[pmulcahy11b]

Also remember that as you watch TV, Movies, YouTube, etc -- you are almost never hearing what gunshots really sound like. The standard report for a .357 Magnum that the industry uses was done with half a stick of dynamite. Gunshots are surprisingly "quiet" (ie, not as loud as you expect, not necessarily quiet) when you hear them close up -- yet they echo over long distances.

And then there is the opposite grievance of mine -- silencers in movies and TV. They are NOT as quiet as portrayed on movies and TV -- the typical silenced round sounds like a .22 Long Rifle round being fired, better ones sound like a cap gun, and I once was standing beside someone firing an MP-5SD -- it sounded like a cork being popped from a bottle of champagne. None of that high-pitched thweep-thweep-thweep -- no silenced firearm in the world sounds like that. And don't forget that silenced semiautomatic or automatic weapons have bolt clatter -- you will hear the mechanism of the weapon working. Silencers do hide most of the muzzle flash (though some oil-based or water-based silencers will spit a very small cloud of water or oil), help the sound not carry as far, and if you hear them, make it difficult to determine where the shot came from.

Most of the rounds that make noises that carry a long way are supersonic (most bullets are), but rounds like the .45 ACP, which are subsonic, won't. Most of that crack you hear over long distances is not from the weapon being fired -- it's from the round breaking the sound barrier. Just as an aircraft breaking the sound barrier will produce a shock wave (the sonic boom) that will carry a long way, so will a bullet. Subsonic bullet reports do not carry as far.