"Do silencers work? Are they worth it?"
Uncle Same sure seems to think so, in more ways than one (both insists on his own best men having them, and insists on ruining the lives of his citizens over them out of fear)
"Hearing tolerable"
Put it this way; many of my guns, it's uncomfortably loud to drop the slide/bolt under the mere recoil spring pressure with your head in shooting position. They're cycling much faster/harder than that in practice, to say nothing of the still hundreds of PSI venting from the end of the suppressor. All the can does is drop it from the 'explosives' noise range down to the 'air tools' noise range. All it means is now hearing protection is sufficient (that's right; some guns
can't be made truly hearing safe with hearing protection, simply because your face/skull itself isn't a good enough earmuff, and no one wants to shoot with a ground-crew helmet on)
I see a recurring thread among the folks who claim it's no biggie or is totally safe in their estimation; they almost uniformly are already exposed to dangerous sound levels regularly (our jack-hammer and earbud examples are themselves excellent examples of this). Your ears acclimate; that's not to say that they become protected/resilient, but you get used to your ears being continually damaged, and your sensitivity goes away. Leave for a secluded vacation of a few weeks, and that loud environment will become intolerable, at least for a day or so. I hear the same stuff about shooting without ear protection
unsuppressed all the time from the guys who drive rivets in the hangars all day.
Yeah, I imagine a braked AR probably
is more comfortable than running an air hammer six inches from your face inside an echoing beer can for ten hours
... I said hours. ...
HOURS!
TCB