Left handed CCW

[Boncrayon]

Eye dominance is "relevant" in finding the individual workings of one's dominance or preference of hand to eye sighting. There are right-handers with left dominant eyes and left-handers with right eye dominance. Changing hands is an option to correcting what our brains are telling us. I can shoot with my astigmatism by closing my alternate eye and practicing. Everything takes practice to set the brain's expectation. Try placing a piece of paper over your dominant eye and use the other eye to sight with the front sight. Try the other configurations and see if there is a possible compromise. Try all angles for the direct line of sight so you do not have to turn your head sideways to your line of sight.

 

[lefteye]

As I stated eye dominance is almost irrelevant shooting handguns. Eye dominance is easily overcome shooting handguns as I explained in my post. Eye dominance is critical shooting long guns unless that the dominance is very slight.

 

[pax]

Yup, Lefteye is correct: eye dominance simply does not matter when shooting modern defensive handguns.

It still matters for those who want to shoot in the old bullseye style (sighting straight down the arm from the shoulder), and it matters to long gun shooters.

But for handguns? Nope.

Changing hands to match the eye dominance is often among the worst possible advice one can give a new shooter. Let me quote my friend and colleague, Karl Rehn, on that subject: "As a right-handed, left-eye-dominant shooter that made IPSC Grand Master shooting that way, and as someone with 25 years’ experience teaching adult handgun classes, I strongly disagree with NRA’s position that the best way to teach right-handed, left-eye-dominant adult shooters to shoot handguns is to require them to shoot left handed."

Use the hand that you prefer.

Use your eyes however you need to use your eyes in order to line up your sights.

Press the trigger smoothly and follow through with every shot.

Get good training from a competent professional instructor to avoid wasting a lot of time and ammo money developing bad habits that you'll have to correct later.

pax

 

[lee n. field]

Use your eyes however you need to use your eyes in order to line up your sights.

I'm right handed, and weakly right eye dominant. Sometimes I find myself peering down the sights with my left eye, ignoring what the right eye sees. Yes, it still works.

But learning to shoot left handed would be, I can tell, a real struggle.

 

[pax]

lee n field,

I'm right handed, and weakly right eye dominant. Sometimes I find myself peering down the sights with my left eye, ignoring the right eye sees.

And that, right there, is why I actively think it is a bad idea for an instructor to run a quick test of their students' eye dominance, and then make everyone shoot with whichever hand matches the eye that tested dominant in that moment.

For many people, eye dominance is nowhere near as straightforward as it's often been made out to be.

A single test can lie. A series of tests can lie, especially if they are all performed on the same day in the same lighting conditions. A person's eyes can perform very differently on different tasks -- that is, they can test strongly right eye dominant when the task is bringing a thumb-finger circle up to the eye, but be strongly left eye dominant when the task is to focus on a front sight. Also, though ones hates to admit it, the test can be badly administered and thus not at all reflective of how a person actually uses their eyes.

And ... eye dominance still doesn't matter much when it comes to actually shooting the handgun accurately and effectively. Many other variables matter a lot more.

pax