Hearing loss and issues from firearms?

[Texas10mm]

Sure it wasn't 99.9? It's not expressed as a percentage. And generally, only the GT score is used. (At least when I was in. It has changed.) Mine was 126.

Raw score. 99.9. I never heard of the GT score. I went in back in '78. I know I took the thing seven times and got 99.9 every time. That's what I was shown by my recruiter and my SDI. I scored in the 99.9 percentile of everyone who had ever taken the ASVAB.

The Navy wanted me to go into the Nuke program.

In the sixth grade I was reading at a 16th grade level with 99% comprehension and retention.

When I received the score from the test in my senior year of high school I decided it was time to talk to the recruiter. The federal building was on the way home. I walked in and down the hall to the Marine recruiting office. When I walked in the recruiter was on the phone and told me he would be right with me.

He had one of his card file drawers open. There was one card standing on end in it. When he got off the phone he asked what he could do for me. I told him my name and he turned around and grabbed that one card that was standing on end. He then told me he would be right with me. He walked into the hall, closed the door and yelled "He's in my office". The next thing I see is all the other recruiters standing on the other side of that glass wall looking in.

Gunnery Sgt. Comier gave me a ride home that day. Before I got in the door the other recruiters were there wanting to talk to my parents.

 

[entropy]

I went in in 86. They used the GT (General Knowledge/Technical Knowledge) for all MOS's then, and still do for some now. 99.9th percentile and 99.9% raw score are not the same statistically, but the point is moot.
You're certainly no dummy, but I already knew that.

 

[swagbrdr]

I don’t know how...but I still have excellent hearing at age 41. I shoot a lot, am around loud music constantly, chainsaws are part of my job, oh, and lots of loud aviation stuff at work. I wear ear pro when I can, but not always. I might be deaf as a post when I get older...

 

[Twiki357]

Hearing loss can come from a lot of different directions. In my case, it was when I was about 9 or 10 years old and another kid bush wacked me across the nose with a board. It resulted in a buildup of scare tissue in my nasal and ear passages to the point that by age 14 or 15 I was almost deaf. It took months of “radium” treatments for my hearing to recover to 70% in one ear and 85% in the other. God only knows how much it cost my parents. The radium treatments were ceased in the early 1980s when it was discovered that it caused short term memory loss in later years, which is what I have now.

My hearing was further aggravated when I got into shooting in the early 1960s. At that time the only hearing protection I ever saw at the range was the RO with a couple of 22 cartridges stuck in his ears. And yes, everyone complains about me turning up the volume on the TV.

 

[golfer_ray]

I've had tinnitus for 10-15 years. The ear doc said that my hearing is so excellent, that when even something is slightly out of kilter, tinnitus can occur. When I was younger, I'd get in my vehicle in the morning, turn on the car, then get blown out by the speakers, then wondering was it really only one or two beers last night, so now I wonder whyif that's I have tinnitus. So, I feel like I'm rambling, but to those who use two types of ear protection, I like to too. So at my local shooting range, they used to offer free eye and hearing protection (ear muffs). I would use ear plugs also. Well now, either due to that virus thing or to make more money, they don't do this. I read that hearing protection muffs/headgear should be at least 30 db. I went to my local Academy, bought a nicer 30 db set, plus a cool pair of red lense glasses, and tried on the headgear in the truck. I couldn't hear a thing with the engine running. Ready with that and ear plugs to see just much I can't hear. Also rambling, don't you just love it when the tinnitus starts playing tunes? Fan on.

 

[chicharrones]

Here I sit reading through the additional replies, leaning my head on my right hand, with my right ring finger stuck in my ear to try and make this morning's ear irritation subside.

 

[GBExpat]

I have been shooting for ~60 years. I have a very mild (thank goodness!) case of tinnitus.

It is the direct result of an air-horn incident/accident a few years ago.

The irony is that I spent decades hunting and/or field-shooting without hearing protection and my hearing was only noticeably damaged by dropping (and catching) one of those silly canned-air horns while indoors. <sigh & smile>

In the first several decades the only time that I regularly used hearing protection was during my extremely-rare professional-range visits.

Whenever I was going to be around others that were shooting, I would usually carry one or two sets of "ears". If not, I would stand well back. 15-16 years ago I got my first set of electronic "ears"; Peltor Tactical 6S. Won-der-ful! I got a 2nd set that lives in a bedside table drawer just in case something "goes bump in the night" ... and I have to go shoot it.

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I recall a story of Dad's that he told about one of the boys that he worked with at NACA/NASA after the war. They had upgraded Physicals to include Hearing Tests. After the test was complete, the doctor asked him how many hours he had in B-25s. ??? This stumped the guy because he had not mentioned anything specific about his war service to the doc. Turned out that the noise of the B-25 engines, over extend periods, would destroy a narrow band of a person's range and that is what the doc had recognized.

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'Seems, some folks are more likely to suffer hearing damage than others ...

In the late '70s I brought a friend from work with me for a visit to this farm (at that time, unoccupied). He was a city-boy who had never had a chance to shoot a gun or wander wood & fields. I brought along at least one crate of old British BESA MG ammo (7,92x57) plus copious quantities of other ammo, a K98k, a Wz-29, a .243 Ruger Mod77, a .45acp Colt Combat Commander, a .357 4" Ruger Security-Six, a Walther PP, a S&W Mod36 and a Mossberg 500A 12ga shotgun.

Plenty of guns & ammo and, at the base of the hill across the pond, plenty of "Things to Shoot At". We would be shooting from an open slope with no hard sound reflectors nearby. We had no "ears".

I spent one afternoon acquainting my buddy with safety lessons and taught him the operation of each firearm. He fired each until he felt comfortable and we moved on to the next.

Next afternoon, my BIL (who lived up here) came by with several of The Guys and we spent a few hours shooting across the pond.

My buddy asked me if my ears were ringing and I told him, sure, they always ring for awhile after shooting ...

... but his ringing never went away. He finally went to a doctor a week or so after we returned home and was told he had something called Tinnitus.

My ringing had gone away and I called my BIL and had him check to see if any of the guys experienced and persistent ringing in their ears. Nope.

After that I was more careful.