WaPo:Tim Kaine's claim the Las Vegas shooter was only stopped because he lacked a silencer

[friendly_iconoclast]

X-post from Editorials & Other Articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016194090


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/10/04/tim-kaines-claim-the-las-vegas-shooter-was-only-stopped-because-he-lacked-a-silencer/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_factchecker-355am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.05236bbcb021

“He was only stopped finally because he did not have a silencer on his weapon. And the sound drew people to the place where he was ultimately stopped. Can you imagine what this would have been if he had silencers on these weapons?”
— Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), interview with The Washington Post, Oct. 2, 2017

...The Facts

First of all, there are relatively few reports of suppressors being used in crimes. In 2015, 125 suppressors were recovered from crime scenes where a trace was requested by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) — when nearly 265,000 pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns were recovered. The Violence Policy Center, which opposes the proposed law, argues that this shows the success of current restrictions. “The limited information available suggests that the current regulation of silencers under the NFA is working to keep criminal use of the devices rare,” the group says.

...Hearing damage begins to occur at about 85 decibels, which is the sound of a hairdryer. Various reports have indicated that the Las Vegas shooter had AR-15-type rifles. A 30-decibel reduction means an AR-15 rifle would have a noise equivalent of 132 decibels. That is considered equivalent to a gunshot or a jackhammer. A .22-caliber pistol would be 116 decibels, which is louder than a 100-watt car stereo. In all likelihood, the noise level is actually higher...

...But in any case, the evidence does not support Kaine’s claim that the shooter was “only stopped” because he did not have suppressors on his weapons. That’s exaggerated and could leave a misleading impression on people only familiar with silencers in the movies. The crowd under attack might have had trouble establishing the location of the shooter if he had silencers, but he fired from a hotel filled with guests who almost certainly would have heard 132 decibels from the floors above and below the attack.

They gave Kaine two Pinocchios- when will people learn that giving out inaccurate information about guns
only provides a means for the NRA, et al for dismissing any accurate information one does provide?

We must be more truthful than them!

[Sailor65x1]

2. Actually, you're missing an important point and he's right

You're talking sound pressure, which behaves as an inverse square to distance. At the 400 yards to his targets, the sound pressure would only be about 70dB, and from his window to street level, not much more. And that's with no attenuation from structures.

If he were using a suppressor, even a 30dB drop would have made his shots almost undetectable at range, and only moderately detectable at street level below. Inside the building, the team tracking him definitely would have had a much harder time.

Remember, too, that structural attenuation also has the effect of impairing directional detection of sound.

I think that Kaine is making a decent point here.

[friendly_iconoclast]

3. Why would something as loud as a jackhammer not be heard in the hotel?

Again from the WaPo piece:

Officials credited hotel security and the police for quickly locating the source of the noise, based on officer observations about the trajectory of the shots and information from the guest calls inside the hotel. That led officials to conclude the shots were coming from a room between the 29th and 32nd floors. Paddock then gave himself away when he fired at a security guard checking rooms on the 32nd floor, apparently because Paddock had set up remote video cameras to monitor the hallway.

[Always Right]

4. He would have been found sooner if he had a silencer and would have not been able to fire as much

[link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/10/02/a-fire-alarm-from-gun-smoke-led-police-to-the-las-vegas-shooters-room-retired-officer-says|]

Regardless of what the sound pressure at street level was, with a silencer the noise still would have been 120dB plus to the near by rooms which is still quite loud.

Here, the shooter was first located because all the gun smoke set off the fire alarm. Yes, he would have eventually been located based on the noise but even without any noise, he would have still been found and found first because of the smoke.

Had the shooter been using a silencer, more of the smoke would have remained in the room because the way a silencer functions is to reduce the sudden rush of gases from the muzzle. That results in gases coming out where the bolt is as well as the gasses going forward with less force. Basically it is like letting air out of a balloon slowly instead of popping it.

Using a silencer would have sent off the fire alarm much sooner. Not only that, the silencers get hot, quite hot. (Think about the muffler on your lawn mower.) Silencers heat up by 7 degrees per shot. After one magazine the silencer would have been glowing red hot and on the verge of failure. With the next magazine, the silencer would have failed (exploded) and disabled the weapon and possibly the shooter. There are lots of youtube videos of silencers being shot until they fail.

If he were to have put down the gun with a glowing red silencer, he likely would have caught the room on fire, which would have increased the speed at which the smoke alarm went off and caused him to stop shooting to put out the fire or flee the room.

[JoeStuckInOH]

5. Nope. Silencers take WAY more abuse than that.

"Silencers heat up by 7 degrees per shot. After one magazine the silencer would have been glowing red hot and on the verge of failure. With the next magazine, the silencer would have failed (exploded) and disabled the weapon and possibly the shooter."

I've personally done mag dumps using full auto and takes way more than one mag to make it glow and two to pop it. At your stated "7 degrees per shot" ... that's only +210 degrees for one 30 round magazine. General rule of thumb in the welding shop is something faintly starts to glow red around 1000F. Even assuming this is the celcius scale we're talking about, you don't get a dull red glow until about 550 degrees Celsius. So it would take about 3 magazines before a suppressor was red enough to take notice.


This particular video start to show the faint glow (in daylight) after the 4th magazine with the glowing more evident after the 5th magazine. Since it's daylight outside, the beginning of the glow would probably be seen a magazine-sooner if indoors. Looks like he shoots through about 11 magazines (330 rounds) before things stopped working well.

[Always Right]

6. By magazine I was referring to the Surefire ones the LV shooter had

The Surefire magazines the LV shooter had were 100 round magazines while the ones you are using in your video are 30 round magazines.

As his magazine capacity was 3.3 times what you are using in your video, there would have been less breaks to cool down due to fewer magazine changes. Also, due to his bump fire stock, he was shooting faster than you in your video. Lastly, it appears that you are using 7.62x39 which has a pressure of 45k while he was using 5.56 which has a pressure of 55k.

My initial point being that with a suppressor, his gun would have stopped working sooner with a suppressor than without a suppressor is still valid. While you got 330 rounds off, you had the advantages of a lower pressure round, brief breaks while changing more magazines and a lower rate of fire so I would expect that he would not have gotten off nealy as many rounds as you did.