Right handed Left eye dominant question

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  • justeric

    Active Member
    Apr 6, 2010
    377
    Hi All,

    I was talking to a friend that is Right handed and Left eye dominant. He told me that his firearms instructor told him that he will need to shoot a long gun left handed. My knee jerk reaction is your eye dominance doesn't matter if you close one of your eyes when shooting. I know some can shoot pistols and rifles with both eyes open but I suspect the majority of people close one eye like me. Is it reasonable to tell my friend to just close his dominant left eye when shooting a long gun (and or pistol)? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

    Thanks All,
    Eric
     

    daggo66

    Ultimate Member
    Mar 31, 2013
    1,992
    Glen Burnie
    I;m the same and knowing that I’ve been fine with rifles and handguns. You can always learn to shoot with both eyes open
     

    erwos

    The Hebrew Hammer
    MDS Supporter
    Mar 25, 2009
    13,866
    Rockville, MD
    That's dumb AF. Close an eye and call it a day if you have to. Plenty of dudes do, myself included, and unless you're at the upper echelons of competitive shooting, it's unlikely to be your biggest problem.
     

    bibitor

    Kulak
    MDS Supporter
    Oct 10, 2017
    1,894
    FEMA Region III
    I'm right handed and left eye dominant and for me it matters a great deal. I shoot long guns and bows left handed, but handguns I shoot right handed. YMMV
     

    JPG

    Ultimate Member
    Aug 5, 2012
    6,996
    Calvert County
    Modify the stock. :innocent0
     

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    Lane Meyer

    Active Member
    Jul 20, 2020
    212
    Cecil County
    I’m a relatively new shooter, so take anything I say with a grain of salt. I am right handed and left eye dominant. I’ve been shooting rifles and shotguns right handed with my left eye closed and had no problems. This past weekend while shooting clays I tried putting a piece of tape in front of my left pupil on my shooting glasses. My right eye immediately took over as the dominant eye. In theory this might help with peripheral vision and help locate the target more quickly (vs. closing left eye). In practice I couldn’t tell any improvement. I only did it for ~15 rounds. I will experiment further. I just move handguns to the left a little and use my dominant eye.
     

    MaxVO2

    Ultimate Member
    MDS Supporter
    Hi All,

    I was talking to a friend that is Right handed and Left eye dominant. He told me that his firearms instructor told him that he will need to shoot a long gun left handed. My knee jerk reaction is your eye dominance doesn't matter if you close one of your eyes when shooting. I know some can shoot pistols and rifles with both eyes open but I suspect the majority of people close one eye like me. Is it reasonable to tell my friend to just close his dominant left eye when shooting a long gun (and or pistol)? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

    Thanks All,
    Eric

    *****I'm an NRA firearms instructor and teach basic pistol, rifle, etc.. and this is an issue that does come up most every class when we do the eye dominance test.

    Like anything else, opinion is divided on what works *best* versus what works good enough for most people. I know plenty of competitive shooters that are cross eye dominant and shoot very very well in spite of not changing up their shooting side to accommodate the eye dominance issue.

    The fundamentals of sight alignment, breathe control, trigger pull, still apply regardless of what side the dominant eye is on so it often comes down to what is most comfortable for the shooter. Ideally, a shooter should be able to shoot well on both (right and left) sides, but it takes practice to be able to do so. In a close quarter combat situation it is almost always better to have both eyes open.... Longer distance shooting, with optics versus iron sights make things a bit more complicated, especially if one eye is much weaker than the other... - but the most important metric is performance. If you shoot better lefty or righty keep doing that... Plenty of right handed people with left dominant eyes that shoot best lefty with rifles but prefer righty for handguns which have a shorter sight radius and make things somewhat easier for cross dominant folks.

    Plenty of people that are cross eye dominant do indeed squint or close the dominant eye - it works really well for some..

    The big issue I have seen, repeatedly for longer distance shooters with cross eye dominance who change their shooting arm from right to left is the issue with bolt action firearms... They are *much* slower for repeat shots at distance. Equipment selection is important for folks like this but most people are right handed so bolt action rifles are setup that way for the most part.

    Anyway, bottom line is in an ideal world the dominant eye would be on the same side as the long arm, but I wouldn't sweat it too much. Just line stuff up, pull the trigger and enjoy.
     

    bpm32

    Active Member
    Nov 26, 2010
    675
    That's dumb AF. Close an eye and call it a day if you have to. Plenty of dudes do, myself included, and unless you're at the upper echelons of competitive shooting, it's unlikely to be your biggest problem.

    The issue is that the non-dominant eye will fatigue faster than the dominant eye.

    ETA—closing one eye will cause the pupil in the open eye to dilate, which supposedly fatigues that eye even further.
     

    c&rdaze

    Active Member
    Oct 2, 2007
    893
    Southern MD
    While not an NRA instrustor, I've helped muitlple people deal with this issue. Most have gotten over the serious frustration by simply putting some kind of block over the left eye and starting to knock birds out of the sky. More common than most folks think. I personally don't have this and didn't undrestant it at first. Now, I do the simple test with each new shooter.
     

    bpm32

    Active Member
    Nov 26, 2010
    675
    Eye dominance is not an absolute thing: people with a very strong dominance in one eye typically don’t even need to close or occlude their non-dominant eye. Those people would be ill-served by closing their dominant eye. People who often see double images have very low dominance.

    You can kind of test this: if you hold your thumb out and defocus enough to see two images, you eventually see one thumb start to waver and disappear first. So for me, the thumb on the left disappears eventually, which corespondent to a weaker right eye.

    Here’s an article that explains better from Norman Wong. Before Norm retired, precision shooters used to fly into San Francisco just to get a prescription from him:

    https://www.ssusa.org/articles/2017/10/1/five-easy-steps-to-determine-your-dominant-eye/
     

    mdunphyjr

    Ultimate Member
    Feb 25, 2010
    1,123
    North point / Dundalk
    I have the same issue, with guns I dont sweat it as much. With archery it's a PIA, but I've always stuck with shooting right handed. I suspect I'd shoot much better left handed but I'm not changing at this point in life. It is what it is, I'll never be a great shot.

    Like blaster said, line up the sights and squeeze!?!
     

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