firearm question

Am putting this question here since it has to do with an assassination other than those listed:

Would firing a pistol through a coat wrapped around it and the hand holding it be enough to make the sound muffled... dropping the noise to sound perhaps more like a firecracker?

I believe it wouldn't be considerable supression. Main source of firing sound is very fast expansion of gases (products of burning of propulsion charge) and, for supersonic rounds, sound barier. If firearm has a subsonic muzzle velocity, the last is no problem for suppression.

Coat, wrapped around weapon, wouldn't provide considerable diffusion of muzzle gases, so it would be bad solution of suppresion with none or little effect.

Thanks. This may have happened in a 1948 assassination in South America. Maybe the coat was more to hide the weapon than for sound suppression?

greg parker wrote:Thanks. This may have happened in a 1948 assassination in South America. Maybe the coat was more to hide the weapon than for sound suppression?

On the other hand... four shots were fired... the first three were [described by witnesses as] muffled but hit the target. There was a brief pause before the fourth shot. It was not muffled and missed the target. Possibly two people involved.

I believe the coat is primary to hide the weapon (and without anyone seeing weapon in your hand, you have some chances to escape scene without being pointed at as obvious murder).