By Luke McCoy via USA Carry
Even if you’ve always known which hand is your dominant one, you should test out which eye is dominant. There are a lot of people who discover that their marksmanship has been off for years just because they’ve been using the wrong eye to align the target.
If you are someone who is right handed and left eye dominant, you can probably get away with switching to your left hand for firearms like rifles and shotguns. But, for handguns, it’s not always convenient or comfortable to use your non-dominant hand. This is because the first hand on your handgun is usually your dominant one.
So, let’s discuss some techniques to make it easier to sight in on your target using your left eye and right hand. Fair warning: please DO try these techniques at the range. Don’t just take our word for them.
Right bicep cheek rest
Resting your right cheek to your right bicep, it’s easier to bring your left eye into alignment with the pistol sights. This is really more of a Weaver stance, with your left foot slightly forward and your right foot slightly back.
Isoceles shift
The very cool part about standing in the isoceles stance (feet shoulder width apart and perpendicular, knees slightly bent) is that it is easy to shift focus from the right eye to the left because the handgun is held out before both of them.
Modified weaver “close combat”
If you are in tight conditions and don’t feel comfortable or trust extending your arms out in front of you, you can bring the pistol back. Bend both of your arms at the elbow and pull the pistol in tightly, keeping it aligned with your dominant eye. Not only will you be able to use both eyes to keep situational awareness, you’re already set up for success if you have to pull the trigger.
In general, we like to advocate for using both eyes in a self defense gun situation. This is because while you only need one eye to look through the sights, both eyes can give you more information about range, and potential additional threats coming from the sides.
Holster Considerations For Right Handed, Left Eye Dominant Shooters
There’s nothing wrong with where your pistol is currently holstered. That said, some cross dominant shooters have found a few methods that have worked for them and we’re sharing them in case you’d like to experiment and see for yourself.
Cross draw holstering
Cross draw involves placing the handgun on your non-dominant side, pistol grip facing out. To illustrate, just take your normal right-handed gun holster and unclip it from your belt and bring it across your waistline until it’s in relatively the same position but on the other side of your body.
This method is actually favored by those who drive a lot and need to be able to keep a hand on the wheel of their truck and still use their dominant hand to draw. It’s also favored by some cross dominant shooters because they feel it is faster to align the sights to the left side.
Left hand draw
If you do get a left handed concealed carry holster, you should definitely practice drawing from the left side. That said, a lot of cross dominant shooters have found success by practicing their draw from the left hand side. This obviously means you will be using your left hand as the dominant hand, whereas your right is actually your dominant hand. With the proper amount of practice, you can make it work.
