Aiming with both eye's open....

[hybridatsun350]

No no, I shoot handguns right handed and just turn my head to the right slightly so my right eye is out of focus. This causes my dominant left eye to focus.

Do you really want to have to shoot that way in a combat/self-defense scenario? You're eliminating a good part of your peripheral vision on your left side. I used to shoot Weaver and I know exactly what you're doing. I also know that my shooting improved immensely when I switched to shooting Isosceles.

[locosway]

I've been shooting Isosceles since watching the competition shooters and agree that my shooting has improved since then. I was really a handgun novice in terms of accuracy until I bought my Glock. I never spent enough time shooting to understand what I was doing wrong. Now I've put 500 rounds through my G20 in a month and once I get my G19 in a few days I hope to shoot even more because the 9mm is so much cheaper than the 10mm.

I've been thinking about using something opaque on my glasses to force my right eye to focus. I think what happened is when I was a kid I could close my right eye and not my left, so my left eye became dominant because of that.

[trinydex]

Just train your brain to ignore the less dominant eye visual input. its not hard to do once you do it a few times. With both eyes open youll have a double sight view when you focus on the target. if you're right eye dominant you want to use the left sight. if you're left eye dominant you want to use the right side sight picture.
Ok do this


basically stick your arm straight out level with your eyesight make a fist. Put up your thumb straight up as if you were hitchhiking. Now target something about 15-20 feet away spot on the wall a door knob something. if you focus on the target you'll "see" two thumbs. you'll be able to "see" through your thumbs they will be like ghost thumbs. Now try and cover the target with one of the two thumbs. Close your left eye. if the target is covered that's your dominant eye. If you close the right eye and the target is covered than you're right eye dominant. If you close one eye and then the other you'll either have the target covered or it will be off to the left or right by 6-8 inches or so.
Once you know which is your dominant eye and which sight/thumb you need to focus on it becomes easier to shoot with both eyes open

this gets harder in varying light conditions...

[tEN wOLVES fIVE sHOOTER]

Howdy Gents

I'm left handed left eye dominant, and shoot with both eyes open, when shooting right handed with handguns I just move the gun over enough to use my left eye comfortably with my right hand, this takes practice, just sit in a room and pick a target, then use your weak hand and do your pointing and sighting. years ago I shot in quick draw comp, where we had to be accurate and hit our targets, not just draw and fire, I used a double rig, and during this time my right eye was sharing dominance equally with my left eye, it was all in the use and training, when I went back to shooting just with my left hand, it seemed like it was no time at all that I lost the sighting ability with my right eye, so it comes down to use and training, your weak eye can be made just as strong as the other if you work at it. ( IMHO )


Regards

tEN wOLVES

[nobb]

Here's how you tell which eye is dominate. Make a triangle with both hands, index fingers touching and thumbs touching, both arms extended. Focus on a target at distance. Bring your triangle to your face. It will automatically move to your dominate eye. If you focus on the target your sights will be blurry. If you focus on your front sight the target and the rear sights will be blurry. You might want to get your eyes checked. It sounds like you have some astigmatism issues.
Shooting with both eyes open is better than with one eye because it gives you a 180 degree view. To keep from getting tunnel vision, breath. If you breath like you're suppossed to then you won't get tunnel vision.
For those who are cross eye dominate and shoot with both eyes open, don't bring your left eye to the sights, bring the sights to your eye. It takes more time to move your weapon and head at the same time to meet in the middle than to bring the weapon to you eye. Try this, it may be uncomfortable at first but it is faster, also you can shoot weaver or isosceles.

[luckystrike]

i fire with my right eye open (right handed) and my left half way open. thats just my way. worth a try?

[DDRH]

i fire with my right eye open (right handed) and my left half way open. thats just my way. worth a try?

Yes, i find i have to squint a little bit with my left eye, very little. just so i can focus on the front site. although i'm still a newb...gettin' better though!

[dawson8r]

I'm left handed but RE dominant. Been shooting right handed since I can remember. Started shooting with both eyes open about 2 years ago and noticed significant improvement and less eye strain.

[cal3gunner]

I am right handed with right eye dominant. The way I see it, when I'm shooting, both eyes are open but only my right eye is doing the work. You just have to really practice on keeping both eyes open but only really using one. My left eye is always picking up the peripheral but its not focused on my sights or target.

You can practice focusing at home. Do dry fire exercises with targets across the room, hallway, backyard or whatever you have to work with.

