Both eyes open, offsetting the handgun to dominant eye?

K

Kimio

New member
This may be something that should have been pretty obvious, but I recently tried doing this during a range session.

Before I was shifting my stance or trying to focus my right eye on the irons of my handgun without much success.

To compensate, I tried holding the gun slightly to the right so that it was more in line with my right eye (my dominant one). As silly as this may sound, this made a world of difference, I was much more consistent with my shots afterwards.

While fatigue set in a little earlier than I would have liked, it was nice to see some progress. Now if only I can learn to "shut off" my other eye and make solid follow up shots without losing where my irons are from time to time, everything would be peachy.

If anyone else has some tips, or would like to share their experiences with learning how to shoot with both eyes open, please feel free to do so. I'd love to hear how others learned to shoot like this.
 
If you shift the gun toward your dominant eye, then your natural point of aim could be off and need to be adusted.
There's always a trade off.
While I've most always shot with both eyes open, handguns and long guns, now it often causes double vision.
Slightly squinting the non dominant eye is sometimes needed to eliminate the problem.
There's always something. :o
Can't rightly remember when I actually started shooting with both eyes.
It might have been from trying to emulate the hip and snap shooting on all those tv Westerns.
 
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I'm most accurate with one eye closed, however, I'm trying to learn how to shoot with both eyes open since this is supposed to be my daily carry handgun.
 
One of the other instructors in our group is cross dominant (right hand/left eye). In his shooting stance (whether he is shooting Weaver or Isosceles) he keeps his head erect and turns it slightly to the right. That aligns his left eye with the sights. By turning the head while keeping it erect, instead of tilting it, he avoids muscle strain and fatigue.

We teach that to our cross dominant students in out NRA Basic Handgun classes. It almost always works for the student. Some few students still have difficulties (sometimes associated with weak dominance or shifting dominance). Those few students usually have to resort to closing one eye.

But overall, the technique has proven to be very effective. I've adopted it for shooting with my non-dominant hand.
 
Funny enough, I was trying that as well, but I was worried that this was the wrong way to go about it.

I don't have anyone to formally train me unfortunately, so most of what I learn is through experimenting and simply watching what the pro's tend to do in videos and so on.
 
I've always shot both eyes open,right-handed,left-eye dominant.On my adj.sighted guns,I simply made needed adjs.15 yrs.ago when I started shooting fixed-sighted Glocks,I ran into constantly grouping 3" left at 15 Yds.A Glock armorer set rear sight clear to right edge of slot.Solved problem for a load I'm still using.Maybe this is helpful. :D
 
Skeets said:
I've always shot both eyes open,right-handed,left-eye dominant.On my adj.sighted guns,I simply made needed adjs.15 yrs.ago when I started shooting fixed-sighted Glocks,I ran into constantly grouping 3" left at 15 Yds.A Glock armorer set rear sight clear to right edge of slot.Solved problem for a load I'm still using....
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In general I could not recommend offsetting the sights as a way to deal with cross-dominance. If one is using a handgun for self defense or for action pistol competition (IDPA or USPSA) he will want to be able to accurately fire the gun with either his dominant or non-dominant hand. Offsetting the sights complicates matters when shooting with the non-dominant hand.
 
Myself being naturally left handed I'm also left eye dominant. But I shoot pistols right handed. Go figure.
What I did several years ago, I would black the left lens out on a pair of shooting glasses and over time (about 2 months) trained my right eye to be dominant. I've had no trouble at all since doing that.
You've heard of ambidextrous, well I'm ambieyeballed because I still shoot rifles and shotguns left handed.
 
I too am right handed, left eye dominate.
Since I have switched to the Isosceles stance instead of a weaver stance.
I have been practicing shooting with my dominate eye.

Its actually is not hard to do with the Isosceles, your dominate eye naturally comes in line.

Weaver was harder, I had to move my head farther to my strong side.

I think its a good idea to practice that. If you close one eye, your cutting off half your peripheral vision.
 
I'll have to get video of me shooting some time down the line. But I stopped doing the weaver stance with handguns a long while ago. I've bee trying my best to do the same stance Jerry Miculek does in his videos.
 
tweaked

I'm left eye dominant, right handed, but get a much better sight picture with my right eye. I squint my dominant eye to switch my vision over to my non-dominant eye. This works best for me.
 
There are "fuzzy dots" you can put on your dominant off eye lens so the other eye works more and takes over. LOTS of trap shooters suffering from cross dominance do this.
 
One of the other instructors in our group is cross dominant (right hand/left eye). In his shooting stance (whether he is shooting Weaver or Isosceles) he keeps his head erect and turns it slightly to the right. That aligns his left eye with the sights. By turning the head while keeping it erect, instead of tilting it, he avoids muscle strain and fatigue.
Click to expand...
I find this method works wonderfully for us cross-dominant folks. I'm now even managing to keep both eyes open, at times, this way, though I've had years of practice with only the left. It's coming little by little.;)
 
+1 I went thru this after a stroke. I noticed I was doing this in a draw qualification class. The head turns ever so slightly to favor the dominant eye.
 
I am cross dominant as well and have settled on closing one eye at distance and accepting the minor point of impact variation at close targets due misaligned shooting stance.
 
Back in 2008, when Hickok45 had maybe 25,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel, I used to communicate with him occasionally. One of the topics discussed was shooting effectively being cross eye dominant, which he is.

If you notice in his videos, he cants his head to the right when shooting to get better alignment with his dominant left eye. He also told me that he closes his right eye. If you observe closely in his videos you will notice his right eye squinted. Adaptation and practice can overcome many obstacles to achieving good marksmanship.
 
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