Is .357 Magnum too Loud?

As a retired Safety engr who has dealt with noise issues and also an active shooter I submit the following:

The over pressure from a 357 mag will not rupture your eardrums unless there is allready a weakness from a previous injury.

From personnal experience the pain you may suffer will depend on the construction of the room or building you fire in.

A Steel buliding with out insulation or dampening material will hurt like HE double hockey sticks. Experienced this when I took a shot at some dogs which were attacking my horses. Thought I had the 357 mag outside of the door of my garage when I shot at them. It was inside the door. I experienced intense pain and ringing in my ears. The pain was worth it to protect my Arab and her foal.

A normally constructed drywalled room such as a bedroom will not hurt. The walls, bed, curtains and furniture will attnuate the report. You may experience auditory shutdown, not be able to hear for a while and experience some temporary and permanent hearing loss. These events will occure with any non suppressed firearms which you may shoot in a confined space.

If there are any former tunnel rats out there, they can probably give an excellent description of the effects of a 45.

NOTE: Hearing damage is cummulative.

If you are trained and have your adrennalin pumping, the report should not impair your ability to function.

Your choice between your life and the lives of your family vs some hearing loss is a decision you made. You made that decision long ago when you chose not to be a victum and prepared yourself to defend against a deadly enemy.

I have had the misfortune of experiecing a deotnation of 10 pounds of squib composition at 50 feet. I felt the blast and overpressure such that it felt like I had been kicked in the chest by a horse. The detonation did not cause immediate damage to my ear drums. No normally functioning firearm generates that type of overpressure.

My advice is use the weapon you are most proficient and comfortable with.
 
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Let's completely disregard the damaged hearing that becomes evident after the shooting, let's talk about DURING the self defense situation. Do yall think that the noise of the first (or more) shots from the Magnum could be so intense that it could cause either a delay in follow up shots or otherwise hinder your abilities to defend yourself?
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NO!!!

If your life is on the line you won't even know the gun is going off ... PERIOD!!!;)
 
357 magnums are loud. Observers say that my 357 magnum j-frame is louder than my 45/70 BFR revolver.

Once I was shooting my BFR at the local pistol range when this guy takes the spot next to me and starts plinking with his 9mm glock after he had been there for a while it was clear that my shooting was making him flinch. I oppoligised and moved as far from him as I could. After a short time he scowled at me and then complained to the range officer about my gun. They (the range officer and the guy complaining) said that it shot a rifle bullet so I had to take it to the rifle range. Instead I put the BFR away and pulled out my Coonan Classic (357 magnum automatic) with some special 110 grain bullets loaded over a hot load of H110. That gun spewed fire like a dragon and roared like a F15 Eagle. I did 21 rounds of fast fire (3 mags)

When the same guy complained to the range officer again the range officer came over to me and looked at my gun and asked if he could shoot it. He shot 1 round and gave it back to me! He said its an interesting gun and I was welcome to shoot "this" gun at the pistol range! The other guy left after giving me some dirty looks.

The loads I was shooting from my BFR where sub-sonic soft cast bullets and the gun sounded a little louder than a standard 45acp. But the guy was clearly angry about the noise. I tried to be nice and move but even that was not enough for him.
 
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Another good argument for deregulating supressors......

...I know.....revolvers can't be supressed....but it's still a valid point....
 
There is something called audio exclusion in self defense situations. I have fired a .223 and 357 sig in defense of my life and didn't notice the report. I have fired a 357 sig putting down an injured deer and a 357 mag while hunting without ears and it really hurt and probable did some damage. The thing you have to ask yourself is what will happen if you don't use it, you or your loved ones will beseriously harmed and possible killed. This is the deffinition of self defense.
 
When I was younger and much stupider I had a negligent discharge with a .357 magnum. The gun was parallel to my face which was close enough to get sprayed by the cylinder gap. My hearing immediately went to about 40% of normal, but I could still hear people talking and moving about in the hall outside. In a critical situation I believe I would still have been able to hear police commands, or attackers moving around me. It took 4-5 days for my hearing to return to normal but I did not experience lasting effects after that (as far as I can tell).

