Looking for canon references to resolve a debate. Thanks.

Sound Suppressors, what page was it in Cannon Companion. Though they can't fire burst, that is to much volume.

Ummm well it's in the back were there is optional rules. Can't find my book right now.

Simple answer would be no.

Complicated answer would be yes, assuming you use slugs, though the suppressor will need somewhat ludicrously big, and will give you little to no benefit with shot ammunition.

I don't believe it's ever touched on in canon.

Whoops. Somehow managed to never notice that.

Like I said somewhere in the back of CC, thinks for finding the page. I just found my book. Now how did it get there.....


Well I guess someone already answered it for me so thank you guys for doing so.

Thanks muchly.

Spookymonster:

Methinks someone needs to revise the rules.

I saw a real-life shotgun sound suppressor nearly 20 years ago in an issue of SOLDIER OF FORTUNE] or GUNG-HO.

It was a dedicated suppressed barrel, meaning that the suppressor assembly was semi-permanently attached, and was designed to be removed or disassembled for cleaning ONLY. To swap between suppressed and unsuppressed modes, it was necessary to remove one barrel and replace it with another.

I'm not certain, but I think the suppressor in question also included some form of adjustable choke.

Hope this helps.

--Foreigner

That's the least problem with canon shotgun rules. I'm sure this has all been discussed before, but I couldn't find it. In any case, I'm certain there's no need for a dedicated suppressed barrel assembly to suppress a shotgun that you're only going to fire slugs through. Since you mentioned choke, you're talking about suppression for shot rounds instead, and some more complicated system is certainly neccessary for that.

Since there's no canon system for having any other form of suppression than either a "Silencer" or "Suppressor" added to the barrel, I think it makes sense that the unlikely and largely unneccessary idea of suppressing a shotgun with shot rounds has not been dealt with in the rules, because it would've required some additional rulings to make any sense.

BTW, when referring to a movie/book/magazine title, simple italics are quite enough. I actually have trouble reading bold, italized, underlined text, and it looks quite humorous.

Sorry about that, A.E.

Force of habit, I guess. I was a proofreader for 12.5 years.

I'll try to do better in the future.

--Foreigner

Well, it's not really a question of "doing better" I guess, it's just that less can sometimes be more with emphasis. This is why I always go back and remove half the swear-words and great/extreme/huge/massive/insane/etc type of words from my messages before posting them: I know I've got a problem in that respect, and I'm trying to cut them down.

When you use less emphasis on average, those times you do use emphasis really stand out.

Although in this particular case, I think just plain italics is the standard -- at least that's what the lecturers tell us in the Academic Writing Skills courses.

OK, so you can't use a silencer at all, but you can use a suppressor if you're using slug ammo. Now here's the 25,000 question:

Is bola ammo considered shot or slug ammo? (hint: they're officially referred to as bola rounds)

I'd consider them slug, with a sabot that falls away after firing. Just guessing, is bola real life stuff?

Diesel:

In a manner of speaking, yes, bola ammo for shotguns is, as you put it, "real life stuff".

Several years ago, I saw some weird shotgun ammo a gun show. Unfortunately, the weird survivalist types like to show up there.

Anyway, one guy had a display of peculiar shotgun ammo--12-Gauge, 2.75" (standard length for that size) shells.
There were Rock Salt shells (intended for non-lethal dispersal of game animals, I suppose, such as deer raiding a farmer's alfalfa field); Screamer shells (essentially a Fourth of July rocket designed to be launched out of a shotgun--the rocket motor ignites after the projectile clears the muzzle, and all it does is whistle; however, they're supposedly quite loud. The intended purpose, again, is to scare someone or something off without actually harming them); and Bolo Shells (several pieces of shot of varying sizes, strung on a length of wire about 1/32" in diameter, and held in place by metal epoxy; think of a beaded necklace made with metal beads. The idea with such a shell is supposedly that, if one pellet of the pattern strikes a target, the others will be directed towards it as well since they are, essentially, tied together. Whether such a contraption would actually entangle its intended target in the manner of a true South American bolo, I don't know.) I have also seen advertisements for so-called "Dragon's Breath" shotshells--essentially the same as the "Big D's Revenge" shotshells mentioned in CANNON COMPANION. I believe they're loaded with phosphorus or something, and are ignited by the shotgun's muzzle blast. The end result is, in essence, a short-range flamethrower.

Hope this helps.

--Foreigner

someone--raygun, maybe?--linked to a pic of someone firing one of those flame rounds for a twelve gauge. truly impressive stuff--a blast of flame about as high as the firer was tall, and maybe twenty meters in length.

You could also used silenced ammunition in which a plunger pushes the round out, leaving the gas trapped in the casing. Power level should be reduced, since not the same ammount of powder is used, but no silencer needed.

