Eyes open or closed??

3

3rdDragoon

New member
A while ago a firearms instructor told me to try shooting a handgun with both eyes open, whatever the distance. That also goes for iron sigted longarms. It seemed that alot of people just automatically close an eye to use their dominant eye without really thinking about it. I must admit it was difficult at first but made a hell of alot of sense. If you were in a gunfight, your brain wouldn't allow you to close an eye.

Try driving your car with one eye closed. How much would you not see?:confused:

I now always shoot pistols with both eyes open. Took a bit of getting used to. Your brain eventually just focuses on the dominant eye and ignores what isn't important.

What do you guys think?? Eyes open or closed?
 
I tried for years to shoot with both eyes open and just could not get the hang of it. Sometimes I could get my dominant eye to focus, but most times everything just blurred together or the sights looked like they were 2 feet to either side of me. I tried every "trick" i was told or read about in trying to get one eye to focus with both eyes open. I guess I'm one of the unlucky ones. :(

I do however shoot with my dominant eye. I'm left eye dominant but right handed so I have to cock my head, but have never found it uncomfortable and found that my accuracy improved in doing so. Of course I have to keep my right eye closed. Oh well. :P
 
Both eyes open. My father told me that when I was a little kid and I never forgot it.


Edit; I am cross eyed dominant too.
 
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If you were in a gunfight, your brain wouldn't allow you to close an eye.
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With all due respect to a fellow service member in LE/Military-
I don't know how many gunfights you've been in, but I will tell you that there's no telling how you're going to react until someone starts firing rounds @ you. All you can do is train correctly, and if you don't totally lose your cool, you'll automatically react accordingly. As far as the "both eyes open or closed" issue, a fully open field of view is always better than a 1/2 open field of view, especially when you might have more than 1 attacker.
 
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I suspect that, whether we keep both eyes open or one eye closed, most of us wind up "seeing" only out of the eye that we're using to aim with. The brain shuts out everything else as irrelevant background noise.

In any event, I, like several other posters, am cross-dominant (right handed with a dominant left eye). I find it impossible to shoot with both eyes open, I close my right eye and aim with my left. Works well for me.
 
I was taught to close one eye when I was a kid. My dad had to close one eye due to a "lazy eye" problem of some sort.

I later learned to shoot with both eyes open when using open sights, and it's much better for me. This allows one to see around, or "through" the sight so that the target isn't blocked out by the sight.

But I still can't shoot with both eyes open when using a scope.

Daryl
 
Try driving your car with one eye closed. How much would you not see?
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I feel that this is a very bad analogy. The act of driving a motor vehicle and the act of firing a weapon are not similar enough to make this useful in my opinion. There is a real life example from combat aircraft actually, in which gunsights were offset to the right in some Luftwaffe fighters. The pilots were trained to fly with both eyes open but to fire their weapons with the right eye doing the aiming

I have never served in the military or law enforcement but I do own several miltary firearms such as an M1 rifle and Colt M1911

Keeping both eyes open with a pistol simply gives me two sight pictures and as soon as I try to pay attention to one or the other, it's hard to tell which front sight is the 'correct' one on a pistol. On my M1 rifle, the rear peep sight makes both eyes open inferior to one eye closed in my opinion, as with both eyes open, the rear sight is much too indistinct. With one eye closed, the ring is more well defined allowing me to center the front sight

Is it possible to be neither eye dominant?

While I see the obvious advantage to having both eyes open in combat, it seems to me that most people forget that some people participate in recreational or target shooting.
 
I have tried to shoot with both eyes open and it is a skill that still evades me. I am right-handed but left-eye dominant, too. I tilt my head slightly and center the weapon in front of my face for handguns. I simply shoot long guns like a southpaw. That is what just feels natural to me. Every so often, I will try to shoot a handgun with both eyes open with less than stellar results.
 
i used to be able to be able to shoot both eyes open, but my eye dominance changed and has been messing me up. now im cross dominate.
 
Actually, you can focus on either the sight or the target. With a rifle, I focus on the target; with a handgun, I focus on the front sight.

It just takes a bit of practice to get comfortable doing it, and with that practice you'll know which eye is seeing what.

Depending on one's physical ability with their own eyes, I suppose. Some people definitely have issues that prevent them from doing certain things. You have to learn to adapt to your abilities and needs.

