Gunforge Assemble! Eye Dominence Question

It seems my niece is right handed, but left eye dominent. I don't want to teach her to shoot with one eye closed, but don't know how to teach her to shoot unless she learns to shoot left handed, which just seems wrong for a right handed person (not to mention most weapons are designed for righties). Now, rifles might not be an issue because she can learn to shoot with her left eye closed or something, but what about pistol. If holds the pistol in her right hand, she has to cant her head all the way over to see out of her left eye or go with the one eye closed. Is there a solution?

Ever see the movie "Firebirds"?

Yeah, I'm trying to avoid rigging periscopes and pantyhose to her head.

Plus: I hate Nicholas Cage and all his earthly works.

Plus Plus: Excpet for Raisng Arizona.

She's a bit young to do exactly that... Perhaps a golf cart instead of a Humvee...

He ain't that bad. National Treasure was pretty good.

Don't say things you can't take back.

I can't wait till the second one comes out.

I don't know what the technique is called, but I've seen where someone who was left eye dominent and right handed canted the handgun a little to the left so that they could use their left eye while aiming...kindof a half gangsta grip.

Several years ago I noticed that my right eye was losing it's dominance. I started a renewed training regime where I started shooting with my left eye closed and wiring my brain to focus through my right eye on command thanks to some tricks my Opthalmologist taught me. Over the course of several months, I started to slowly reopen my left eye while shooting and today, I'm back where I wanted to be.

Yes, yes there is.

A variation of which also aids controlability and gets me, at least, back on target faster. All part of the CAR technique, I'm evaluating now, which is really starting to surprise me. I've known for years that canting the weapon slightly while firing one handed aided me significantly, but I never really changed my thought pattern because I was so stuck on the Weaver.

Not small... TINY paws.

I'm decidedly left-eye, right-hand. Since I've not shot naught but a rifle, it hasn't been a problem. But I can't seem to focus in my right eye very well with my left eye closed, and I can barely keep only my left eye closed without affecting a severe sneer anyway.

Interesting to see the right-handed, left-eyed people mentioned or posting in this thread. I'm the same. (I'm also left-legged. It just happens that way, I guess.)

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This phrase made the lexical parser in my head explode.

Or did you mean to say "I've shot naught but a rifle?"

How do you know what eye is dominant?

Easy enough for you. Get your handgun. Keep both eyes open and line up the sight at a picture on the wall. Close your right eye? Did the sight picture change? No? Open your right eye and close your left eye. Did the sight picture change?

If you close your left eye and the sight picture does not change, you're right eye dominant.

If you close your right eye and the sight picture does not change, you're left eye dominant.

And without a handgun, simply cut a small hole (about a half inch across) in a piece of cardboard, hold it out at arm's length, then (with both eyes open) line it up so you can look at some specific, distant object. Then move it slowly back towards you, keeping the object in view. It will end up at your dominant eye, provided you didn't consciously try to make a choice one way or the other when you lined it up.

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Hmm. I'd have thought dominance would be less of an issue with the pistol than the rifle.

I see. You're talking shooting one handed, yes? I don't know that I have an answer for that. But it seems like if you're shooting combat--Isosceles or Weaver--it's just a very subtle head shift to have the proper eye in sight alignment.

In a perfect world, sure. But, the world often dictates different things, like getting your strong hand busted or your arm broken so you can only shoot one handed.

Ideally, your sidearm should be your absolute last ditch weapon for anything beyond or at arm's length. Naturally, after the sidearm comes the knife, and then the fists, but I digress.

Sadly, itt's not really polite, or in some places legal, to walk around with a rifle slung over your shoulder, so for most people, the handgun becomes the first line of defense.

Any and everyone that wishes to carry should practice one handed drills using just the front sight for last ditch survival maneuvers.

Crosseye dominance is easily dealt with in either the Isosceles or Weaver stances. It's a simple matter of either rotating or shifting your head slightly so the dominant eye is on the sight line.

See, that's where we have to agree to disagree again. And it is a contradiction in your personal doctrine.

You maintain that a person shouldn't get a gun with an ambi safety because it could needlessly snag on something. But what if, as you've just pointed out, your strong hand is busted or your arm is broken so you can only shoot one-handed? I guess with that strong-side safety you're pretty much fucked. (And I won't even go into the fun of trying to locate a left-handed only safety if you're a southpaw.)

And the other side of the coin is, just how often are you going to need to shoot one handed? 1% of the time? What are the odds that you'll NEED to shoot? And when it happens, what are the odds that it'll be at a distance where eye-dominance will matter a damn one way or another?

Finally, if she's forced to shoot with her weak hand due to extenuating circumstances and she's eye-dominant on her weak side, isn't this a solution in search of a problem?

I carry a Glock. The only safety is betwixt my ears. Barring kids in the house, it's the only safety one would or should need if you diligently follow Col. Cooper's 4 rules of gun safety.

Why don't you ask your fellow Marines, the ones that came up with the pistol qualification course and training regiment that I use and teach professionally?

I have the capacity to move on beyond one issue in a thread. Maybe, just maybe, do you think I was taking the thread in another direction?

What happened to the 1911 that you carried in previous gun threads?

And I dunno what Marine pistol qual course you are talking of. They may be reworking ours, but the one I've always shot--and shot back in June--has no one-handed shooting. It is all Weaver or Iscoceles.

Yes, I haven't.

Also, you can't say that five times fast.

He's been carrying a compensated Glock for as long as I can remember.

Yup. The .45 doesn't conceal well.

Conceals fine on me. It actually conceals better for me than my more "compact" Sig 229.