this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2024
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[–] [email protected] 132 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Some of these are wrong.

Tracing a call is instant. It took longer back in the days when there were physical switches, but that's been a long, long time ago.

Silencers can make a gun nearly as quiet as the movies, in limited cases. Something like a subsonic .22 will be about as lout as a golf clap. A 5.56x45mm rifle will be hearing-safe, but only barely; it's still going to be very loud, and will def. sound like a rifle.

You can shoot some locks off. You're not shooting through the shackle, you're disrupting the locking mechanism that keeps the shackle closed. It's still unsafe; you're going to have ricochet and spall going everywhere.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Tracing a call is instant. It took longer back in the days when there were physical switches, but that's been a long, long time ago.

Yup. Back in the days of analog phone exchanges, you literally had to send a guy to check electrical connections between lines. Which is why it took time and which is why they encouraged the people to keep on the line as long as possible.

Digital exchanges added call tracing as a design requirement. Everything gets logged. Even if you spoofed or blocked your number, the phone company knows what you did. They are the Phone Company.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

It gets more complicated if you're using VOIP, and a logless/anonymous VPN. But yeah, tracing calls is pretty simple for the most part. Now that cops are aware of it, people tend to get busted for SWATting these days.

[–] sp3tr4l 16 points 3 months ago (3 children)

To add to this a bit more:

Generally, if you want to shoot a lock (or door frame hinges) off, you use a shotgun with special breaching rounds.

Various forms of these have been and still are used by various Militaries, but more often SWAT or equivalent type units.

The general video gamey / movie portrayal of how this works is usually wildly exaggerated / inaccurate though, usually with pistols at moderate ranges.

Conceivably you might also be able take a door lock/hinges apart with an anti materiel rifle, but this would be wildly impractical.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I think the idea of just shooting the lock off came about from the idea that our character had nothing else available. Like what average street criminal goes about with breaching rounds? And in the movies its often in a pinch. Breaching rounds are used by military and swat because they are equiped and prepared for that possibility, just like a professional theif is equiped with lock picking tools instead of a glock (or at least their glock isn't used on the locks).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

The default scenario that comes to mind when I think of shooting a locked door open is to put a bunch of bullets into the door around the latch and then kicking the door to smash the now-weakened latched part off. That seems like a reasonable approach to me, especially as a desperation maneuver.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

My favorite cliche under that umbrella is people shooting chains to cause something to fall. Chains are strong as all get out, round, and they're hanging. Shooting a big heavy chain might just clean some corporation off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

If hinges are on the outside, in most cases you can just pull the pins out with pliers. Or a small hammer and a screwdriver to act as a drive punch. That's why most exterior doors swing in (hinges on the inside) rather than out.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

It's gonna depend on the lock, too. Most locks most people buy are gonna have shit build quality. Some literally so bad that you could just shoot straight through it and not just disrupting the locking mechanism (in the way that some quite a bit stronger locks can be disrupted with, for example, a rubber mallet) but literally destroying it. Others (a minority) might be so strong that a typical gun has no effect at all and the infographic actually gets it right.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Pretty sure chloroform is wrong too.

Chem teacher had some and one kid stupidly took a whiff. She dropped like a sack of potatoes. She woke up in a few seconds but yeah - that shit was instant.

I guess it might take 5 minutes to get enough to be out for a few hours.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Here's what I can find that gives a better answer. Above 100ppm, you'll rapidly start feeling dizzy. But chloroform is also highly volatile, so you would need to have a rag soaked in chloroform just before attacking someone, rather than lying in wait for a few minutes to a few hours. Plus, if you get that concentration too high, you can accidentally kill someone.

So if you'd been hiding in someone's car for 10 minutes, that rag might have lost enough efficacy that it would take a few minutes. Alternatively, if the person in the backseat doused the rag just before attacking the driver, it might be nearly instant.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Supersonic bullet still makes a crack. When you fire subsonic you can get just the sound of the metal bits hitting each other. Whoever is interested look up what an MP5S with subsonic ammo in a firing range sounds like (the S is important in this search)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

It's still louder than just the bolt cycling; you're hearing the gas escaping at high speed, but subsonic ammunition through a silencer is definitely significantly quieter than supersonic ammunition. One of the very, very few positive things about .45 AARP is that it's always subsonic, so it's easy to get it very quiet, as long as you have the slide locked so that it doesn't cycle. (IIRC Knights Armament Corp made a .45 for SOF that had a locking slide.) Videos aren't great for hearing what a silenced firearm really sounds like due to the way that most microphones compress sound; they end up sounding very different IRL.

I've been at the range when some other people were testing out a night-fighter rig with .300 AAC and a silencer; it sounded like they were shooting a .22.

I'd love to get a silencer for my Ruger Mk. IV, because that's one that will get very, very quiet with subsonic ammunition. I also want to get a silencer for my AR-15, mostly because that sharply reduces the amount of smoke you have to deal with at night matches.