Here is what I see when shooting. If I'm shooting fast, lets say hitting a steel plate during a USPSA stage. I'm looking at the plate while my body is setting up, as soon as I see the fiber optic dot on my front sight (which isn't in focus) I pull the trigger. So when shooting fast, I'm looking at my target. If I'm going for a tricky shot and spending more time on it, I'll focus on the front sight.

Now here is what I've done that I think helped a lot. You have to be comfortable with your gun and you have to have good muscle memory of your grip and upper body stance. Lower body is nice but I've made shots around barricades while standing on one foot and way off balance.

For muscle memory, start with your hands off the gun, pick it up or draw your gun from holster, aim at a man sized target from across the room. Do this and get your sights lined up. Now do the same thing with your eyes closed. What happens to your grip and sight allignment? Practice, practice, practice until whenever you raise the gun up, the sights are always alligned.

When I'm bringing the gun up to shoot something, i'm not worried about if my front sight is too low,high, left or right. I know its in the place it has to be. If I get a bad draw from holster, I can feel it and adjust it. I'm not saying I'm perfect by any means, I still have misses and throw shots.

I've read books by different professional competition shooters and one of the key things that a lot of people say to do is, lots of dry fire practice. Spend anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour a day shooting at targets and getting comfortable with the gun in your hand. While doing this, work on your eye focusing issues. Experiment with focusing on the target vs on the front sight.

Food for thought

[1JimMarch]

OK. Folks, you're not going to want to hear this. You're going to want to block it out. But please...just once, toss out your pre-conceived notions for a sec.

Everything y'all know about combat handgun sights is wrong. Jeff Cooper, Jack Weaver and those guys who revolutionized combat shooting didn't go far enough, and didn't walk away from the idea of target/bullseye sights and the "focus on the front sight" concept taken from target shooting.

Take another look at this:



It's an accurate description of the problem, except it doesn't show what's going on at the rear sight as well. It hardly matters, because in order to get decent accuracy with notch'n'post handgun sights you have to look at the front sight, rendering both rear sights and target blurry.

What I use is a set of iron sights, no glass/wires/batteries, that let me focus on the target, and yet everything still lines up correctly. Focusing on the target, it's much easier to hold both eyes open AND discard from consideration the non-dominant image, which in my case is the left image because I'm left-eye dominant.

So here's what it actually looks like:



And here's the actual sight:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/1jimmarch/3630584151/in/photostream/

The original concept is by gunsmith Tim Sheehan of Goshen Enterprises:

http://www.goshen-hexsite.com/index2.htm

It works, guys. I knew something was wrong with how handgun sights worked but I didn't know what was wrong until I came across Tim's material. He's filled in the last gap between target and combat shooting.

You can blow this off, assume it's like any ghost ring sight when it's not, assume this can't work, that the hex can't allow your eyeball to line up with sights that aren't in focus...but you'd be wrong.

Because this is BY FAR the best, fastest-yet-accurate sight I've ever used, on any gun, and the easiest setup to do both-eyes-open with.

[Dr. Peter Venkman]

It's a big ghost ring site with a better index for finding true center. If it really was a 'revolution' in sighting systems it would have been picked up by USPSA/IPSC by now in their divisions that allow it. And if someones "combat focus" is not on the front sight of their gun, they won't be hitting anything to begin with. You can look at a target all you want but a gun not pointed at it is not going to hit it.

I've never been comfortable shooting with both eyes open. I am a left eye dominant, right handed shooter.

[sixniner]

.....

You can blow this off, assume it's like any ghost ring sight when it's not, assume this can't work, that the hex can't allow your eyeball to line up with sights that aren't in focus...but you'd be wrong.

Because this is BY FAR the best, fastest-yet-accurate sight I've ever used, on any gun, and the easiest setup to do both-eyes-open with.

Very interesting concept

[1JimMarch]

I am a left eye dominant, right handed shooter.

So am I. And I can assure you, I can hit with this. Accuracy is as good as anything else I've used.

[Rob454]

this gets harder in varying light conditions...

yeah but you can train for those also. i used to do this.
Take a pistol and point it ahead and aim. Do this a few times then close your eyes. aim with eyes closed. then open your eyes. your sights should be in the same spot that you had it when your eyes were open. its always better to see with both eyes. you can see threats and target them easier. it just takes training and repetition. You can practice with a empty gun all day long then put the practice to the test at the range

[Alvin Tostig]

Out of curiosity, I put a piece of tape over the left lens of my glasses, stuck out my thumb, and pretended sixniner's avatar was my target. Like magic, I saw a crystal clear thumb and only 1 blurry avatar! So far, I've been shooting left-eye closed because of the double vision. I can't wait to try this tape thing the next time I'm at the range.