Are dB levels a factor in home defense weapons?

[Fosbery]

I've had a .357 mag go off near me without hearing protection (slipped off! ) and it made me wince, but I didn't have ringing and I don't believe it damaged my hearing. Just my 0.002p.

[striker3]

I do not know much scientifically about hearing loss, so I will just speak from experience. I have been around firearms alsmost my entire life, but did not start wearing hearing protection until I was in my teens. When I enlisted in the Marines, I had above average hearing. In the 8 years I have been an infantryman, I have been exposed to a lot of gunfire and explosions, both inside and out, not to mention the noise level of armored vehicles and helicopters. I rarely used hearing protection. I could not stand having something stuck in my ears for long periods of time, so I just went without. While I can tell that my hearing has diminished, it is not something that affects my day to day life. In fact, according to my last audiogram, I am still within the acceptable loss range and do not yet qualify for a percentage of disability.

There is a phenomenom called "Auditory Exclusion" which basically means that when your adrenaline gets pumping, your mind will filter out loud noises. I am sure that your hearing is still damaged, but from my experience, you usually do not hear ringing or have a sense of your hearing being muffled until things cool down.

I seriously doubt that hearing loss is something that you should concern yourself about when it comes to choosing a HD weapon.

[kellyj00]

I've met a few veterans who have fired many many rounds in combat. I know one who was a Huey door gunner. Not sure what he fired, but he's still got his hearing.

do our boys in the field wear muffs or earplugs? One would think that it would make it really tough to communicate in combat.

[Brad Johnson]

Never fails to amaze me that people will waste time worrying about where/when/how to deal with hearing protection when it's their life they ought to be concerned with.

If there is a bad guy in your house deal with staying alive first. Jerking around trying to put on muffs or plugs is a useless waste of precious time, not to mention it deafens you to the sounds that help you keep the bad guy located.

Brad

[DMK]

There is a phenomenom called "Auditory Exclusion" which basically means that when your adrenaline gets pumping, your mind will filter out loud noises. I am sure that your hearing is still damaged, but from my experience, you usually do not hear ringing or have a sense of your hearing being muffled until things cool down.

Auditory Exclusion happens in the brain. Your mind filters out extraneous information so you can focus on the threat. This is to help you "fight or flight". Other examples of this phenomenom are tunnel vision and time compression (events appear to happen in slow motion).

However, the fact that you don't 'hear' the noise doesn't matter. Your ears are still exposed to the pressure from the noise. Hearing loss is physical damage.

Folks under such stress have often not felt gunshot wounds or bones breaking. However, that did not prevent the physical damage from occurring whether they felt it or not.

[bigun15]

I can't argue that the db levels can't make you deaf, but I plead guilty to taking out my ear plugs to hear what an AK47 sounded like in real life. No damage.

OK so it was stupid, but my shooting buddy and I are from California and we're minors and we just really wanted to know what it was like. Our verdict: Very cool.

[doubleg]

Rifles and Pistols always bothered my ears way more than shotguns.

[ctdonath]

Cops know if you use supressors you cant just screw them out of the weapon and be like "yep shot him no supressor". You see supressors slow the bullet down and make it hotter leaving distinct burn marks. There would also be the whole issue of nieghbors not hearing any sort of boom and then it makes self defense seem rather suspicous.

...um...NO.

1. Why unscrew it? So what if you keep your HD gun with a suppressor on it? I do. There's nothing wrong with making a gun inherently quieter for legitimate use in your own home.

2. NO, suppressors do NOT "slow the bullet down". A few integrated designs (mostly just .22LR) may include ported barrels to prevent the bullet reaching supersonic speeds - but most rely on the user's choice of super- or sub-sonic ammo. The suppressor itself only reduces muzzle blast.

3. NO, suppressors do NOT "make the bullet hotter". They don't touch the bullet*, and only affect the gases that follow. The bullet has exited by the time heat comes into play.

