Cross-dominant shooting woes

Me too

I have the same cross dominant symptom as the OP, over the years I have managed to train over it with handguns, I can shoot handguns with any hand eye combination. (with both eyes open)

With rifle it's a little different, I can shoot a light recoil rifle from either shoulder, on my left side I can shoulder the rifle and look down the sights/optics and it comes right in.

When I shoulder a rifle on the right side, I can see iron sights fine but optics are an issue, I simply cant see through the optics until I close my left eye, I have been trying to train this out for a very long time, I have never been able to get this part.
 
With handguns it isn't that hard to adapt. With long guns the best thing to do is to learn to shoot from the left side. My brother has the same problem. When he finally decided to retrain himself to shoot left handed he became a much better shot. There was a learning curve, at first he shot very poorly from the left side. But after a little work he quickly became much better than he had been when trying to shoot right handed with a left dominant eye.
 
Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I'm definitely feeling better about the handgun situation. Since I first posted, I've had the chance to go to the range a couple times and experiment. It actually feels pretty good to shoot with my left eye and my right hand now that I realize it's not improper technique for someone in my circumstance. I like how I have to adjust my head very little in isosceles stance to shoot with my left eye, however I am still more accurate out of Weaver, which is probably just a muscle memory thing. I'm going to keep experimenting with both and I'm very comfortable now that I will gravitate to a stance that's natural for me and yields good results.

But guys...the rifle thing. I have 35 years of muscle memory burned in to me, and I don't know how switching hands at this point can be realistic. Hundreds of hours as a boy shooting air rifles and .22 from my right shoulder and using only my right eye. As soon as I begin to raise up a rifle, I naturally transition from two-eye mode to one-eye mode. Despite being left eye-dominant, I can easily and naturally close my left eye, even more so than my right after doing it that way all my life. Once the rifle is up, you can call me Captain Jack, because I may as well be wearing a left eye patch. I own six rifles, and some will find it unusual that two of them are kept in iron sights, and the others all have relatively low magnification fixed scopes. I think the reason that is my STRONG set-up preference is that because once the rifle is up, I cannot so easily switch between two eyes for field of view and one eye for shooting. What I see out of my one eye for the most part is the field of view I'm going to get, so I like to have a lot of information in my sight picture. As weird as this may seem, this is what I have adapted to pretty successfully, and at 47, learning to shoot left handed seems as likely to me as learning to write left handed. What is true however is that shotguns are not in the cards. I've never been comfortable with them so no trap or skeet, but I'm very ok with that!
 
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It's not as much of a handicap as you think, the best I can do is shoulder a scoped rifle on my right side and blink my left eye, this brings the optics in on my right eye and then I can maintain it with both eyes open.

I have never been able to overcome this with optics, I've tried every trick in the book including blocking my left eye for extended periods of time (months), my left eye dominance has quickly returned every single time. I finally just decided it's the way it is and deal with it.
 
I'm in the same boat, except you actually have a leg up on me. My left eye is so dominant that I can't for the life of me close it without closing the right eye. I can close my right eye and keep my left open, but my body seems inclined to give up on vision all together if it doesn't have that left eye. The only way I can shoot a rifle right-handed and get the sights to work is to obstruct my left eye :(.

So what do I do? I shoot rifles, shotguns, any long gun off my left shoulder. I'm lucky in that since I was a kid this was actually what felt natural to me (my mother claims I spent the first few years of my life using my left hand dominantly and then switched for some reason). I still shoot pistol right handed. In both cases I shoot with both eyes open. I like the added situational awareness it gives me, but frankly it's something I never had to work at. I could always just shoot with both eyes open. When it comes to the pistol I find I naturally cant the pistol ever so slightly to make it match up better with my left eye. I still angle my head as well, but again something in my body is doing work behind the scenes. Because of this cross eye dominance I shoot pistol primarily in isosceles.

So I guess my point is it's a problem that can be overcome in any number of ways. How seems to be up to you. I was lucky enough that my natural instincts seem to compensate for my problem so there was no learning on my end. I can see where you're coming from that you have years of developed muscle memory to overcome. You'll have to determine for yourself if it's worth working against that memory.

I did like this article I found a bit ago:
https://www.usconcealedcarry.com/find-your-optimum-shooting-stance/
 
The issue of eye dominance applies onlt to binocular vision. You are a good rifle shot because you are using only your nondominant right eye in a monocular manner. You can produce the same effect by closing your left eye when handgun shooting, although that is frowned upon, and for defensive purposes unwise to occlude nearly half your field of vision.

Eyeedness can be switched. It involves wearing an eye patch over the dominant eye long enough for the brain to reprogram to make the other eye the dominant one. I don't know how long it takes, but you get to look like a pirate for awhile and can shoot without difficulty in the meantime.
 
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