I just fired a gun right next to your head, neither of us was wearing ear protection, and now we're having a conversation at normal volume and we can understand each other just fine.
Bonus points for grenades going off indoors, and nobody having a concussion after.
I fired an assault rifle in the army without hearing protection once just so try how loud it was. No need to try that one again. I knew it's going to be loud but not that loud.
I think there's a scene in The Other Guys where Will Ferrell and another guy temporarily get deafened by the loudness of gunshots. Might be thinking of a different movie but it was funny, like "Holy SHIT that was loud!" "Whaat?"
Hey, but it had a silencer on it, which is absolutely what it's called, and makes the shots super quiet so they won't be heard by people in the next room!
I was in a play once where we were going to fire a blank onstage, in a fairly small black box theatre. There were two options, a .22 and a .45 caliber blank. The .22 made a sharp CRACK that really shocked you. The .45 made a VWOOM sound that filled up the entire room and left you with the feeling of a wave of violent energy having just passed through your entire body.
I've shot a few thousand rounds. 9mm is very loud. Shoot it in a closed space just once without earpro and you will cause permanent damage to your hearing.
I don't think a million round sample size would help you in judging this.
You realize it's a function of distance and that function is logarithmic, right? A gunshot at one foot is a hundred times louder than it is at 20 feet. If you were exposed to a million gunshots of any caliber from a foot away, you would be profoundly deaf.
So why even mention your million rounds as a reply to "I just fired a gun right next to your head, neither of us was wearing ear protection and now we’re having a conversation at normal volume"? Talk about ignorant.
My point still stands. I've had 9mm from an m17 shot beside my head and had zero issues with my hearing afterwards.
Edit to reply to your ignorant use of the word ignorant:
I have personal and professional experience with many different things that shoot, so calling my response ignorant is just wrong. That's like people saying "I literally just died" when what they really meant was "I'm a little embarassed"
Think it just varies by rounds/gun and surroundings. I've had 9mm's be quite quiet, but I had a Walther PK380 that would make my ears ring in a field without protection. It's a smaller round than a 9mm... So never understood why.
Believe it or not when I took my concealed weapons license class years ago it was in a small room indoors, at the end to ensure everyone has at least had fired a gun before, they handed us an old .22 handgun (maybe a browning? Long time ago) with a silencer on it. And 1 by 1 had us take shots at a small target with a sack of what I assume was dirt/corn/or such behind it.
So around 15 people in a 10 by 30 foot (3.3 by 10 meter) room where we shot at a target with the other 14 people standing behind us. No hearing protection was needed. It obviously is louder than the movies, but amazing to not have our ears ringing in a space so small.
The silencer on such a small handgun is awkward at best. Your natural instinct is to want to hold it up, as it weighs down the front of the gun drastically, but clearly you should/can not fire like that, as the gases will expell throughout the silencer resulting in injury more than likely. That was in Florida, the state which concealed weapons permit is accepted in the most U.S. states during travel. The class, took no more than a couple hours during a single night.
I'll just add to this, 9mm, or any handgun really, is still very loud. The reason it doesn't seem as loud is because when most people are shooting there are two main things happening.
They're behind the barrel, normally this doesn't matter much, but the sound is at least a little directional, so being in front of it is going to make it sound much louder because you're hearing the initial explosion, not an echo.
Most people aren't shooting it in their house, they're at a gun range. The space in front of you at the range allows for the sound to travel and the pressure to spread through the room, slightly reducing the impact of the sound. Shoot one in a tiny room and it's going to be much worse for you.
Again it's still really loud, but the context of where the sound is being made does make a difference. Obviously larger rounds will be louder, but that doesn't mean rounds like 9mm are safe for your ears at all.