Daryl
 
I close my left eye. With my bifocals I can't get the front sight in focus without closing one eye.
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There's a simple way to have both sights and the target in focus no matter what your eyesight is. I have 62yr old, far sighted eyes with astigmatisms to boot. I use this simple idea to clearly see my sights and the target using either pistol or rifle iron sights.

The principle is to use a tiny aperture held close to your eye to increase your Depth of Field (the area in focus). Given a small enough aperture one can increase one's DOF to almost infinity. Best of all, it's free because you already have everything to make it and it only takes 5 minutes to make and install.

Simply take some black electrical tape and a hole punch. Punch out some 1/4" circles and then take a nail, large pin, whatever, to make a tiny hole in the middle. The tiny aperture very close to your eye will act like a ghost ring in that you won't see the tape as anything more than a shadow. Because you are looking through a tiny aperture, your DOF will be almost infinite. And, because it's so close to your eye, the Field of View will be surprising large.

Just mount it on your shooting glasses where you look through them to line up you iron sights as I did below. Note, I recently switched to yellow tinted shooting glasses to enhance contrast and sharpness and my shooting aperture is now unbelievably sharp and clear.

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Both open. Why handicap yourself intentionally? You lose depth perception with one eye closed, as well as nearly half of you field of view. What if your shooting eye gets injured? You should be able to use either or both eyes at any given time. Dominance doesn't affect your ability to shoot any more than it does your ability to hit a nail with a hammer. If you're getting double vision or something, I can understand not having both open.

This is speaking for practical use, not bullseye on the range. If you have no intention of ever using a gun for defense or dynamic competition, ignore this stuff.
 
If you really want to try shooting with both eyes open, because some people have a difficult time holding one eye shut, here's a very easy exercise that will work. (I had a very hard time shooting with both eyes open. Especially with reflex sights).

Do you remember those "MAGIC EYE" posters/pictures. Where it looked like a non-impressive set of lines, colors, shapes, etc... However, if you looked through it, and semi let your eyes cross, you could see an actual picture inside of the picture. And it was in 3-D. Well, pick up one of those books. They have tons in the library and in book stores. Practice looking at the pictures and getting the 3-D picture. When you can see the 3-D picture in just a couple of seconds, move on to looking down your rifle scope, open sights or reflex sight. Your brain will easily be able to turn off the UNWANTED signals.

I discovered this my accident. I use to wear a patch on one eye. This made hunting very difficult. But for the life of me, I couldn't keep my right eye closed for more than a couple seconds. (I'm a lefty). The magic eye posters were getting really popular in the late 80's early 90's. My daughter had cut out the pictures in the sunday newspaper each week. We'd sit there with her on my lap and try and do them. After some practice, we were able to do them really fast. A couple months later, i was hunting whitetail in texas. I was glassing through my rifle to look for deer on the side of a hill. My right eye opened after a few seconds, like it always does, and I was about to pull away from the scope and refocus, when I realized that I could still see through the scope, with BOTH EYES OPENED. It was like looking at the Magic Eye pictures. I could see right through the scope. No problem. The brain basically turned off the near vision of the other eye. Anyway, it worked for me. Just a suggestion.
 
Using a scope, both eyes open. I have never been able to get a good sight picture with iron sights and both eyes open unless I used a Weaver stance and cocked my head so my eyes lines up with the sights. Now I am using more of an isoceles stance -- find it more accurate -- so both eyes doesn't work for me.
 
Flat face, both eyes pointed forward and we focus by moving the eyes in and out to meet at the sight target, ie what you are looking at. We are built to be a bifocal looker and the answer to the double vision and lack of ability to focus is range time and dry fire, dry fire till it hurts with both eyes focused on the front sight, practice till its almost impossible to not see the front sight clearly when you shoot, it has now become second nature.

It is amazing how fast you can get on target and focus on the front sight with enough practice. If you cannot then you need more range and dry fire time. That's why in spite of all my big boomers and 46 years of shooting seriously in competition and hunting I still practice with the 22 for serious, not just plinking fun. That concentrated practice pays dividends when I pick up a long gun, rifle or shotgun. You learn to locate and see the target but you focus on the sight...period.
 
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