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A fellow I once knew who did a lot of work on silencers (suppressors) made a valid point. He said that the device didn't need to completely silence a gun, it only needed to make it sound not like a gun.
I fired guns with a couple of his silencers, though, and they really did silence the gun. To be more exact, they silenced the discharge of the cartridge; silencing the gun is another story. I fired an M3 SMG with a silencer and it was almost as loud as without the silencer because the bolt slap on that stamped receiver made a lot of noise. The racket would normally have been drowned out by the noise of the firing, but with the silencer in place, the bolt noise could be heard over 50 yards away. And it sounded (surprise!) just like a submachinegun firing.
The M3's and STEN's made for silencer use had lace-on pads to keep the action noise down. A British STEN with a silencer and cover made a noise like that of a CB Cap, so it sounded like a .22 CB cap submachinegun, not necessarily something that would be ignored.
Jim
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