4. So what if neighbors don't hear a boom? They probably won't anyway, them being in their house and you being in yours. People can be remarkably unaware of loud, sharp, completely unexpected noises anyway. Auditory exclusion can occur in the unaware just as much as the hyper-aware.

Unless expressly forbidden in your local/state jurisdiction, suppressors ARE LEGAL. So is using them appropriately (like protecting your hearing while protecting your life.)

It generates a painful ringing but you can still hear your immediate surroundings, like voices and movement. My ears rang for 4 days before returning to normal.

Painful ringing == auditory nerves dying.
Sure you can still hear other sounds; hearing damage does not mean complete hearing loss.
Your ears did not return to normal. Assorted nerves finally died, and you got used to the tinnunitis (sp?) and absence of those frequencies.
Adapted != returned to normal.

f there is a bad guy in your house deal with staying alive first. Jerking around trying to put on muffs or plugs is a useless waste of precious time

That's why you put a silencer on a HD gun before you "need it": making the gun inherently quieter saves time and improves your perception during the incident.

[Prince Yamato]

I think a couple shots and you'll be OK. If it makes you all feel better, here's a real life example:

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau is a famous German Baritone. He also served in the Germany Army during WWII. I'm guessing he shot a few guns. He's still singing today, in-tune and has no hearing problems. So .

Now, as far as his chain-smoking affecting his career... that's another matter.

[ctdonath]

I think a couple shots and you'll be OK.

If you think hearing damage is OK. Seriously guys, exposure to gunshot-level noises causes damage (if it doesn't, you're lucky; if you rely on it not, you're ...).

While I no longer notice the damage caused by having no hearing protection too close to the wrong end of a .308 firing, I won't contend there was no damage and won't consider it "OK".

He's still singing today, in-tune and has no hearing problems.

You sure he has no hearing problems? Auditory damage does not mean unable to hear and unable to carry a tune.
FWIW: Beethoven was seriously deaf.

[Prince Yamato]

FWIW: Beethoven was seriously deaf.

First, he had perfect pitch, which makes it possible to hear actual pitches in ones head

second, scholars are debating the degree of his deafness. There's talk that it is over-exaggerated for emotions sake. Much of this has to do with recently found letters between he and Schiller (his assistant).

Back on topic, I think what everyone is getting at is that you still have functional hearing after shooting a gun without protection. You may not have noticeable loss. So I think people need to relax a bit. Just like smoking a couple cigarettes won't cause you cancer, you're not going to go stone deaf after shooting a couple shots without hearing protection.

[carpediem]

*sorry, accidental post*

[ArfinGreebly]

Please also see this thread, with special attention to post #4 by hso, and follow his links.

Progressive (cumulative) hearing loss is not something I'd want to entertain.

If I had to choose between slightly degraded hearing and slightly dead and buried, I'd take the degraded hearing.

Doesn't mean I'd want to set myself up for it.

If it's at all possible, I'm wanting to protect my vision and hearing.

Yes, I'll protect my life first, along with the lives around me, but if I don't HAVE to damage my hearing, then I won't.

[Double Naught Spy]

Sorry Feanaro, from your sentence structure, it appeared you were saying that there probably would not be hearing damage. You posted the query...

Alot of people say they use shotguns for home defense but I suspect it would be VERY LOUD. You'd probably get hearing damage, right?

then responded

Not probably.

So I thought you were saying there would not be hearing damage and justified it via some facts and then said,

Carry it out.

like it was okay because there would not be hearing damage.

However, you are right, no coffee. Mountain Dew and I had plenty of it before the math.

[PercyShelley]

Hearing loss is usually not perceptible until it becomes very bad indeed. Loss of visual accuity is similar as well. The brain is remarkably good at coming up with a fairly convincing account of what is going on, even if it's largely guessing. You won't miss it until you realize that, after all those years of shooting without protection, you suddenly notice one morning that you can't hear songbirds anymore.

Is life more important? All the deaf people I know have a very definite answer, that's for sure.

Of course, if the firearms community could get its act together and flex some muscle to get suppressors deregulated, we wouldn't have this dilemma!

