Shooting a handgun right handed, sighting with left eye

leadchucker said:

try to develop right hand/right eye sighting.

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Is what i do.

Using the left eye , right handed, changes how a hand gun recoils. Not great for rapid fire, one handed. Using 2 hands , not as bad.

To avoid eye strain, just cover the left eye, keeping it open. There are flip up covers made for shooting glasses. Bullseye shooters use them.

I shoot handgun rignt/right. Rifle / shotgun/archery, left/left.
All because teachers in the 50's would not let us write left handed, so i was told.

I am right handed left eye dominate as well.

While it may be entirely possible to "train yourself" to make the right eye sight I simply do not have the patience for it. I have found it impossible to shoot with both eyes open and sight with my right eye.

However, I think it depends on what type of shooting you're talking about as to whether it's really an issue to try and force on yourself. For defensive practice if I'm shooting with my right hand only it's point shooting. Using both hands it's easy to use the left eye. I always keep both eyes open.

If you're talking precision target shooting than I don't really see the need for both eyes open. Use whatever works for you.

I shoot right handed. A few years ago I switched to aiming with my left eye. Easy change, no problem, 1 hand or 2. 38, 9mm, 45 acp, 44 mag.

leadchucker said:

Am I better off just yielding to the reflex and using the dominant eye, or should I try to develop right hand/right eye sighting?

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It is always better to use your dominate eye IMO. For handgun shooting it isn't much of an issue. Long guns pose a bigger problem for some who are cross dominate. I'm right handed - left eye dominate and have always shot everything left handed.

Research "Quell firing system" It is a possible solution for you.

With apologies to Snowman 92D on Tactical Forums, here's his post on the subject:

My memory isn't perfect after 30+ years of police work, but I recall the "Quell System" being extolled at a firearms training seminar in the 1970's.
As best I recall it involved (say, for a right-handed shooter), locking the right elbow so the entire right arm was stiff. The left hand was used in a push-pull isometric tension whereby the handgun was, in effect, "pulled" back into the stiffened right arm...the right cheek was firmly affixed then to the bicep muscle of the right arm and the shooter was expected to sight the gun with his left eye.
This was due to the supposed effect of pressing the right cheek against the right arm's bicep thus turning the head to the right and necessitating the use of the left eye for sighting. By pressing the right cheek against the right arm's bicep, coupled with the handgun being pulled back into the stiffened right arm, the overall effect was supposedly something akin to shooting a rifle and thus gaining better accuracy.
The shooter was supposed to target the pelvis area of the target, which was supposed to down him quicker somehow and, in any event, be less likely to kill the poor felon. That's the best that I can recall about the "Quell System". Interesting in theory, but it died away pretty quickly.

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I'd disregard the pelvis shooting, but the method of tilting the head to put the dominant eye behind the handgun is still being taught.

There are highly successful Olympic-style pistol shooters like Roberto Di Donna and Antoaneta Boneva who are right-handed and aim with their left eye.

leadchucker said:

For some things, I’m left handed, and for others, I’m right handed. I’m clearly more comfortable with a handgun in my right hand though.

Lately, I’ve been making a concerted effort to drop an old habit I have of closing my left eye when shooting a handgun. Now, when I level a pistol on a target, right handed, with both eyes open, I find myself reflexively lining up on target using my left eye.

My shooting has improved dramatically since I’ve been practicing with both eyes open and sighting with my left eye. I can sight using my right eye, but I have to consciously shift sighting from left to right. I don’t shoot as well that way either. My dominant eye seems to be my left.

Am I better off just yielding to the reflex and using the dominant eye, or should I try to develop right hand/right eye sighting?

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Well, …… I think the crux of your vision dilemma harkens back to the original premise behind Paris Theodore’s ‘Quell Method’ of Shooting. Here are a few thoughts on, ‘dominant eye shooting’, which hand to use, and keeping both eyes open:

First, the right-side of the human brain controls the left-side of the body; and, the left-side of the brain controls the right-side of the human body. (Got it!) It is, now, recognized that the right-side of the human brain is more, ‘target orientated’ and has greater control over the body’s reflexes than the left-side of the human brain has over the body’s right-hand side.

Second, for those who may be interested, this curious human phenomenon is actually thousands of years old, and is clearly referenced in the Holy Bible: i.e.,

‘They were armed with bows, and could use both the right hand and the left in hurling stones and shooting arrows out of a bow, even of Saul’s brethren of Benjamin.’ (I Chronicles 12:2)

‘Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss.’ (Judges 20:16)

So whether you prefer the recent discoveries of modern science, or the ancient revelations of Sacred Scripture, this means that ANYONE should be able to shoot better by using his left-hand and/or left eye.

