What does putting a pillow in front of a gun do?

IMHO firing through a pillow will muffle or suppress the report of the weapon, that is the loud noise created by the escaping and expanding propellant gases.

Can a pillow be used as a weapon?

Pillows. Although seemingly harmless, pillows can be deadly in certain circumstances. When a pillow is placed (and held) over someone’s airways, it cuts off the oxygen supply, leading to death by asphyxiation. Therefore, pillows can be dangerous weapons when in the wrong hands.

Do Pillows muffle sound?

The pillow aspect is ultimately secondary, but important — it’s only conducive to screaming insofar as it mutes the noise. There’s a reason why movies always show people getting shot through a pillow: Your family or partner might still hear your muffled screams, but your neighbors probably won’t.

Why don’t pillows reduce the sound of a gunshot?

Because the sound of a gunshot comes from gases rapidly expanding out of the barrel, if a pillow could seal the muzzle — containing and cooling the gases — there would, presumably, be lower sound levels.

What happens when you muffle a gun?

The gun is muffled and the assailant goes back to whatever leather-jacketed evil he’s pursuing. Things are more complicated in reality. “If you use a revolver you will have a lot of noise coming out of the slip around cylinder and barrel of the revolver,” says Per Rasmussen, an acoustics expert at the microphone manufacturer G.R.A.S. in Denmark.

Can a pillow really reduce noise?

“The pillow will certainly reduce the noise.” That said, it won’t eliminate noise altogether. “If you look at just the noise from the trigger mechanism, it’s in the range of 100 decibels,” he says. “Maybe the pillow will reduce your peak level from 150 decibels to 120 decibels?”

What happens when a bullet passes through a polyester pillow?

The bullet passed through a polyester pillow, fusing some of the synthetic fibers along the way, and exploded the soda bottle on the other side: A similar YouTube experiment with a 9 mm handgun and a decibel meter found reductions from a baseline of 160 dB to about 140 dB.