It should go without saying that you nearly always should use hearing protection whenever you are shooting, because the shooting sounds are sufficiently loud as to otherwise damage your hearing permanently. The only exception to this would be to once or twice experience what it sounds like to shoot your defensive weapons with no hearing protection, because that is probably what you’ll experience in real life, and you don’t want the sudden extra loudness of a real life shooting unsettle you.
Of course, in a real life defensive shooting, your adrenalin levels will be so high that you’ll have a very distorted hearing experience anyway, but nonetheless, we suggest you have some experience of hearing shooting without hearing protection – both at a moderate distance from yourself so you know what shots sound like in real life (very different to in the movies where the sounds have been artificially enriched and enhanced to sound ‘better’, ‘bigger’, and more ‘powerful’) and when shooting yourself.
We don’t know of any ranges, anywhere, that do not insist on all people present wearing hearing protection.
There are two main types of hearing protection – ear plug type and ear muff type. Both types can offer similar degrees of hearing protection.
Ear Plug Style Hearing Protection
Ear plugs are small, light, and convenient, and also don’t get in the way if you are shooting a rifle or shotgun. But many people don’t like the sensation of stuffing things in their ears, and such people prefer ear muffs rather than ear plugs.
Ear plugs can be as simple as two little pieces of high density foam in a cylinder shape. You roll each piece between your fingers to get it to compress, then stick it in your ear. After a minute or two the foam expands back to tightly fit in your ear canal, creating a potentially very effective sound block.
Other ear plugs are more ergonomically designed and are more like hearing aids.
A pair of ear plugs are sometimes joined by a cord between them, so they can hang loosely around your neck when you are not using them.
Ear plugs range in price from as low as a dime a pair for two sticks of single use/throwaway foam, up to $50 or more for a pair that you would reuse many times, and even more if they have electronics inside them to control what sounds pass through and which sounds don’t.
Ear Muff Style Hearing Protection
Ear muffs are bigger, bulkier, heavier, and usually more expensive than ear plugs. Larger sized ones can also be a problem when shooting rifles or shotguns, interfering with your ability to line up your head, shoulder, and rifle/shotgun correctly.
But for people who don’t like sticking things in their ears, they are the only obvious alternative. And if you’re not planning on doing much rifle/shotgun shooting, there’s not a lot of downside to choosing them.
Passive or Electronic
In addition to the two styles of hearing protection, there are also two different types of hearing protection.
The least expensive and simplest types are standard ‘passive’ devices that simply block/reduce all the sounds that would otherwise reach your ear (although note that it is common for any sort of hearing protection to offer differing levels of noise blocking at different frequencies).
With these types of noise blockers, quiet sounds become too quiet to hear, normal sounds become quiet, and loud/very loud sounds also get reduced in volume down to more acceptable levels.
The other type of hearing protection uses electronic noise control devices. Think of them as a regular pair of (eg) ear muffs, that now have a microphone on the outside of each ear cup, and a clever amplifier inside, connecting them to a tiny speaker in each cup. The clever amplifier will amplify very quiet, quiet, and normal sounds, so as to make them about the same sound as you would be hearing if you didn’t have the ear muffs on at all, but when the amplifier detects a loud or very loud sound, it instantly and briefly switches off, so that sound doesn’t pass through at all and the full passive blocking ability of the ear muff then protects you.
This means you can hear your instructor, your friends, and other people around you reasonably normally, but when the shooting starts, those loud noises are automatically filtered out and reduced in volume.
Most of these units have volume controls on them, with the result that it can sometimes be possible to not just hear quiet sounds at the same volume as if you didn’t have ear muffs on at all, but in some cases, you can even hear the quieter sounds magnified and louder than without hearing protection on at all.
Most of the units are stereophonic – ie, each ear cup has its own independent microphone, amplifier and speaker. This gives you a sense of directionality in your hearing, but the directionality, which working reasonably well in a left/right sense, does not seem to work so well in a front/back sense. There are complicated reasons why this is so, and rather than explain them, we suggest you simply accept that the headphones will give you good side to side spatial location of sound, but not good front/back location. This is not a problem on a range, but if you’re
Clearly, these are much more useful and beneficial than hearing protectors that simply reduce all sounds across the board, whether they are originally loud or soft, and whether you want them blocked or not. It could even be said they are safer, and some training schools are now insisting that all their students use electronic hearing protectors.
On the other hand, they are also very much more expensive than passive hearing protectors (good ones will cost over $100, compared to $25 – $40 for good passive hearing protectors) so not everyone will choose to make such an investment. If you can afford/justify this type of cost, you should.
Sound Blocking Rating
Any type of hearing protection has a rating in dB that describes how much sound they block. Unfortunately, there are several different types of rating, and the rating only applies to sounds at certain frequencies, not to sounds at all frequencies, so the rating numbers are more of a guide than an actual exact consistent type of measurement.
There is a standard rating formula defined by the EPA – the ‘Noise Reduction Rating’. This dB measurement usually understates the potential noise reduction, because it builds in an allowance for incorrect usage on the part of the user.
