Shooting in the ??HOUSE??

I have tinnitus, and the nearest thing I can compare it to is (for those of you that live where cicadas are) is the sound you hear when you go outside and hear multiple cicadas "singing" in the trees a couple of houses down. It's that way all the time. I'm fortunate that I've been able to just ignore it, for the most part, but it's ALWAYS there.

Also, and this is purely anecdotal, but I read an article perhaps 25-30 years ago (might have been by Ayoob?) talking about a DEA undercover agent that was in a car with 3 drug dealers, and got "made". They were going to kill him, so he pulled his short barreled .44 mag out and managed to kill all of them before they killed him. The result was, he was alive, but was permanently, totally deafened. Alive is better, but hearing loss from discharging a firearm in an enclosed area is permanently damaging.

This is the main reason I've considered a good (10-22 probably) autoloading .22lr for a HD weapon. Especially if it was reliable with sub-sonic stuff. I know, I know, a .22 will just bounce off bad guys, or just tick them off... at least that's what the big boys on the interweb all say... but I imagine that putting a "flurry" of .22 slugs into someone at living room distance would at least discourage them until I could brain them with a baseball bat. With a laser to make it easy to connect from nearly any position,
 
I can't see how anybody can say how they would react to noise in close quarters unless they have experienced it firsthand. I have been hearing impaired since birth and have shot guns since the age of seven with no hearing protection except for the last 10 years and only to set an example for those younger than me. I have also been to very loud rock concerts in the 60's and 70's, worked in factories and construction with very loud noise levels and have generally ignored the fact that high levels of noise are bad for you all my life. At age 64 I do have tinnitus, it comes as an indistinguishable radio broadcast type background noise sometimes, at other times it is more like the test tones of a hearing test of which I have had many since age 3. And due to the fact I can speech read I can tell what someone is saying even if I cannot hear them if they are facing me. It works even for my cats. The thing I have to say is how do know how you are going to react to a gunshot in it's full intensity without experiencing it? I am not saying it is good for you but learning how to handle it may save your life. In the military they have a training exercised where they make you take off you gas masks when the room is full of tear gas. I will leave it at that.
 
The thing I have to say is how do know how you are going to react to a gunshot in it's full intensity without experiencing it?
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There's a story attributed to Mark Twain in which he tells of asking a baggage handler if he should carry his bag with him or put it in the baggage car of the train.

The baggage handler, took Twain's bag, threw it up in the air and let it fall to the ground. "That's what it will get at the first stop.", he said. Then he slammed it against the side of the train car three times. "And that's what will happen to it at the second stop."

Next he threw the bag down hard on the ground and jumped up and down on it. On the second jump, the bag broke open and the contents were strewn all over the train platform--some of the items were badly damaged and the bag was destroyed.

The baggage handler said: "That's what it will get at the third stop. So if you're going past the second stop, you should carry the bag with you."

I guess some people will read that story and think it's an example of an experiment that provided vital information. Those are the people who will agree that shooting without hearing protection to learn their reaction is important. I hope that most will chuckle when they read the story and realize why destroying something important to learn something of questionable value is inadvisable.
 
That train story is funny!

Having worked as an auto mechanic then shop owner for more than 20 years, I know a bit about hearing loss. I was religious when I was turning wrenches about hearing protection and safety glasses, and I know it helped out a lot.

But

One night my boss invited me and another kid out "spotlighting" in the West Desert. We must have shot 50 jackrabbits while bouncing through the sagebrush in his Montero with 6 Hella Off-Road lights blazing. LOTS of fun until the kid with us - from the right rear seat - started shooting his 1911 RIGHT BY MY HEAD. My window in the front seat was open and this idiot shot TWICE with the muzzle dead even with my ear. Even though the gun was "outside", it was ridiculous for him to do that. The funny thing? It wasn't my right ear that suffered damage, it was the left one. I don't know exactly how the sound waves worked to do that, but my left ear has had a low ring ever since. In a room with ambient noise, I don't notice it. In a quiet room, however, it's very noticeable. Sucks that someone who really tried to protect their hearing wound up with hearing damage from one instance.
 
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