It’s all in the cadence, Scott Beinster (a public-safety specialist for ShotSpotter) tells the New York Times how people can determine the origin of a loud “bang!” :
“When somebody pulls a trigger, they tend to pull it in a fairly steady rhythm until the end, when their finger gets tired,” Beisner says. A series of evenly spaced bang-bang-bang sounds is much more likely to be a gun than the more sporadic ba-bang, ba-ba-ba-ba-bang of firecrackers.
Sometimes it is difficult to know whether what someone hears is from a gunshot, and usually the answer comes from the sound’s intensity. Beinster details that multiple shots from a gun will be equally loud, unlike a continuous stream of fireworks (the sounds from them can be unequal in intensity). So the next time you hear bang, bang, bang consecutively - try to ask yourself : is it the equal bang, bang, bang, of a gun or the ba-bang, ba-ba-bang of fireworks?
image credit: via wikimedia commons
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It's quite sad (and scary) that the question "gunfire or fireworks" actually ever has to be asked.
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That is, the origin of a single loud “bang!" can't be determined. from a single sound. The cadence of a bunch of crackers having their fuses braided together may be identified. In case someone designes a of a fire cracker battery, it seems possible just to simulate different auto fire sound patters and cadences. However it, in areas where you can listen to enough gun fire and fireworks it seems cheaper just to design a small mechanical apparatus firing blank cartirdges in a controlled cadence. .
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