This was my second time at the shooting range with my army friend, and whereas before I fired some small stuff like a pistol, shotgun, and then a mini 14, this time he brought a proper rifle that fired .30-06 rounds, which are pretty big rounds.  It shocked me how god damn loud that gun is.  The weird thing is it doesn't hurt the shoulder at all, there's no pain.   When it fires, there's a massive boom, everything blacks out for a second, and then you have to recover and get back into position for the next shot.  And standing like 25 yards away with no ear protection, you hear a huge boom and then a crack at the end.  The reason I was shocked at how loud it was, is because that's the round the M1 Garand fired in WW2.  It's hard to imagine soldiers firing that thing over and over again with no ear protection.  It's so loud that even with ear protection, standing and waiting for someone to shoot was so tense I was cursing under my breath, and making sure I wouldn't bite my tongue off when it fired.  Games and movies make guns like that sound like a casual thing to shoot off, but holy crap it is so not like that.  In WW2 games these rifles usually aren't even a one hit kill, but in real life that thing would devastate whatever it hits.  Oh, and my friend tried shooting the pistol gangster style to see if there was any benefit, but it was retarded, with brass flying all over us, bad idea.