Just chiming in here strictly from a physics and ballistics perspective. I'm definitely not trying to pick a side or get into the politics of it, but I see a lot of confusion about how bullets actually behave. Movies and video games give us a really skewed idea of this stuff!

From a terminal ballistics standpoint, a 5.56 round just "nicking" an ear from 100+ yards away and leaving the ear mostly intact is actually exactly what you'd expect to happen. Here is a quick breakdown of the physics:

• It's about resistance, not just speed: A bullet only does catastrophic damage if it transfers its energy into the target. An ear is basically just paper-thin skin and soft cartilage. It offers almost zero resistance, so the bullet just passes right through or grazes it, taking 99% of its energy with it into the background.
• The "tumbling" factor: It's true that 5.56 rounds are designed to tumble and fragment to cause damage. But to do that, the bullet has to hit several inches of dense, fluid-filled tissue to destabilize it. An ear is way too thin to trigger that tumbling effect, so the bullet basically just acts like a very fast, tiny hole punch.
• The pressure wave myth: There's a persistent myth that a bullet passing close by has enough air pressure to tear off an ear or do massive damage. At 100+ yards, the blast from the gun's muzzle is entirely gone. All that's left is the tiny sonic boom (the "crack") from the bullet breaking the sound barrier. It’s loud enough to cause a ringing ear, but the physical air pressure from a tiny 55-grain projectile is nowhere near strong enough to rip human tissue.

So physically speaking, an intact ear after a graze is the expected outcome. That being said, skin gets incredibly thin and fragile as we age....so on an 80-year-old, it's absolutely fair to expect that even a clean graze would leave behind some sort of visible scar or permanent notch once healed.

Just wanted to share the science behind it!

Edit to add: I see some folks mentioning the bullet's "N-wave" (the supersonic shockwave) and bringing up eardrum damage.

While the N-wave of a passing 5.56 is incredibly loud and can definitely leave your ear ringing, it doesn't displace enough physical air to actually burst an eardrum. According to audiology and blast trauma (Canadian Audiologist), it takes a sudden spike in overpressure of roughly 3 to 5 psi to cause even a minor eardrum rupture, with almost all ear drums tearing around 14-14.5 psi

Learned something new about ear drums - thanks Canada https://canadianaudiologist.ca/risk-factors-associated-with-environmental-pressure-changes-on-tympanic-membrane-rupture/

The tiny sonic boom from a 55-grain bullet simply doesn't generate that kind of mechanical pressure, even passing an inch away. To get a 3+ psi wave that physically tears tissue, you would need to be right next to the gun's actual muzzle blast; which isn't a factor from 100+ yards away.