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Young, dumb and armed: how Melbourne became a gun city. The police raid found eight kilograms of drugs in a car, a box of ammunition in a closet, and a silencer stashed in the fridge. No gun was recovered, but the slim metal tube was cause for concern for law enforcement agencies. Usually associated with assassins or secret agents in Hollywood movies, silencers have become an increasingly popular tool in Melbourne's underworld. A decade ago, police reported discovering four silencers a year in the hands of known criminals. But the number of seizures has surged to 38 sor far in 2016, according to new data from the Crime Statistics Agency. The sharp increase has prompted warnings from Victoria's judiciary. "There could be no conceivable explanation for the possession of a silencer other than as part of a particularly sinister criminal enterprise," the Court of Appeal said in a judgement handed down in April this year. A silencer, or suppressor, is designed to dampen the explosive sound made by a bullet as it leaves the barrel of a gun. Its express purpose is to allow a gunman to maim or kill as quietly as possible. The alleged drug gang recently found in possession of a silencer has been locked in a bloody battle with rivals for several months, a feud linked to a spate of drive-by and ambush-style shootings around Melbourne in 2015. Run by a feared western suburbs crime figure, the gang is believed to be responsible for at least two murders. Shootings have become a routine occurrence, with more than 100 incidents recorded since January last year. It's impossible to know how many involved the use of silencers. But in some attacks – including one gangland-style execution in a suburban street – nearby residents were unaware shots had been fired until police arrived. When three bullets were fired into the Ascot Vale home of sports scientist Stephen Dank in July, neighbours said they did not see or hear anything. "We have got dogs that would go off at the slightest noise. They didn't go off last night, so whatever happened was pretty quiet," said a neighbour called Dean, who declined to give his surname. Matched with a low-calibre handgun and special subsonic ammunition, a silencer can reduce the deafening sound of a gunshot to little more than the click of the gun's mechanism. "It's incredibly quiet – you wouldn't even know," a firearms expert said. Victoria Police's armed crime taskforce, which investigates non-fatal shootings, says it has not seen any discernable rise in the use of silencers. "A number of our victims are uncooperative with police, but many report hearing a gunshot at the time of the incident," Inspector Stephen Clark said. But the devices have continued to be found in the possession of drug dealers, bikies, armed robbers and standover men over the past two years. More than 230 silencer-related offences have been recorded since 2011, which is when gun-related crimes began to rise steeply in Melbourne. Manufacturing the devices has also become an underworld cottage industry, amplified by the widespread availability of technical manuals and instructional videos on the internet. Amazon sells print copies of the The Silencer Cookbook for $10. There are downloadable versions of Home Workshop Silencers – "for reference and historical purposes only" – available on Kindle for $14. In August, a raid by the anti-bikie Echo taskforce allegedly uncovered a makeshift weapons factory hidden inside a Derrimut warehouse, including gun schematics and a copy of The Silencer Cookbook. Police say many of the silencers that are recovered are homemade. Their proliferation comes despite stiff penalties. A known criminal caught with a silencer faces up to eight years imprisonment simply for possessing it. The potential jail term was doubled in 2003 in the midst of Melbourne's Underbelly War that claimed more than 30 lives. cvedelago@theage.com.au