Eye dominance and CQB training

[longrange1947]

Guy - I fully understand what scenerio you are talking about. I still say switch him, we have done it a number of times and used to be standard practice when shooting.

Having a shooter use his right hand to shoot and left eye to aim with causes problems, or vice versa. It is not the same as writing as the body recognizes that the hand shooting is natural for the eye that he is using for shooting. It is better all around to hold left handed and shoot left eyed then hold right handed and shoot left eyed. My bet is that after only a few days the shooter will be better at it and his training is less than trying to train a new dominate eye, or chnging his equipment around to force fit a situation. He already shoots left handed long gun, and he only shoots right handed becasue he was forced to shoot cross dominate during prior training.

A far as the barrier, any way ou go you must expose more body as you are exposing more head to see with the left eye as you shoot around the right side of the barrier, and most will expose more body due to this situation.

My thoughts, my opinion, my two cents.

As far as my experience, I first started doing take downs in the 70s. I have been both knuckle dragger and long gunner.

[Guy]

Mixing apple and oranges here.

You mean to tell me that...

"It's easier to train the body than the mind"?

I'm talking about a two weapon system and transitioning from the long to the short, acquiring the front sight with a good sight pic.

Throw in manipulation of the weapons system "tap, rack bang/squeeze" and this can be accomplished using your weak hand...proficiently?

Try teaching what you said to foreign students.

BTW...I'm very much aware of your background.

[Alex F]

Originally posted by Guy


As far "barriers" I can counter that argument by just changing sides...what happens when a left handed shooter has to shoot around the right side of a barrier?

How do you (general you, not just Guy) feel about training weak hand for this sort of thing? It's faster to shoot dominant hand but possibly more dangerous as you'll expose more of yourself.

Better to train to shoot with both hands and lose a little speed in the transition or to just shoot dominant hand and be a little more exposed?

Regards

[Guy]

Back-up from the barrier.

As far as training with the weak hand/side...not to many people do it (that I know of). You may hear people talk about it, how many do you see doing it?

Master the basics first, then move on.

[Smokin Joe]

When I was first taught how to shoot by my father. He taught me to be able to shoot either hand either eye or either shoulder either eye.

I am left handed and left eye dominant. I spend probably 3/4 of my training time shooting this way. The other 1/4 I mix up using either hand/shoulder and either eye.

The reason for this is if I get injured in either my dominant hand or eye I can still fight effectively with my weak hand or eye. The last thing I want to do is learn how to shoot with my weak side or eye in the middle of a gun fight.

[NousDefionsDoc]

The only reason I will shoot weak hand is if I'm wounded in my strong arm. There are many ways to get around the other reasons.

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Originally posted by Guy
Back-up from the barrier.

As far as training with the weak hand/side...not to many people do it (that I know of). You may hear people talk about it, how many do you see doing it?

Master the basics first, then move on.

Had some folks call me on that once. A lot of beer was bought that day and not by me.

Jack Moroney

[Guy]

Originally posted by Jack Moroney
Had some folks call me on that once. A lot of beer was bought that day and not by me.

Jack Moroney

People will not do it unless they have fired a bunch of rounds. We fired so many rounds at one time the pistol over-heated, we had to go put on gloves.

We had one guy shooting a semi-auto M4 like it was a machinegun. I didn't think you could squeeze the trigger that fast!

[Jack Moroney (RIP)]

Originally posted by Guy
People will not do it unless they have fired a bunch of rounds.

Well I do have to admit that we had an average of 20K rounds per individual that we put downrange over the period of a year with some folks doing a lot more than that. We were swapping out the slides from the frigging berretta because they were developing cracks around every 2K rounds or so. The only reason I took them on was that I had busted my thumb on my right hand and knew we had a qualification coming up and had put out that if you didn't nail the rediculous pistol qualification that the Army required then you didn't belong in the unit. So I spent some time working with my off hand so I wouldn't have to eat my words. Didn't want to be one of those alligator mouth officers with a tadpole asshole.

Jack Moroney