Power level should then be halved, or reduced even further, and the ranges cut by 2/3rds... That sort of ammunition isn't used for a reason. A shotgun might be a good platform for that, because the shell is quite large compared to pistols or rifles, but you'd still be limited to ~Light Pistol performance with even shorter effective range. Some RL examples can be found here.

Reaver:

Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten all about that.

The U.S. Army "Tunnel Rats"-- a branch of the U.S. Army's 1st Batallion, 28th Infantry Division, which was itself a branch of the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Infantry Division ("The Big Red One"), developed a special handgun for use by their personnel in Viet Nam. It was called the "QSPR", or "Quiet Special Purpose Revolver", but was also known, in their typical backwards jargon, as the "RQSP", or "Revolver, Quiet, Special-Purpose". I first read about it in GUNS & AMMO shortly after the end of the U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, which would've been almost thirty years ago.

It was a highly modified Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum. The conventional, rifled barrel had been replaced with an unrifled one which was about two inches long, and there were no sights--the weapon was strictly a close-quarters, "point-and-shoot" pistol.

The ammunition resembled conventional .44 Magnum cartridges, except that they were .53-caliber, instead of .44-caliber, and were made of blued steel, instead of brass. There was a thin steel nose cap, held in place by waterproofing sealant.

Inside the cartridges were the typical primer and gunpowder arrangement. However, forward of the propellant was a brass piston, and in front of that were 15 tungsten pellets, each of which was approximately the size of a Number 9 birdshot pellet.

Upon firing, the interior piston moved forward propelled by the gunpowder explosion, shoving the pellets out at moderate velocity--about 800 to 900 feet per second. When the piston reached the end of its travel, it sealed the case mouth, trapping the remaining propellant gases (and hence, most of the noise and muzzle blast; the latter was handy since the Tunnel Rats usually worked in near-darkness) inside the cartridge case. About the only noise heard was the mechanical noise of the revolver's mechanism (the loudest part of which was probably the hammer falling) and the muted "pop" of the cartridge's primer going off. I've obviously never heard one fired, but based upon that information, I would suspect that it wasn't much louder than the report of a child's cap pistol.

There were, however, a few disadvantages to this system.

One was that, being essentially a small-bore, VERY short-barrelled shotgun, it didn't have much range. Fifteen to twenty feet (yes, I said feet, not yards) was about the best you could expect for decent accuracy.

Another was that, due to the interior piston and the external nose cap being virtually identical (except for color and construction material, that is), it was virtually impossible to tell a fired case from an unfired round of live ammunition without examining the primers. Possible in the dark, I suppose, but it would require a better-than-average sense of touch if the user didn't want to give himself away.

I've seen a photograph of the revolver in question, or at least a prototype, but I'm not certain if any were actually fielded or used in combat.

Some may be in military museums, or possibly in the hands of private collectors, although I doubt the latter very much. A private citizen would have to jump through quite a few legal hoops in order to purchase such a weapon, as it technically (because of its size and the unrifled barrel) fits the legal definition of "sawed-off shotgun" under Federal law, which is (paraphrasing) "a firearm with an unrifled barrel of fewer than sixteen and one-half inches in length and/or an overall length of fewer than twenty-six inches".

Such weapons are called "Class III Firearms or Devices" (the term "devices" applying to sound suppressors or silencers) in the U.S.A., and must be registered with the authorities (usually the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives--originally part of the Department of the Treasury (as the BATF, or "Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms"--when you hear folks in the old movies, such as THUNDER ROAD, talking about "revenooers", these are the people to whom they refer, even if they themselves don't know it), now part of the Department of Justice, under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security) if purchased by civilians. I'm not certain whether the QSPR would fit the legal definition of a silenced handgun since it is, in actuality, a handgun firing silent ammunition. In other words, possession of either the revolver or the ammunition separately would most likely be legal, but definitely NOT both at the same time without the approval of the appropriate Federal, State, and Local law enforcement officials.

Anyway, I see no reason why the same principle could not be used with conventional shotgun ammunition, even including flechette or slug rounds. After tooling and everything, it should be less expensive to make in the long run than the 20th Century, .44 Magnum-based cartridges because there's no miniaturization involved. Also, with the advances in weapons technology, a more powerful shell could probably be used, along the lines of the nominally 12-gauge Close-Assault Weapon System (CAWS) that our military was working on a few years ago. I say "nominally 12-gauge" because the shells were the same size as a standard 12-gauge 2.75" shell (because the CAWS could, if necessary, also use standard ammunition), but the 12-gauge CAWS shells were loaded to much higher operating pressures--high enough to cause a standard shotgun to come apart.

Hope this helps.

--Foreigner