The Importance of And How to Shoot with Both Eyes Open

Keeping both eyes open while shooting is a very important skill that you need to master. We naturally keep both eyes open. We have monocular vision.

That’s how we naturally see things. For you to close one eye actually limits the brain’s ability with your vision. It changes the light that comes into your eyes.

It changes the light in your vision. When you’re opening and closing that eye, you actually have to transition between the two. Now one of the important things to realize that if you’re ever in a defensive situation where you have to draw a handgun or a rifle is that your eyes will naturally stay open because of the adrenaline rush.

And if you’re training to keep both eyes open ahead of time, that’s going to give you a real advantage if you ever have to face a bad situation. Now one of the first things you have to determine if you’re right-handed or left-handed is what eye dominance you are. Most people that are right-handed are right eye dominant.

And that means when they bring up their rifle, even when they close one eye, they close the non-dominant eye. And so you’re shooting focuses out of the dominant eye. That’s really easy to do if you’re already right-handed and you’re shooting with a right eye dominance.

But if you’re right-handed and left eye dominant, that can be a little bit of a trickier situation, but not anything you can’t overcome. One of the things you need to understand is what are you? Are you right or left eye dominant? And a real easy test for that is to take your hand and put it into a triangle and focus on a certain spot. And then just bring your hand up to your eye.

Whatever eye that you bring it to is typically the eye that you’re most dominant in. Another way is when you pull up a handgun and put eye you close. Again, it’s a real easy test.

So the big problem though is a lot of people want to train you differently than how you naturally want to shoot. As you bring your handgun up and you look down the sights, if you keep both eyes open, what you’re seeing is two sight pictures. You’re seeing your sights with two different eyes and it can be kind of confusing.

One of the first things that makes it easy to be able to focus on that front sight is to squint one of your eyes. Just squint the non-dominant eye. Don’t close it all the way.

Just squint and focus on the front sight. Focusing on that front sight is important no matter what you’re shooting. Getting that eye focused on not the target.

The target should be a little bit blurry. You’re able just to focus on the front sight, not on the back sight, on the front sight. And if you can focus, then that’s going to get you locked in.

Now for me, because I’ve been training for a long time, it’s real natural for me to bring up the gun, look down my sights, and I focus with my right eye right on that front sight. It takes some practice though and that is one of the most important things that I’m going to talk to you about is practice. I have a target set up in my shop and a lot of times making sure the gun is unloaded, making sure that everything is safe, keeping my finger out of the trigger for this type exercise, and I can bring it up to my target, put it on the target, and capture that front sight every time.

Now, let’s say you’re cross-eye dominant, which is a major problem with a lot of people. You’re right-handed, you have a left-eye dominance. There are some instructors that will actually tell you to switch hands and that is absolutely ridiculous.

You have all your dexterity in your dominant hand. Yes, you may be ambidextrous, but it’s really important that the hand that you are most dexterous in, that you naturally feel you want to shoot, that is the hand that you definitely need to shoot, especially with handgun. The only thing that you have to do with cross-eye dominance is when you’re lining it up is just line it up with the left eye.

Now see, if I blink, I can line that up with my left eye. Now, I’m training. Yeah, I’m moving it over about two to three inches, but no big deal.

This is the natural way. I’ve been shooting with one eye closed anyway, so now I’m just lining it up with both eyes open. You can train with that because if this eye is more dominant, it will naturally start to take over and focus on that front sight.

Now, with a rifle, that’s totally different. One of the problems is that when you bring up your sight, if you’re left-eye dominant, you’d have to do this. I mean, it’s impossible.

You can’t even do it. What I’ve learned is, especially doing a lot of tactical training classes, we’ve done a lot of defensive carbine classes, and we have to shoot weak-hand. Even with weak-hand shooting, I bring my rifle up, I’m able to get it with both eyes open, but it always comes with training.

You need to be shooting weak-hand anyway, so learning to shoot this way is really important. This also goes with your handgun. If I’m going to shoot this handgun left-handed, single-handed, which could be a video on shooting single-handed, and how that could be a great possibility in a defensive situation, is when you bring it up, bring it up with your right eye.

You still contain that right eye dominance, even if it’s in your left hand. Really, you’re just focusing on the front sight. I have no problems getting that front sight.

To me, the most important aspect of keeping both eyes open is that you’re going to lose about a third of your peripheral vision. Now, what happens is, when you close that one eye, it blocks all the vision for about one-third of your total vision, including your peripheral. I’m going to give you an example.

Here I am standing. I’m going to keep both eyes open. At this point right here, looking straight ahead, I can see that hand wiggle all the way to here.

