Lots of instructors — myself included — talk about the importance of vision, seeing, focus, and such for shooting performance. Most of them — myself included — never really take the time to analyze exactly how their vision works while shooting.
Gabriel White (who goes by the moniker “OrigamiAK” on a number of shooting forums) recently penned a detailed analysis of exactly how his eyeballs do what they do as he is shooting. Entitled simply Vision, Gabe has generously allowed pistol-training.com to reproduce it in the Articles section of this website. You can read it here. Computer aided graphics are included at no charge:
It really is a very interesting and informative article, particularly the realization that convergence and accommodation aren’t necessarily linked. The first time Gabe mentioned that he does this, I publicly told him he was crazy. Then I grabbed a SIRT training gun, aimed at the nearest wall, and realized I’d been doing the same exact thing all along without even realizing it.
Train hard & stay safe! ToddG
While I understand and acknowledge the principles and benefits behind both eyes open shooting method, I must warn that it has its limitations.
In a controlled range environment, I can shoot either way, both eyes open or one eye closed. However, it is from my field experience that I chose to use one eye closed method. My intent is not to convince one method is better than the other, but to inform that there are some risks involved in both eyes open method that rarely get noticed because those risks do not get revealed in a training environment.
Let’s say you are a police officer or a solder doing a building search and you see a threatening opponent. But, the catch here is that you see the opponent through a security bars on a window or the bars of a stair case fence. Now not only do you have a convergence problem with the pistol and target, you have double vision of the bars and you have no idea if your pistol sights are projected over a real bar or a ghost image from the non-aiming eye. And, that is even assuming your eyes are converged over the target as trained. That kind of conditions occurred very frequently during operations. If you lower your posture, you might be faced with seeing a target through the spaces under the furnitures through the spaces between chair and bed legs and all sorts of visual clutters like electric wires. Your head is often not in an upright position like you are used to seeing things too.
Also, it is relatively easy to make the eyes consistently converge over the target in a controlled environment. But, in operations, the light conditions are dynamic. The light conditions or background contrast can create situations where it draws your visual attention more stronger to something other than your target. Your eyes won’t converge on the target when that happens.
Another problem is using cover. With both eyes open method, the shooter must expose the head until the dominant eye can see the target. This can result in shooters having to expose the face area that includes both eyes are exposed while one eye closed method only requires one eye exposure.
Eui, not trying to be bash, but seeking clarification: Have you used two eyes in the field or in training as opposed to your preferred one eye method?
During recent force on force training in an school converted to a storage facility, I had no problems making hits on the move with both eyes open, including a hostage rescue drill that involved head shots. The light conditions varied as well as there was plenty of junk in the training area. It wasn’t a matter of consciously attempting to find a convergence point, just automatically reverting to what I practice.
The only time I had fire my gun in operation was during day time with no visual clutter involved, but I did aim at stuff in various situations in the field to try to see how it works. I tried it either way. Visual clutter generated from non-dominant eye image, was a problem at times. Some times I had to close one eye even when I was not involved in shooting guns, just to see something clearly.
One good example is when I am moving up a stair case with fancy stair fences, which often happens during house search. As I am “pieing” vertically and horizontally, I see the upper level getting revealed through the bars of the stair fence. Some light conditions require me to close one eye, so that the double image of those bars won’t get in my way of recognizing the upper level area that is being revealed to me. At this moment, I am not even shooting anything. So, it will only get worse if I actually had to shoot through those opening between stair fence bars.
In training environments, I’ve done it both ways. Training often favored both eye open method, but I have not seen any type of training environment that recreated the situation where non-dominant eye visual clutter became a problem, while I often did encounter such problems in the field.
That is the reason why I wanted to warn people. The training environment rarely, if ever, reveals that potential risk. Not that I am saying people should not use both eyes open method.
I have no doubt people can make hits on the move with both eyes open, but that is not the point I am challenging.
Now you did say there was plenty of junk in the training area. But, did you have to see the target through the clutter of those junks, like you would see a target through bushes in low light outdoors? I am talking about visual clutters between you and the target, not just in the background.
However, I would face this problem a lot more than most others. The reason is that when I see people I work with engaged in operations like building searches, etc., they often do not maximize cover. If their eyes are just hovering in the middle of the room or hallways, rather than edge of a cover object, then they would rarely have non-dominant eye visual clutter problem, since most visual clutters are near the surface of walls or counter tops, etc.
I really don’t want to get into a debate/argument, but I’ll say this; there are much simpler ways to minimize exposure around cover than changing your shooting skill set from both eyes open to one eye open.
Ideally, the only thing exposed when shooting around cover, is a thin section of head and arm/shoulder. This is clearly the case when shooting around your strong side. Now, as for shooting around your support side, generally more of your head and body are exposed, but this is due to the gun being in your strong side hand. If you transition the handgun to your support side hand, you will likewise minimally expose yourself.