Third, I do have some personal experience with this problem. As a boy I was dyslexic, and had a lot of trouble learning how to read. Then, twice, during my youth, I was badly injured and forced to use only my left-hand for extended periods of time.

The end result is that, today, I’m perfectly ambidextrous with all hand-held tools and weapons. I do have a dominant right eye; but, because nobody ever told me it could be a problem, I learned how to switch my brain over with nothing more than a quick squint of either one eye or the other. Depending on which hand I’m holding the pistol in, I simply squint the opposite eye in order to switch back and forth between my right and left eyes.

I do, however, always shoot long arms with both eyes open and only from my right shoulder. Probably because of weapon design limitations, I never bothered to teach myself to shoot long arms from the left-hand side.

Fourth, some of the remarks in this thread sound very much like mechanical descriptions of Paris Theodore's, 1970’s ‘Quell Sighting Method’. Little known and seldom used today, the Quell Method works and, when properly employed, works well - especially with sighted fire and at long range. The CIA used to teach the Quell Sighting Method as a technique for shooting either a pistol or a rifle with considerably greater accuracy while operating under either extreme physical stress or, over long range.

Conventional Quell Method training did NOT differentiate between right, and left-handed shooters. In practice the Quell Method was primarily applied to right-handed shooters and simply taught them to aim a pistol by using their right-hand and left eye. Unfortunately human visual aiming processes remained ambiguous; and, in practice, the Quell Sighting Method was incorrectly applied to BOTH right and left-handed shooters. Consequently it fell out of favor before ever being clearly understood.

There is an advantage to aiming with your left eye. Properly applied Quell training taught a right-handed shooter to aim with his left eye AND the right side of his brain. The big advantage, here, resides in the fact that the right-side of the brain processes visual data more easily than the left-side; and, correct Quell training should have been designed to take exclusive advantage of this phenomenon.

Finally how do I switch, both, my brain and my hands around in order to aim easily with either hand? I momentarily squint with the eye that I do NOT intend to use. (It really is that simple!) The straightforward fact is that you will become whatever you train yourself to be. I’d like you to consider that there are, also, distinct advantages to becoming accustomed to aiming with your visually superior left eye and, thereby, employ the visually superior right-side of your brain in order to make important (i.e. 'instinctive') aiming decisions.

ojh said:

There are highly successful Olympic-style pistol shooters like Roberto Di Donna and Antoaneta Boneva who are right-handed and aim with their left eye.

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A quick google

Roberto Di Donna who won Olympics in 10m air pistol in 1996 shoots right hand left eye, google his name for pictures

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Free pistol is single shot 22. I have shot both.

My Feinwerkbau air pistol was recoilless. Doesnt compare to a 45acp shooting rapid fire,.

The OP can just try all methods. See what works best.

I have the same problem with aiming handguns. I'll pick up a gun and sight normally and always fall to right side dominant. But if I stand and aim for a period of time, I notice that my brain wants to shift to the left eye. My solution has been to close my left eye which is easier for me.

Spatial reasoning (parietal lobe) and visual processing (occipital lobe) happen on both sides of your brain. These are absolutely NOT single sided brain processes.

The neurology behind eye dominance and hand dominance favors that a shooter should learn to shoot their handguns on the same side as their dominant eye. Handedness for dexterous tasks are a LEARNED motor skill, whereas eye dominance is not - it is a hard wired neurological pathway preference.

In other words, for this left eye, right hand shooter, you can train your left hand to be as effective as your right, but you cannot train your right eye to be as effective as your left.

I used to be in the same boat. My right shoulder was frequently sore as a result of holding the gun further left than was comfortable. I also had a gun that ejected inconsistently and would hit me in the face and head with hot brass.

So first things first, I got rid of that gun because it also had reliability issues. Then I spent well over a year practicing a forced use of my right eye on the draw. I forced myself to use my right eye to shoot and to focus on the front sight.

Now when I do the eye dominance test, my right eye is dominant. I also shoot faster and with better combat accuracy than before because my shoulder feels better and I'm not being pelted with brass.

You can change your eye dominance. I've done it. There are measurable benefits in my experience.

