Does anyone know if a silencer leaves any forensic evidence, such that someone could tell whether a silencer was used or not?
I know silencers get dirty so that might stop some of the powder burns and particle imbedding you get from close range gunshot wounds. Not sure if it would affect the forensic investigations.
I do agree with you Maui that a criminal is probably going to commit the crime either way, but the argument can still be made that we would want the person stopped or caught sooner. If there was a mass shooting at some college campus and the shooter used a silencer, I am sure someone would claim that the silencer made it so that people had less advanced warning to flee. Though again, mass shootings account for a very small percentage of gun murders.
One more time .....
(1) silencers are not totally silent.
(2) silencers are not illegal in all states. They can be manufactured or purchased with an NFA tax payment and proper paperwork in 39 states, and the list is growing.
(3) silencers are manufactured illegally, just like many guns are.
(4) silencers are available to any criminal that wants to use them for mass shootings or any other crime.
So, if a college shooter wanted to use a silencer to make it "so that people had less advanced warning to flee". there is no reason to believe it hasn't happened simply because the mass shooters couldn't get their hands on one. The obvious reason this scenario hasn't happened is because it makes no sense.
When was the last mass shooting in which the primary weapon was a .22LR weapon? Any larger caliber gun than that will not be anywhere close to silent.
No matter how many movies have silencers that make a gun sound like an airy fart, it's just not reality when you pick a 9MM pistol or larger caliber.
First, the way sound is measured is complicated. Most commonly, sound is measured by the decibel level, named after Alexander Graham Bell. The hard part is that decibels work on a logarithmic scale. This means that 20 dB is not twice as loud as 10 dB—it’s actually about 10 times as loud. But we won’t get involved in all that. Just realize that a few decibels can make a huge difference in perceived noise.
Second, you have to worry about duration of exposure to loud noise. One momentary “exposure” to a 140-dB sound can permanently damage your hearing. But so can repeated exposure to sound levels less than that. In fact, OSHA limits average sound exposure over an eight-hour shift to 85 dB—not a whole lot more than the noise of a vacuum cleaner.
Now back to guns. The venerable 1911, firing a 230-grain .45 ACP cartridge, will generate about 162 dB of sound. One shot near unprotected ears will cause permanent hearing loss. Each additional exposure will add cumulative hearing loss. The problem is, you won’t know you’ve damaged your hearing until it’s too late, and nothing can be done to repair the damage. Always wear hearing protection, folks!
Putting a suppressor on that 1911 will reduce the sound to somewhere around 133 dB. That’s below the OSHA maximum exposure level for an “impulse noise.” But you don’t want to expose your ears to a continuous barrage of 133-dB noise, either.
The bottom line is that silencers are great, and a massive improvement to hearing safety. Just be smart and use hearing protection anyway when firing suppressed. A shot or two here and there probably won’t hurt you, but you don’t want to spend hours at a shooting range surrounded by noise in the 130-dB range.