Politicians need to watch less action films. A suppressor does not remove all sound from a gun shot.

Via The Washington Post:

In the wake of Sunday night’s mass shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 58 people dead, the attention of those advocating for stricter gun control laws seized on a current debate in Washington.

“The crowd fled at the sound of gunshots,” Hillary Clinton wrote on Twitter. “Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get.”

But the effect of having a silencer probably would have been negligible.

Clinton and others appear to be assuming that silencers — or “suppressors,” as they’re known in the industry — work the way that they do in the movies.

Screw a little barrel on the end of your pistol, and you can run through enemy headquarters picking off bad guys with no more audio footprint than a little zip.

In reality, gunfire from a suppressed automatic is clearly audible.