[obxned]

I like them load. It may further disorient a BG who was not expecting to be shot at. Between the noise and the combination of muzzle flash and high intensity flashlight, it's the closest thing to a flash/bang I can get.

[Daemon688]

Bad guy breaks into my house. I have a shotgun in hand and I'm sitting there wondering "man, my ears sure are going to hurt when I fire this!". I think some of you guys have priorities in the wrong place. Noise levels don't matter to me when my life is on the line.

p.S. I've got a buddy in Iraq who doesn't wear hearing protection. Last time I saw him, I didn't have to scream out every sentence for him to hear me.

[Double Naught Spy]

I've got a buddy in Iraq who doesn't wear hearing protection. Last time I saw him, I didn't have to scream out every sentence for him to hear me.

Yes, but he probably will have troubles with high register or high pitch sounds. If he has been exposed to much small arms fire, he will have tinnitus.

[Feanaro]

Just because you can't tell there is damage doesn't mean it isn't there. Someone touched off a 7.62x54 round right next to me. My ears didn't even ring. But I did experience some faint ringing at odd moments after that.

Originally Posted by Double Naught Spy

Sorry Feanaro, from your sentence structure, it appeared you were saying that there probably would not be hearing damage.

Well, I guess I can see your point. I'll forego my vengeance, this time.

Mountain Dew

That explains everything. Quit drinking that, take up smoking. Its safer.

[PPGMD]

That's why my USP Tactical 45 has a supressor attached to it.

[Junkyard Dog]

re: Auditory Exclusion

I have an auto salvage yard and one slow day we decided to see what a car
air bag was like being deployed. We hooked up some wires about 40ft away
and touched it off. To me it sounded very much like a 12 gauge shotgun. I
thought to myself what would that do to someones hearing inside a car with
the windows up and both bags going off. I thought for sure that the people inside would be deaf for a week. Last year I was involved in an auto accident
when someone ran a stop sign. When I hit him the bags deployed. I didn't
realize until a few hours later that I had no problem with my hearing. All of the
windows were up and I could not believe that I was not deaf. I don't know about physical damage but I can tell you that the brain does block the hearing in an adrenaline charged incident. I had heard about it before but until
I had experienced it I guess that I didn't think it was possible. My .02

[PercyShelley]

Just to clairify; your brain blocks out the perception of the loud noises. That I've experienced for myself. When I was but a wee lad of... 12 I think it was, I shot at my first elk, and have no recollection of the gunshots being loud, even though I was shooting a 30-06 with a 22 inch barrel. The noise might as well have been from a popgun. The excitement of the moment completely drowned out everything else, including the fact that the crosshairs where placed nowhere near the elk in question.

Hearing damage occurs regardless, alas. It is a physical mechanism that doesn't care at all whether or not you were in a mental state to pay attention to loud noises.

[Junkyard Dog]

Percy
Thanks for the info, I think. I already have tinnitus. This getting
old stuff sucks.

[joab]

though it could affect what somebody would hear in the downrange direction.

But aren't the walls of the house going to redirect that supersonic crack right back at you

After 3 years of working in tug boat engine rooms with the constant low range boom boom of the engines I had lost much hearing to the point that I can not hear a telephone if it is held to my left ear
I could hear conversations fine but high range sounds were inaudible
When I took my hearing test I was amazed at my level of deafness

Also after a few years of carelessly not using ear plugs I have an annoying little ringing in my ears that has not gone away for about ten years
I can tell you the exact day and time it became noticeable
I shot a .45 while standing between two steel sheds
The pain it caused would have rendered me at least momentarily incapacitated in a real gunfight

As a result of it my wife and I can not sleep in the same room
I can not be in a quiet space and she can't sleep with the TV or radio on
Something for you younger more rambunctious bucks to think about

I'm still not going to let that deter me from using a gun in a HD situation
But it just may perhaps maybe might make me hesitate for that all important split second while I brace myself

[XD Fan]

Hear damage vs. violent assualt or worse?

Go with the most powerful gun you can in the situation you are in.

My $.02.