There are also European measurements – APV (assumed protection value) and SNR (Single number rating). The APV is one standard deviation lower than the mean attenuation at any given frequency, so it too is a bit of a worst case number. The SNR is a bit like the NRR, although not calculated exactly the same way.
This all gets very confusing very quickly (and if you’re not confused yet, there are lots of other acronyms to consider such as SPL, A and C weighting factors, and so on.
So, to make it simple, it is safe to say that always, the larger the number, the better if measured on the same scale, but you need to be aware that if you are comparing two makes and models of hearing protection with different measuring scales, there might be effectively the same amount of hearing protection even if one has a rating one or two dB greater than the other.
You should insist on any type of hearing protection being rated at least 20 dB and ideally the very best hearing protection goes over 30 dB.
We have seen ear plugs ranging from as little as 18 dB to as much as 32 dB in noise reduction, and ear muffs ranging up as far as 33 dB. Probably with a bit of research you can find even ‘better’ sound blocking devices, or alternatively, if you are noise averse, there’s another very easy strategy.
Double Plugging
Some people simply want to give themselves the best noise protection possible. Other people plain find it uncomfortable to be surrounded by the sounds of gunfire, even with moderate levels of hearing protection.
And some people find they are flinching when they are pulling the trigger, anticipating the loud explosion that will immediately follow.
In any of these cases, or just simply ‘because you want to’, it might make sense to consider what is sometimes termed ‘double plugging’. This is simply the situation where you have both ear plugs and ear muffs simultaneously. Doing so can make a huge reduction in noise levels, way below any degree of loudness that would encourage flinching or discomfort.
The only downside to double plugging is that unless they are both electronic type hearing protectors that filter out loud noises while still passing through quieter ones, you’ll be so insulated from the sounds around you that you’ll find it very difficult to hear other people or range instructors and range safety officers. This can be both inconvenient and also potentially dangerous, and at the very least, it means you’ll probably be taking on and off your ear muff layer on a regular basis – again, an inconvenience.
We often recommend that first time shooters should experience their first few rounds of shooting while double plugged, so as to have the most mild and positive introductory experience possible. Once you’ve built up some confidence, then you can ‘progress’ to a single layer of hearing protection.
Indoor Ranges are Noisier than Outdoor Ranges
Indoor ranges are generally much noisier than outdoor ranges. This is because they are enclosed spaces, trapping the sound and directing it back to you, rather than the open outdoors where most of the sound can travel away from you and not be reflected back. This effect is aggravated further because they usually have hard surfaces that reflect rather than absorb the sound, whereas outdoors, any surfaces tend to be soft and diffuse or absorb the sound rather than send it back to you.
So good hearing protection is even more important on an indoor range than an outdoor range. You’ll want to choose hearing protection with higher noise blocking ratings for an indoor range to get the same effect as you would with less efficient noise blocking outdoors.
Carefully Choose Your Neighbors on the Range
Here’s a handy tip. When you’re visiting a range, sometimes you’ll be assigned a lane number by the range staff, and sometimes you can pick and choose any empty lane.
In either case, try to avoid being next to a shooter with a high-powered gun, so as to avoid the unpleasant side effects of his muzzle blast and shooting sounds. If the range staff assign you a lane, ask for a lane next to a low/medium powered shooter if possible, and/or for a lane at one end or the other, so you only have fellow shooters on one side rather than on both sides.
If you’re free to choose a lane yourself, look for someone who doesn’t have an obviously large-caliber gun. Also look for shooters with guns that have longer barrels – typically there is less muzzle blast and sound from longer barreled guns than from shorter barreled ones.
Oh – what goes around, comes around. If you have a hand cannon yourself, you should be considerate and go next to an apparently experienced shooter with a full caliber pistol, rather than next to a mother and daughter struggling to come to terms with a .22 LR target pistol!
Resources
Ear Plugs
Hearos Ear Plugs
– A reasonably priced and very effective ear plug product
Etymotic ER20 Etyplug Ear Plugs 
– Expensive ear plugs and they stick out a bit, and they provide insufficient noise blocking by themselves, but if you can fit them inside ear muffs, they would be well suited for ‘double plugging’ because they evenly attenuate noise across the entire spectrum. They come in both large and standard sizes.
Peltor 97079 Combat Arms Earplugs 
– These too would work well for double-plugging because they have a non-electronic type of selective sound blocking. Probably a better choice than the Etymotic earplugs.
Ear Muffs
Peltor 97010 Ultimate-10 Hearing Protector 
– With an excellent 30 dB NRR, and a price of about $20, these are excellent performers at a great price, albeit with passive only sound blocking.
Howard Leight R-01526 Impact Sport Electronic Earmuff
– A good midrange set of electronic ear muffs
Peltor MT15H7F SV Tactical Pro Hearing Protector
– An excellent set of electronic ear muffs
Pro Ears Pro Mag Gold Electronic Hearing Protection & Amplification Ear Muffs
– Truly the ‘gold standard’ – the ultimate in hearing protection, albeit at a very high price. Note they include an ‘on light’ which makes them dangerous if you are sneaking around your house in the dark trying to avoid an intruder. Highly recommended.
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