I watched an old CSI show the other night where the villain used a potato as a silencer. His gun was a pistol, I think about a 9 mil, and he held the potato in front of the barrel and shot the victim. According to the team this is known as “the poor man’s silencer”. Will this work?
I wouldn’t try it 
Think you would just have potato all over the place.
Since most of the sound energy comes from the muzzle, I see no reason why it shouldn’t work. It will wreak havoc with your accuracy though and as such is probably not very practical.
The back-pressure from blocking the barrel with a potato could do the shooter some serious harm, even to the extent of the firearm exploding, depending on its calibre and the powder charge of the round being fired.
A silencer (or suppressor) works by limiting or reducing the rate of expansion of the gases that escape behind the projectile after it leaves the firearm’s barrel. An empty plastic cold drink bottle or a light cushion would make a better and safer once-off silencer.
'Luthon64
Makes no sense to use potatoes as silencers when they are obviously more suitable as projectiles!
Ridiculously over-engineered Potato Gun
I’ve seen it done (only on the telly, I hasten to add) with a 2l plastic bottle with some pot scourers (steel wool) inside. I enjoy CSI, but I wouldn’t take anything they do on that show very seriously. The part that irritates me the most occurs in most episodes–the bit where they scan the fingerprints into the machine and it flashes lots of prints on the screen then beeps and flashes ‘MATCH FOUND’ over and over…
Yea I think the noise of a single gun shot is not that huge of a problem,
The neighbors might hear, but won’t have an idea where it came from.
Nobody has ever phoned the cops on hearing a single gun shot.
On the other hand the muzzle flash if it’s dark could alert somebody if they happened to see it.
Hmm, I think you’re right. Still, potatoes can be both projectile and silencer — as in: hitting someone hard enough with a potato will surely silence them… >:D
I recall reading about something similar in an engineering journal. The plastic bottle was filled with polystyrene beads, and a band of tiny pinholes through the plastic all around the periphery at the widest part of the bottle was made. IIRC, a noise reduction of around 65% was achieved.
Yes, because computer searches are so acutely … visual, aren’t they? :
'Luthon64
Ugh, when they “enhance” a reflection in a doorknob recorded by a security camera, that ends up being 3 pixels accross into a nice portrait of the killer. I cry.
So if he shoots you through his own head, no one will hear a thing end he’ll be able to make a clean getaway… 
Cry? We had a good, hearty laugh when William Petersen once waxed gravely authoritative about “the speed of gravity [being] 9.8 metres per second per second.” (At the risk of preaching to the choir, the correct expression is “acceleration due to gravity.” Gravitational waves travel at the speed of light.)
One has to wonder whether the producers appointed total naïfs as technical advisors or whether they simply don’t care that they annoy the technically literate viewer when they display such a cavalier disregard for established scientific facts.
'Luthon64