Killing a man is a nasty business. It's also a very loud business in most cases, because a dying person tends to make a lot of noise between the screams of pain and all of their bodily systems shutting down and making a right old mess. Still, sometimes you have to be stealthy about it, because you're a secret agent or just shy or something. In which case the weapon of choice is usually a silenced pistol, with one of those big toilet roll-looking suppressors affixed to the barrel. That usually does the trick: instead of the usual ear-splitting volume of a gun shot, it squeaks like a mouse afraid of public speaking. Well, it does in the films anyway. Suppressors do exist for real, but they don't reduce the sound of gunfire to the minuscule peep you'll hear on the big screen. In fact gunfire is generally a lot louder than it appears in films (that's why people where headphones at firing ranges, after all), and suppressors can only mask a bit of that noise. It's still hella loud.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
