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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Hearing Protection bill is 100% bullshit
I have shot professional fireworks displays for over twenty years. You know how many big assed bangs and booms I've experienced in that time? Probably hundreds of thousands. Guess what? I WEAR EAR PLUGS. I don't even have the expensive noise cancelling headsets like most gun owners use to protect hearing. I wear those little orange squishy ear plugs that cost about $3 for a bag of 20 at CVS.
This whole bill is a sham for the NRA and gun manufacturers.
Adrahil
(13,340 posts)The average foam plugs reduce the dB levels by 20 dB. An AR-15 shot is about 165 dB. That means with the cheap plugs in, you are still damaging your heaing (the threshhold for instantaneous damage is 149 dB... for some folks, like me, even less. You can wear muffs, which can gove 30 dB of protection, but for sensitive ears like mine, still not enough. You can use plugs and muffs which gives about 35 dB of prtection, which is safe for the shooter, though it sometimes makes it difficult to hear what others on the range are doing.
I own and use sound suppressors on the range with my mdoern guns (my antiques do not require them). I got them because my ear doctor recommended I get the dB's below 110 to avoid further damage to my ears.
I don't hunt with them. I am not a survivalist. I just like shooting at the range, and the mechnical history of the antiques ( I own an antique flint lock, and multiple examples of 19th century rifles... up to about WWI. And a few modern guns).
Owning and using them does not turn one into a secret ninja assassin.
titaniumsalute
(4,742 posts)Adrahil
(13,340 posts)I get that. I even sympathize to some extent. But the rifle he was shooting uses supersonic rounds. The noise the victims heard was 90% the supersonic CRACK the bullets make as they pass through the air, which a sound suppressor cannot eliminate.
The idea that if he had a suppressor that the victims would have never heard the shots is pure fiction.