The round was a Federal Hydra-Shok 158gr fired from a 4" S&W Model 19. For those interested, it went through two layers of drywall, struck a wood door frame in the next room, and blew up spraying copper fragments everywhere in that room. Just thinking about it is really sickening and it served as a real wake-up call for me.
 
I have tinnitus and I've been concerned about additional hearing damage if I ever needed to discharge my .357 in a SD situation. For that reason alone, I'm giving serious thought to adopting .45 ACP as my primary carry. In fact, the new Springfield XDm Compact in .45 ACP is mighty appealing.
 
One writer has sugggested that one use a pair of electronic muffs in the home defense situation. Blast noise was lessened but not normal hearing. One advantage here was decreasing shooter disorientation.
 
Ear Protection

This is what I have done. I got a set of battery operated hunting electronic headphones. They are laying next the the bed out of the way, but in easy reach of the house gun. I can put them on and turn the volume all the way up and hear every little noise in the house. If I do have to shoot the noise is only going to bother the guy on the other end of my pistol. As far as flash not much I can do about it accept close one eye. I check the things everytime I take them shooting and they take AA size batteries, I just keep them fresh.
 
This is what I have done. I got a set of battery operated hunting electronic headphones. They are laying next the the bed out of the way, but in easy reach of the house gun. I can put them on and turn the volume all the way up and hear every little noise in the house. If I do have to shoot the noise is only going to bother the guy on the other end of my pistol. As far as flash not much I can do about it accept close one eye. I check the things everytime I take them shooting and they take AA size batteries, I just keep them fresh.
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First of all Boomer Sooner. Ok how much did they cost ya and where did ya get em? Did you pick em up in the OKC area? I might want to check out a pair.
 
Electronic Earmuff

I believer I picked them up at Academy Sports in Norman OK for under $30, you get some fuzz at high volume, but you can hear a pin drop. Recomended them to a friend, he e-mailed me and said he bought two pairs one for his daughter and one for himself and they loved them. This set does not have a brand name or model on them and it only has one mike on the right side. The higher prices sets has a mike in each muff giving stereo hearing.
 
There was a long period of time where 357 revolvers were the standard police side arm... probably 70% of cops were carrying a 357 revolver between 1970 and 1990.

There has to be some data on hearing loss on those officers involved in street shootings. Many of those shootings had to have taken place indoors. Do all or most of these officers suffer from tinnitus?

I know my father-in-law fired many weapons without any protection during the Korean War... 1911, M1 Garand, Thompson M1A1 submachine gun, 30 cal machine gun, and mortars. At 80 years old, he has mild hearing loss and wears a hearing aid, but no worse than any other 80 year old man who worked his whole career in manufacturing.
 
Before there was the WWW and gun forums, there was just usenet and rec.guns.
Endless threads on stopping power.
Lots of FBI compiled data.

15 years ago I had a theory that the reason 357 magnum 125 gr had the best one stop shot statistics was that it was so loud, it stopped the cop AND the perp, and then the first bullet had a second to take effect.
 
I fire my King Cobra at an indoor range all day and have never worn hearing protection. Fired a hundred rounds in a short period and it never bothered me once. I see you guys at the range wearing the hancy ear muffs and have to laugh to myself. What a bunch of weenies!!! What are they gonna do when they have a real situation and their fancy ear muffs run out of batteries! I practice without hearing protection because thats what a real life encounter will call for!!!!!!!! Oh, and the fact that I'm deaf really helps as well.
 
Pretty sure kens852 is joking.

Even deaf people could damage their future hearing by shooting without hearing protection - in the event medical science finds a way to cure some types of deafness, anyway.

The sound pressure levels would do physical damage that new medical technology probably would not repair.
 
I have never had to defend myself indoors, but from talking with people that have, they tell me that you don't notice the sound if you have to use it.
 
I have a Model 19-4 Smith that served as my sidearm while in the USN during the 70's replacing the Model 10 issued to me (authorized private purchase). I blasted the hell out of that thing without ears as often as I was able to. Today, I am well into my fifties and I have hearing loss that I attributed to the onset of geezerhood but now, I wonder?
 
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