Triangle Tactical Podcast and Blog on Guns, Gear, and Competition Shooting
Recently I came across a Facebook post that advocated practicing shooting without wearing eyes and ears because when the balloon goes up you won’t have time to put them on, so you need to practice without them.
Astonishingly, many of the responses to the post stated that they also practice shooting without wearing eyes and ears in order to get the full effect so they won’t be surprised when/if they ever have to use their weapon.
This is the most asinine thing I’ve ever read.
The fact is, every shot you fire without wearing ear protection does permanent damage to your hearing that you can never get back.
Shooting without eye protection substantially ups your risk of eye damage, and I don’t know about you, but if I can’t see, I can’t defend myself and my family very well in the future.
If I damage my hearing, or lose my sight in the process of defending my life, so be it, but putting my hearing and eyesight on the line for “practice” is out of the question.
And for the record, yes, I’ve shot without eyes and ears many times. The last time I did it, my ears rang for days, and I’ve regretted it since. There’s no training value in doing it, it’s just a stupid thing to do.
There will always be dumb people…
Hearing damage starts as low as 85 dB (I wear ear protection running my snowblower), and a gunshot typically runs 140 – 190 dB. You don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to do the math.
Hearing damage is also cumulative, and tinnitis is a really, really unpleasant malady. There’s a reason the old joke goes:
[Gun writer] “Did you hear the joke about the old gun writer?”
[Old gun writer] “What?”
There is so much wildly incorrect information and completely asinine behavior being espoused by an army of complete morons, and much of it is through social media. How many law enforcement officers or “operators” practice this way? None that I know of. Has the population of today truly lost its ability for critical thought?
Practicing without ears or eyes is the most ignorant behavior I have ever heard of. As previously mentioned, hearing loss is cumulative and once it has happened, it cannot be corrected.
I don’t buy the argument of doing it because “that way you won’t be surprised”. Really? If you use a firearm in a self defense situation, you probably won’t be sure of how many rounds you have fired, let alone be surprised by the noise of the gunshots.
I have worked in a high noise environment all my life. When I was young, I did not take care of my hearing the way that I should. Now, that I am older, I take better care of my hearing but I still have tinnitus and hearing loss. It is not pleasant.