Prior to making the attempt, my left eye was very clearly dominant. I'm not a neurologist but I will always have the same response to anyone who says you can't change your eye dominance. "Nonsense. You can do it. I've done it. It just takes time and practice."

This is really a training question, so I've moved it here.

You're doing what I do. As I aged, I became far-sighted in my right eye and near-sighted in my left eye. So I retrained myself to use the left eye for seeing the sights (they show up nice and sharp). I started out by tilting my head to the right, but eventually it beame automatic to use the left eye.

The bonus is, I can see BOTH the sights and the target sharply -- I see one in each eye, and the brain merges the images.

Vern Humphrey said:

The bonus is, I can see BOTH the sights and the target sharply -- I see one in each eye, and the brain merges the images.

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Hey that's pretty cool. Never considered that possibility.

If you are left handed in a right handed world one learns to utilize the right hand with a certain amount of dexterity also. You may even learn to shoot with both eyes open. You may also learn to index the handgun within your field of vision on the target with out primarily focusing on the sights with creditable firing results.

It's called cross eye dominance. Some vision experts figure that between 1/4 to 1/3 of people have this. Fairly common then. It means the dominant eye is different from the dominant hand. (Unless of course you're ambidextrous).

The first thing to do is to stop thinking of it as a problem, it's just how some folks are. Many shooters do very well with this and use the dominant eye. With handguns it's very easy to do this and to shoot even 45s rapidly. You can shoot with both eyes open, just bring the dominant eye into play more, you can do this easily by turning the head a bit.

tipoc

tipoc said:

Many shooters do very well with this and use the dominant eye

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^^^^^^^ THIS ^^^^^^^^
(and don't worry about it)

.

I am left handed and right eye dominant. Rifles and shotguns from the right shoulder, handguns from the left hand with head slightly tilted. Has never been a problem for me.

"...teachers in the 50's would not..." Happen long before the 1950's. My ma was forced, by nuns, to change and she was hatched in 1911.
Both eyes open works well, but a lot depends on what kind of shooting you're doing.
For one handed bullseye shooting, with one eye closed, you move the hind leg to bring the eye and sights together. Easier to do than describe. In any case, upper body tone is far more important than which eye. Your head/body will just use what it likes anyway. That is far easier if you're back and shoulders are strong.
Shooting games are a bit different. Easier and better to shoot with both eyes open due to it being more like point shooting.
What's really important is to not think about it. Any kind of distraction is bad for shooting.

Dominant eye, strong hand. That's the simplest, completely effective way to learn to shoot handguns very well.

With long guns it really should be all on the dominant eye side, which means learning to shoot rifles and shotguns "lefty." Far better for speed and snap-shooting/wingshooting.

Some great advise has been given here.

I've struggled with left eye, right had dominance also. So does my younger brother, runs in the family. Being in the military and both career LEO's we never had trouble qualifying, with pistol or long gun. We both stayed with right hand shooting; it was easier to maintain better coordination. One thing that I was taught to me years ago; gun fighting vs gun shooting was "threat focused shooting". Center Axis Relock, and third eye Mossad shooting. Developing the ability to place rounds on a very specific target with the sights being secondary in your vision field. The theory is that the brain knows what fundamental sight alignment and sight picture looks like. The shooter concentrates on the target, or rather a spot on the target, and the subconscious mind lets the shooter know when the pistol is aligned. Care has to be taken with proper trigger control.
You don't sight down the bug spray to kill the spider on the wall; you don't sight the hose sprayer to hit the cigarette butt on the driveway, your brain can measure the appropriate triangulation, and make the shot good.

It takes some practice, but for distances inside of 20-50 feet it can be very effective.

Hunting and target shooting, obviously you have to shoot and sight conventionally.
Ok, let the tsunami begin.

What you're describing, JeffG, is what I once called "shoot your way to a sight picture". For some tasks, a highly refined sight picture is required. At the opposite end of the spectrum, a simply awareness of the direction the pistol is pointed, with no visual reference, is all you need and maybe all you can get. But those are not isolated from one another. The end goal, if shooting lasts long enough, is to get a sight picture. But you may be done shooting before that happens. It is not defined steps, it is a flowing continuum.

Mathew Temkin has written a great deal on the merits and proper technique of point shooting. Many new methods have come and gone, failing to deliver when it mattered or lacking in some point that overwhelmed their perceived strengths. But point shooting, first codified by Sykes, Fairbairn and Applegate (he came a bit later, in the 1940's) has evolved as more became understood and adapted for a century now.