. The Guinness record for loudest finger snap is 108 dBA. So, the quietest gun will be much louder than the average finger snap.
That means those movie scenes where people are having a shootout with silencers in a library and nobody notices, or even in a crowded train station. That's not realistic. People might not recognize the sound as a gun, but they'd definitely be looking around for the source of that snapping sound. It also means the scenes where someone is sneaking through a house at night killing people without being noticed are not realistic either. If you're asleep, a loud finger snap might not wake you up, but if you're awake you're definitely going to notice it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm under no impression that the scene from John Wick is realistic (at least not with the way current firearms technology functions).
When speaking about subsonic ammunition, the greatest impact is mainly how far away you can hear the weapon. Guns are loud, yes — something that cuts the sound down from 5 city blocks to 1 (hyperbole, I don't know the exact numbers but I do know it considerably decreases how far the sound travels) is pretty fuckin quiet.
And .22lr subsonic really is movie quiet, not that it matters - you're practically shooting a suped up BB at that point.
"Movie quiet" would be so quiet that you can shoot the gun next to someone in a library and nobody would look up. Nothing is that quiet. Even if you were dry firing with no rounds at all, the "click" would be so loud that it would draw a lot of attention.
A realistic movie take on a gun with subsonic ammunition and a silencer would be one where if someone was shooting, people would be looking around for the source of the clicking / snapping sound but not worried about guns because the sound is so unlike a gun that it wouldn't register to them as a gun.