Just an observation to share here. I grew up in the firearms industry. We did all kinds of shooting. I began shooting at an early age. I always knew to wear shooting safety glasses and hearing protection. Always. One day when I was in my late 20's I was out shooting with a friend. We had a factory prototype handgun and a few hundred rounds of .357 "Maximum". It was misting cool and wet. We were wearing parkas with hoods, and David Clark ear muffs. Very pricey hearing protection at the time.
I was standing directly behind my friend, and he was "on the line", cleared to fire. I felt some rain on my neck and I quickly flipped my parka hood up over my head, and in doing that I knocked my ear muffs astray. In that brief instant, my friend also squeezed off a single round. The concussion from the gun going off caused my hood to flare out with a pop, and all of the noise was captured by the hood, and into my unprotected ears. It was like two ice picks being stabbed into my eardrums. The pain was astonishing. I couldn't hear. Only an intense, deafening ringing. It was so bad that I was on my knees instantly. It took a few hours for the intense pain to subside, and to be able to hear normal speech again. It took days for the ringing to subside, but only to a degree. I have had tinnitus in both ears ever since.
Today, some forty years later, it's growing more intrusive, "louder", and difficult to live with. And I am told that I can expect this to continue to get worse over time. Some people go deaf from this.
I have been around indoor and outdoor ranges, test holes, trap and skeet shoots, practical and competition shooting, just about every kind of hunting and shooting you can imagine for most of my life. And I have always covered up my ears. Always. We'll, almost always. Except for that one day, and that moment, when that one round went off when I wasn't protected.