What gun and ammo?

[Kumabjorn]

I've been fooling around and writing stuff, on and off, for my own amusement for a few years. Now I'm conidering testing the waters to see if I have what it requires.

One of the things that will happen is a very close up execution in a toilet inside a restaurant. Obviously the killer will need a suppresor on the gun, but it should probably also be very small calibre with some kind of special ammunition in order to keep the sound level at a minimum (toilets have tiles and it creates a good accoustic echo). Is there some HP where it is possible to understand what is required given the environmental limitations?

[teh603]

For some reason I want to say a Nagant Revolver (Wikipedia article here) with special gas seal ammo and probably a low- charge load that would hopefully reduce its noise even further- although its muzzle velocity isn't much higher than an unladen swallow with normal ammo.

And if all else fails, the cops probably won't remember that someone made a silenceable revolver and will be looking for someone with a semiauto.

[Kumabjorn]

By putting the nozzle to the back of the neck, pointing straight into the brain you don't really need a lot of velocity, right? I'm thinking the bullet needs to work like a buck shot so it spreads for mixumum damage when entering the brain. Death has to be instantaneous.

[Turtle91]

close quarters + silent = knife??

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

close quarters + silent = knife??

Yeah, if you're that close you might as well stick them with a shank and be done with it.

[Kumabjorn]

That is part of the confusion?
The killer is actually the heroine. but that will not be revealed until later.

[Penforhire]

If there is no shooting through stall walls then a .22 long rifle (LR) is supposedly one of the favorites of real head-shooters. Additional detail might be the use a "subsonic" load that does not break the sound barrier (e.g. Aguila SSS, which stands for Sniper Subsonic).

A suppressed (silencer attached) semiautomatic (pistol) such as a Ruger Mk III (or slightly older Mk II) would be very quiet with that ammunition.

[teh603]

Originally Posted by Penforhire

Additional detail might be the use a "subsonic" load that does not break the sound barrier (e.g. Aguila SSS, which stands for Sniper Subsonic).

The Nagant Revolver's default load is just barely subsonic. Shooting it with a weak charge would keep it there.

[cromag]

If it were me, I'd get the cheapest .22 cal handgun I could find, muffle the shot with a roll of toilet paper (right there in the stall), and use .22 short ammo. Marksmanship isn't an issue, and the gun is "disposable."

Purely theoretical, of course!

[BeccaPrice]

I've also read that you can make a silencer using steel wool in a plastic pop bottle, but I've never tried it, myself.

[Kumabjorn]

Originally Posted by cromag

If it were me, I'd get the cheapest .22 cal handgun I could find, muffle the shot with a roll of toilet paper (right there in the stall), and use .22 short ammo. Marksmanship isn't an issue, and the gun is "disposable."

Purely theoretical, of course!

Interesting, using the paper roll as a suppressor. The killing is actually an action of opportunity, killer and victim are both professional assassins. The reason she uses a gun is because she doesn't have a blade with her. Using the roll as suppressor requires the gun to have a long nozzle, doesn't it?

[cromag]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Interesting, using the paper roll as a suppressor. The killing is actually an action of opportunity, killer and victim are both professional assassins. The reason she uses a gun is because she doesn't have a blade with her. Using the roll as suppressor requires the gun to have a long nozzle, doesn't it?

Well, now things start to depend on the action. Perhaps there's a scuffle, the victim hits his/her head on the sink or toilet and falls to the floor, groggy or unconscious. The killer holds the toilet paper roll against the victim's head, puts the gun barrel, long or short, into the center of the roll ...

I was envisioning a short barrel, consistent with a cheap "Saturday night special." With the toilet paper roll pressed against the target and the gun pressed into the roll.

It's probably not perfect, but in a closed bathroom it would probably be "quiet enough."

[Penforhire]

The toilet paper roll is a slick idea given the environment.

An interesting question that I do not know the answer to is, given cromag's action sequence it might be even quieter to just place the barrel end against the head and pull the trigger. Wouldn't that be quiet? Or would you have to press so hard that a typical semiauto comes "out of battery" because you are moving the slide backward?

[VydorScope]

Pro assassin would know how to break neck properly, that would be completely silent and easy to pull off if your close enough to put a gun at the base of the head.

But this gun talk is more interesting to read, so carry on.

[Stitchawl]

Making your own projectile out of builder's sand (rougher than beach sand) and epoxy is easy enough for any re-loader to do, is completely frangible (breaking up after impact) so untraceable to the weapon. Even suppressed with a professionally made 'silencer,' a firearm isn't 'silent,' despite what Hollywood would have us believe. Especially inside a tiled bathroom. Using a roll of toilet paper, while seemingly a good idea, doesn't 'do' what a suppressor does, which is slowly dissipate the gasses. A roll of toilet paper would be too compressed to do that. Next, if the weapon is a semi-automatic, the sound of the slide cycling would be pretty loud inside a tiled bathroom too. And please, please, please... if you choose to use a revolver, do NOT make the mistake that so many authors do; there are only two or three revolvers that EVER were made with a manual safety release, and they are quite rare to see.

Stitchawl