Guns don't make shockwaves that damage your brain. Damage your hearing without ear protection, sure, but they're not sending shockwaves through your skull.
Shooting as a popular passtime has been around long enough that we know what the risks are: commonly tinnitus, rarely injuries related to what the firearm actually does, more rarely lead poisoning.
On the other hand, artillery and rockets are extremely loud. If you want to look it up and start comparing things, keep in mind that every 3 decibels represents a doubling in pressure, so a howitzer having twenty or thirty decibels on a handgun is actually saying a lot.
I think this is probably correct. There are people who shoot thousands of rounds per year and there hasn’t been any mind of established pattern of brain damage like this (at least to my knowledge).
It’s possible small arms fire doesn’t make big enough shockwaves. To cause the effects. I’d hypothesize it’s the larger blasts… perhaps even a frequency component to it? Blasts from a fast explosive like C4 could do more damage than slower shockwaves like mortar or artillery shots.
To someone familiar with the subject matter, “shooting guns gives you brain damage” is an absurd, incorrect idea that one feels obligated to voice an objection to, in order to perhaps slow the spread of misinformation.
A 3 decibel increase represents a doubling in sound energy. Sound energy is proportional to the square of sound pressure, so you need a 6 decibel increase for a doubling in pressure.
I'm into sports shooting, and during winter our club has an indoor range that used to be an old bunker. So we're in this 25 foot by 60 foot concrete tunnel, that's about 8 feet tall at most. Not a giant cavern by any means. And closed doors, so just (forced) ventilation open to the outside.
I've shot .357 magnum and shotguns in there. It's loud, yes. I wear ear plugs and ear muffs when doing that.
But not by any means do they rattle my brain, and I can't imagine it's anything close to what you see around an artillery when firing.
I mean look at the ground towards the camera in this[1] shot, clearly a powerful shock wave going out in all directions.
An interesting thought popped off in my head: what if it does, and the crowd that leans heavily into enthusiast firearm usage is giving themselves micro-TBIs -- could that over the years create certain changes in personality and psychological workings that lead to certain, similar outcomes? E.g. could it be correlated with political affiliation?
Don't read into it too much, though. This isn't snark or passive aggression, just genuine interest.
The thing I suspect will prevent this from being an issue for sports shooters is that I'm not sure the energy in typical sport shooting calibers is enough to induce micro-TBIs.
Sports shooters who shoot larger calibers, ie a 7.62 NATO or higher in terms of sound energy, are typically shooting relatively few rounds at a time. Those who shoot a lot of rounds typically shoot smaller calibers.
Now, I think you might have a point when it comes to competitive practical/dynamic shooters[1], who shoot open division with hot .40 super loads or similar. Especially those, like in my club, who train a lot in indoor ranges.
However these would make up a relatively small percentage of the overall recreational shooters out there I imagine.
I did a lot of clay target shooting with 12 gauge shotgun when I was young. That involves a lot of shots each session with pretty powerful cartridges, I'd suspect it is more deleterious than target shooting, even with large calibre guns.
Don't know about micro-TBIs but it sure fucked up my hearing.
