Handgun eye: was right; after injury used left; should I change back?

[nemo2econ]

Stay with me on this, it's a bit complicated. Or if you don't want the medical history, skip to the "=====================" line below.

I grew up right eye dominant, and used right eye to shoot handgun and rifle. I am right handed too. Never shot much handgun except for qualifications and occasional training while in the USAF. I had 20/20 in both eyes, pilot qualified and all that.

When I was in my late twenties, I experienced an injury to the cornea of my right eye (corneal tear). It healed quickly and well, but left me with irregular astigmatism etc. and about 20/100+ on the eye chart. I went hunting a few more times using a scope, but eventually gave up rifle, and of course iron sights were worthless.

Some twenty years later, I took up pistol and revolver shooting once again and involved myself in a defensive combat league. I did this by unlearning old habits and learning to shoot with my left eye (but still right handed). That is now my well ingrained habit of over five years.

After restarting shooting regularly, I had refractive eye surgery (PRK) of the right eye only. Reduced the astigmatism greatly but, of course, could not repair all of the surface irregularity from the healing of the corneal tear. I now see about 20/30 with my right eye, and the doc set the focus for "monovision" (reading distance) so I could read a menu or whatever without reading glasses. That is to say, my right eye (which had been relatively useless for many years) is set for reading and my left eye -- still the good eye I was born with -- has become the distance vision eye as I lose my ability to see close without glasses, just like all of us at this age. I have continued to shoot handguns sighting with my left eye (I still don't shoot much rifle).

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NET: My left eye is perfect 20/20 at distance vision, has never had any PRK surgery. My right eye is now a pretty good 20/30 vision with a reading/computer focal distance. So I don't use prescription glasses when I shoot, which seems a good thing should I ever need to quickly use a gun in self-defense. My well-ingrained habit is to shoot handguns with my left eye, closing my right eye.

I'm in my early fifties and have recently realized that I can no longer bring the front sight into focus with my left eye. I was surprised to learn that I see the front sight quite excellently with my right eye. But my habit has long since changed and I "instinctually" sight handguns with my left eye.

So my question for trainers who have helped people change their sighting eye, or for optometrist/opthamologist shooters, is: should I consider a training regimen to, once again, RE-retrain my sighting eye, this time from left back to the right eye that was dominant when I was a kid?

It seems that might give me an advantage of focusing on the front sight, as many instructors and books tell one to do. Whadayathink?

[scorpion_tyr]

I'm no professional trainer or anything. In my lowly opinion I guess it would depend on your aiming style. If you focus on the target instead of the sights I would stay with the distance eye. If you focus on the sights I guess going back to the right eye would make sense. Personally I shoot better when I focus on the target. Would it be possible to be "eye ambidextrious"?

[maxkimber]

So my question for trainers who have helped people change their sighting eye, or for optometrist/opthamologist shooters, is: should I consider a training regimen to, once again, RE-retrain my sighting eye, this time from left back to the right eye that was dominant when I was a kid?

You stated your dominate eye was your right eye when you where a kid. What is your dominate eye now? I am not asking what eye you shoot with, but what is your dominate eye?



- Extend both hands forward of your body and place the hands together making a small triangle (approximately 1/2 to 3/4 inch per side) between your thumbs and the first knuckle.
- With both eyes open, look through the triangle and center something such as a doorknob or the bullseye of a target in the triangle.
- Close your left eye. If the object remains in view, you are right eye dominant. If your hands appear to move off the object and move to the left, then you are left eye dominant.

- To validate the first test, look through the triangle and center the object again with both eyes open.
- Close your right eye. If the object remains in view, you are left eye dominant. If your hands appear to move off the object and move to the right, then you are right eye dominant.

To answer your question - if both eyes are healthy etc. use your dominate eye.

Hope this helps...

[oldandslow]

nemo, 11/12/08

Complicated story. Whether to change your reflex shooting habits of the past five years using your left eye depends on how well you shoot now. If you can be accurate and reasonably fast using your present unorthodox system it makes sense to stay with what works well for you regardless of what other people do. If your shooting badly with your present system then a change may be needed but it will not be simple since each of your eyes focuses at a different distance (ie- one at short range, one at long range).

best wishes- oldandslow

PS- I am also about your age and cross dominate with eye and hand coordination (left eyed, right handed) so I know some of your issues.

[ECHOONE]

If your right hand dominate you should be aiming your weapon with your left eye, If left hand dominate aim with right eye and you will soon find there is no longer that blurry vision others so often get try and then call me a liar

[wmeSha]

I say give it a try. After all, if doing crosswords and other mental exercises is supposed to ward off Alzheimer's then your mental exercise should be good too.

[nemo2econ]

Okay, after thinking it over long and hard, and getting advice from several shooting friends, after five years of exclusively left-eyed pistol shooting I went ahead and switched to sighting with my right eye two weeks ago. (I took the advice of User:maxkimber in his post to recheck eye dominance at my current age: I am, indeed, right-eyed dominant.

I am firing 50-100 practice shots per day with a Rovatec Bullite laser-pulse 'bullet', using the little 2-1/2 inch reflective target disks spread around the house, at distances from 10 to 25 feet. After the first several days of retraining, I decided to try to learn to shoot with both eyes open. Both efforts have gone well. I am now reliably bringing the pistol on-target with my right-eye aligned on the sights. Keeping both eyes open has not been a problem, and definitely helps with receiving feedback from the laser-pulse point of impact when I am somewhat off of the small reflective disk as my left eye has much better distance vision.

A trainer told me I should expect 2000-3000 rounds of practice would be necessary to fully ingrain the habit. He also suggested that a laser training aid would be sufficient for the majority of the requisite training. At maybe 1000 "rounds" into the process, I am shooting reliably right-eyed, and with consistent accuracy that exceeds what I could do before when I was sighting with my left eye. I'll be shooting at the range a couple of times before year-end, and then will check it out under stress at a defensive combat pistol match in early January.

[csmsss]

fyi...it's dominant, not dominate