I have had phones, like the current Galaxy Note model, that have a "Shutter Sound" on-off switch in the Camera settings... and I have had phones that have no such option: shutter sound is mandatory. I've never heard of a phone with no shutter sound at all, and I don't think it would be legal to sell it that way.
That said: once you check your Settings -- Sounds -- Volume and make sure everything is turned up (especially system and media volumes), if everything makes a sound except the camera, it's possible that the shutter sound media file was corrupted. The camera sound resides in System/Media/Audio and is probably named something like "camera_click.ogg" - if it's possible, you might want to locate that media file online, download it and paste it into that folder, replacing the corrupt (or missing) file. A file explorer app like Solid Explorer may allow you to do that without root.