VSO Gun Channel host returned to a question that has followed suppressor videos for years: if a can is on the gun, why wear ear pro? The answer, he said, is that suppressors reduce blast but often leave reports in ranges that still risk cumulative, irreversible hearing damage—especially for people who shoot a lot.
Decibels and exposure
He framed 140 dB as the threshold for instant injury and noted unsuppressed full-power rifle fire can sit around 165–175 dB. Decibels are logarithmic: a 3 dB jump roughly doubles acoustic energy. OSHA-style continuous-noise guidance was used as a teaching tool—about 85–90 dB for an eight-hour day, with allowable time roughly halved every 5 dB—while stressing gunshots are peaks, not steady noise. Charts typically stop near 120 dB of continuous exposure as unprotected-unsafe.
Suppressed levels and specs from the video
- Instant damage threshold cited: 140 dB
- Unsuppressed rifle: roughly 165–175 dB
- Suppressed .308: mid-to-high 130s dB
- Subsonic .300 Blackout: around 125 dB
- Suppressed .22 LR: around 120 dB
- 70 dB: all-day speech without damage (as presented)
Even “quiet” suppressed shots, he argued, can flirt with unsafe limits if you fire many rounds. A suppressed .308 in the high 130s might be treated as maybe one exposure in 24 hours; lower 130s might allow more. He declined to dictate others’ risk: “I’m not here to tell you what you should do or what is safe for you.”
What he actually does
He already has non-firearm hearing loss in one ear from a scuba incident and shoots professionally several times a week, so he is conservative. He may skip plugs on a farm walk with a suppressed .300 Blackout if he does not expect to fire. When recording—especially others shooting—he wears protection even if the gun is suppressed and well under a damage threshold, because loss is cumulative. “I will wear hearing protection and that’s why you will see a lot of folks wearing hearing protection if they are doing a lot of shooting and I suggest that you do the same.”
