Left eye dominant and right handed son

[texasag93]

My son is 6 and has this problem.

I am a reasonable teacher, but I am afraid I will mess his shooting up.

I am looking tips and hints on how to deal with this.

I have a lot of right handed guns and would hate to see him not shoot them in the future. I also do not want to buy left handed guns if possible.

Any advice?

texasag

[74novaman]

My son is 6 and has this problem.

I am a reasonable teacher, but I am afraid I will mess his shooting up.

I am looking tips and hints on how to deal with this.

I have a lot of right handed guns and would hate to see him not shoot them in the future. I also do not want to buy left handed guns if possible.

Any advice?

texasag

I am left eye dominant and right handed. I shoot handguns with my right hand and it doesn't bother my accuracy at all.

Rifles must be shot from left shoulder, but with any semi auto from a 10/22 up, that shouldn't be a huge deal. Although I will say that I feel an AK is more user friendly for a southpaw then an AR. (But either one is entirely usable)

Just teach him how to shoot and he'll be fine. You can absolutely shoot pistols right handed/left eye dominant.

[Keith]

Im the same way. I shoot with left eye on handguns so I can keep both eyes open without any problem. For rifles I use right eye again without issues. I have zero problem staying on target and im a hard on myself when it comes to hitting my targets were I want to hit them.

When I was a 10 yr old kid I laid a playing card on edge and sliced it in half with a 22 bolt action scoped rifle at 25 yards. Hey for me it was a big deal lol. He will be fine. Be glad he figured this out early. I could never shoot handguns with both eyes open until I fig out this was why.

[apostate]

How dominant? If it's not extreme and the vision in his right eye is good, you can try a piece of scotch tape on the left lens of his shooting glasses when shooting rifles. If you have a single shot, you can also let him try shooting it both left handed and right handed, to see if he has a significant preference yet.

[fishman]

You might try an eye patch. You can get them at the drug store.

[OldCannon]

I'm a LERH too (Left Eyed, Right Handed). Here's a few things to keep in mind:

Pistol shooting:
- Isosceles stance only. Don't do "weaver" style stuff, which moves gun alignment on the right side.
- Positioning: An isosceles stance puts the human body in a well-supported triangle stance, and requires shifting the pistol alignment _slightly_ depending on the eye. This means he has to shift about <---------- This much -----------> at the most to align his pistol sights to his left eye. One _could_ claim that it strains the distance a little more for the trigger hand, but it's not really significant, and the return benefit is that the support hand (left) gains a little more strength, so it evens out.
- One cool advantage: You're now capable of handling both "strong" and "weak" side shooting scenarios

Rifle shooting:
- Both eyes open shooting is at a significant disadvantage, due to the left eye wanting to dominate
- Repeated training of "relaxing" the left eyelid (not shutting, not squinting) will naturally allow the right eye to take over dominance (the brain does this VERY quickly). This takes time and patience to learn though, but hey -- you practice shooting a lot, so how can that be bad?
- Eye patches are not recommended for safety reasons ( people don't really shoot with eye patches, except on International Talk Like A Pirate Day). There is also a very significant safety issue as well, as we lose our stereoscopic sight advantage. This is critical for good shooting at any distance (and if you have to shoot and move, like in a USPSA event, you might very well be told to remove the patch for safety reasons, so you're back to square one).

[gigag04]

Rifles don't have to be shot lefty.

I've run thousands of rounds through a rifle from various shooting positions. You can retrain the right eye to be up or it. I got there by half closing my left. Little loss of field of view, but significant increase in speed and comfort with the platform.

[OldCannon]

Rifles don't have to be shot lefty.

I've run thousands of rounds through a rifle from various shooting positions. You can retrain the right eye to be up or it. I got there by half closing my left. Little loss of field of view, but significant increase in speed and comfort with the platform.

What he said

One should also consider platforms where you can(should) really only shoot right-handed, like the M-1. There's also a lot [abbreviated profanity deleted] be said for the practicality of being able to operate one in case, um, zombies attack and your wingman just got devoured. You can pick his rifle and get back in the fight. [ok, even I will admit that scenario made NO sense at all ]

[JSThane]

I'm the opposite, right eye dominant but left-handed.

I learned to shoot leftie from the get-go. Rifle, pistol, shotgun, I all shoot with my left side, including my left eye, and I keep both eyes open. I'm pretty fair sure I'm able to do this as, when I was a kid, I learned the trick of crossing either eye independently of the other, and focusing through the eye that was still looking forward. It's an amusing party trick for kids (and quite amusing when you learn it as a kid yourself and pull it on your teachers!), but at the time, I had no idea it would actually prove to have a useful function. I just got bored. End result, no matter which side I'm shooting from, I can still focus on the sights/target, and as I have close to zero fine motor skills off the right side, it's certainly helped that I can "alter" my eye dominance to match my "handed-ness."

Point being, it IS possible to train one's eyes to be "at-will independently dominant." Start by teaching him how to cross his eyes, then how to focus out of either one, and after a little while, depending on how well he learns, he'll be "ambi-ocular." Oh, and you'll have several years of him pulling this trick on random bystanders, and the funny looks that result.

[Thomas]

Probably not the advice you're looking for, but perhaps train him to be ambidextrous?

It's not a bad skill to have, especially if he's young and breaks his right arm or hand and can't write.

[JSThane]

Although I will say that I feel an AK is more user friendly for a southpaw then an AR. (But either one is entirely usable)

I actually find the AR to be quite southpaw-friendly, with the safety being the sole exception. If I place my right, supporting hand around the front of the magwell, it puts my thumb in an ideal place to operate the mag release, and my middle finger right next to the bolt catch/release, without any significant "adjustment" of the hand. I have to operate the safety with my left index finger, however.

[paulhailes]

I am left handed right eye dominant,

I shoot pistol left handed and just get used to lining the pistol up with my right eye, however I shoot rifle right handed, the benefit from this is I get trigger time with both hands.

[Divided Attention]

I am soooo right handed I don't wear a sock good on my left foot - as a joke, the Good Lord made me EXTREMELY left eye dominant. As a kid I learned this awful contortion to shoot right handed long arms. I cannot leave my right eye open and close my left eye to save my life - I can close right and leave left open or both closed or both open - no happy medium. If I try to shoot both eyes open right handed I cannot get a site picture.

About 6 months ago I learned to shoot long arms left handed with a very patient person's help. At first I could not even grip the rifle without looking and purposefully placing my hands. Now it feels odd to shoot a long arm right handed. Just practicing with my left hand trigger finger.

I do still shoot my side arms right handed. I agree with the ambidextrous thing.... could come in handy if you lose function of your strong side.

[TexasTransplant]

Left eye dominant, Right handed here.

Pistol...right handed, only left eye open...adjusted stance to get the weapon lined up.

Rifle...left handed, only left eye open. I don't own a left handed gun.

He will be fine.

[Purplehood]

I am almost 53 and didn't find out I was left-eye dominant (right-handed) until I was in my late 40's.
I have only recently started shooting handguns with my left eye, with a right-hand grip. It seems to work better.
I have always shot Expert (USMC and USA) with the M-16/M-4 so I have made absolutely no attempts to adjust from my traditional right-hand/right-eye shooting technique for Rifles.