Now, if I close my left eye, it’s all the way to right here before I even see my hand wiggle. That is a lot of distance, really about one-third of the total distance of my vision. I’m not going to be able to see what’s coming up beside me.

So, here I am. Let’s say I’m shooting. I’ve got my one eye closed right here.

That is a huge blind spot. One of the problems is, is a lot of times when you have an attacker, it’s not just one attacker. It could be multiple attackers that could be coming from different directions.

You also lose depth of field with one eye closed. When you’re looking out at an object, especially at distance, because your eyes are picking up two different planes of focus, you’re able to tell distance a lot better. So, the more farther out that something is, the more important that depth of field becomes.

If you’re especially shooting a rifle, it’s really important to be able to get that distance. Also, it’ll help with moving targets. If you’re a hunter and you’re shooting and you’ve got both eyes open, you’re able to follow the target even outside of the ring of the scope.

So, whatever your field of view is and your scope, you’re able to see that and to be able to follow it. Once you close one of your eyes and you open it, your eye has to adjust. The light has to adjust.

You’re missing 50% of the light transmission and your brain’s telling you that. So, it’s adjusting stronger for the one eye. Keeping both eyes open allows for that light and that condition to stay to remain the same and to remain constant.

Now, also fatigue in your face. When you’re squinting your eye and you’re closing it, these muscles in this face are closing up. I’ve got my sight lined up, but I’ve got my face squinted up and that’s going to add to fatigue.

It’ll make you actually want to pull your shot a lot faster. Opening both eyes, you can see very clearly. You see the whole area.

Your face remains in a natural state. A couple of exercises that really help is when you bring up your handgun is to get a hold of that front sight. Now, initially, you’re going to see two sights.

For me, because I’ve been practicing for a good while and shooting with both eyes open, I’m able to pick up that front sight very naturally. In fact, if I close one eye, it just kind of closes things down. So, I really like to bring it up, get a hold of that front sight.

I focus on the front sight. Now, one of the things that you need to try out, especially if you’re just new doing this and you’ve been shooting with one eye open pretty consistently for a long time, is that when you bring it up is to squint your non-dominant eye. You just squint it and then it helps you to focus with the eye that’s open and yet it keeps both eyes open.

The other thing is, is if you’re looking and you’re squinting and you’re still losing it, blink. Once you blink that eye, it’ll help your dominant eye to go right to that front sight. So, I’m looking down my sight.

I’m kind of losing it. I just blink and it comes right into focus. But it’s the most important to train with the gun that you carry.

If you carry concealed carry, you definitely need to keep both eyes open while shooting because you’re going to in a bad situation. Oh yeah. Once you get that eye trained, you just kind of unfocus this one.

Keep this one focused. It gives you a lot of capability. Man, this Rock Island Armory 22 TCM, it just rocks.

Even with sights on your rifle, being able to bring it up, just picking up that front post. And of course, with a red dot, it makes it even better because you can definitely keep your both eyes open. And really, it looks like you’re following the target with the dot.

This little Trijicon Reflex is just excellent for keeping light and keeping you focused on one point. And your brain is saying, you know what? I’ve got both eyes open. I’m seeing my target.

You see the natural move. You see your depth of field. You’ve got all of your peripheral vision over here.

If I close this eye, it’s right here before I see it. And again, that can be really dangerous. Taking your dominant eye and just concentrating, letting it focus.

You can train yourself to do that, but it’s going to take training on your part. If you’re going to be lazy, you’re never going to get it. Now, when you’re training without ammo and your brain, you’re getting your sight picture, you’re bringing it up to your target.

Also, doing a dry fire regimen is also important. And most of your modern guns can be dry fired with no problem whatsoever, unless it’s a rimfire cartridge. So we’re going to actually talk about dry firing coming up in the next video or so.

So just watch for that. But training in your home, training unloaded, making sure that everything is separate. And I can’t stress that enough.

Not only will it save you a lot of money out at the range, but you’ll fine tune all the different things about your handgun. The trigger pull, your sight picture. Once you get out to the range and you’ve got the smoke and the recoil and just the adrenaline of being out at the range, this will really help to solidify and give you excellent muscle memory in a tough situation.

And then again, even out at the range. If you’re taking the responsibility of carrying a handgun concealed, you have a gun in your home for self-defense, for home defense, it’s really important that you know what you’re doing with that firearm. And the more you train, the more confidence you’re going to have, the more your skill increases.

And it’s just a great situation to be able to train, train, train. So guys get out there and train. Did I mention you need to train?

 

Be strong. Be of good courage. God bless America. Long live the Republic.

 

-Don