I’ve trained, taught, and demonstrated this to countless cops.
exposure around cover is a tactical skill set, more so than an eye sight issue. I of course say this based on a person with what I’ll refer to as, “standard” vision, or non-corrected eye sight. As noted above, various eye sight deficiencies will impact all of this differently, as will lighting conditions to a lesser degree.
Just my opinion, based on 20 years of LE experience and training/instructing.
LCSO264, I’m not trying to start an argument, and I’m not defending Eui’s stance on this, but if I read you correctly, you think that learning to close an eye to shoot is an issue, but that switching the gun to your support hand is a good idea? Not to mention that to “…likewise minimally expose yourself.”, you would have to be using your left eye as well. I guess I’m confused. If you don’t prefer Eui’s technique, no issue, but your solution seems to be at least as complex a training issue.
I am confused as well about LCSO264’s comment regarding minimizing exposure while using cover that is on “strong” side while only exposing the weak hand side. To use both eyes open method the shoorer either has to expose both eyes or use a non-dominant eye for aiming, which I am not sure how it can be reliably done effectively.
However, Switching the hand holding the gun is a valid technique, if the shooter trains to shoot with either hand. One criticism is that shooters shoot better with the gun always in the primary, or “strong ,” hand. But, the awkward shooting posture one has to go into in order to properly use cover when the cover is on the primary hand side often more than nullifies whatever advantage was had by keeping the gun in the primary hand. So, not only are you not any better in accuracy, but you also expose yourself more with no benefit in return.
However, the switch method do require the shooter to be somewhat proficient with secondary hand shooting. If you rarely train secondary hand shooting, none od the about applies.
This applies even more to rifle shooting, because in some situations it is physically impossible to even get the rifle pointed at a target unless the shooter switch shoulder the stock is on.
SLG; after hitting submitt I noticed how that reads. I was only trying (unsuccessfully) explain that one eye vrs. two eye sighting generally isn’t the solution to using cover. strong side applies to strong hand/arm, regarding the use of cover. Depending on the range, I’m not a huge fan of support handed shooting, I was trying to show that you “could” switch to support hand shooting to minimize exposure/maximize use of cover. To make sure I’m not completely crazy, I just sliced a support side corner with my gun in my support side hand. Maybe I’m a freak of nature, but I was able to do it with minimal exposure. I have no idea which eye is doing what, but it worked. Just to make sure I’m not nuts, I switched back to my strong side, had to lean out/expose a little bit more to get the same site picture. I learned this a long time ago, and have subsequently trained and taught this, and so far all the guys I’ve trained get it and are able to do it…
Eui; I think the wording was less than clear. We rarely get to “choose” which side of cover we are afforded. Although, few truly train enough with their support hand (especially at range), it is a skill set that should be trained. Again, I’m not a huge supporter of frequently shooting support side, I like most of us don’t shoot left handed (for me) as often as I should, but I can do it.
If I understand how binocular vision works (given there is no other vision issues), the brain combines the two images to make one whole image.
I guess I just don’t see the benefit of shooting one-eye out weighing those of maintaining both eyes open.
LCSO264: Are you in North Florida?
RedWal:
No, Oregon.
I appreciate everyone’s comments.
This was intended as a document of narrower and simpler scope than to include all possible defensive situations that might require alterations to the basic visual techniques outlined. Essentially, it is a technical piece, not a tactical piece.
The considerations enumerated in the posts above are quite valid. I’ve seen the ‘confusing multiple lines’ thing in training plenty of times and to me that rightly falls under the general precept of ‘any time there is insurmountable visual confusion with both eyes open, close an eye.’ There is nothing wrong with doing that when a person finds it helpful.
Another tactical example is when the target is particularly difficult to see and fixate on even when both converging and accommodating to it, due to lighting conditions, distance, size, etc. A person might be forced to shoot that way, ‘sight-focused’, because even the blurriness caused by accommodating to the front sight will effectively make the target disappear, so target focus must be maintained.
Great informative article, Gabriel!
Gabe’s article and facts are well written, and correct.
Being a right handed shooter with left eye dominance, I struggled to learn and use the both eye open method. After lots of practice, for most distances I adapted well, for 25 yards or longer I may needed to close the non dominate eye to get the right sight picture, under certain circumstances.
After lot’s of practice shooting both eyes open, it becomes second nature to know which gun I am looking at when using the target focused method. I seldom need to strongly focus on the front sights, as everything just lines up and happens. It was after the Ron Avery class that I really picked up the speed a notch, and since then don’t even think about it.
Thanks Gabe for putting into words what we have known all along.
Excellent explanation