MICHAEL A. TULLEY
Command Safety Office
10th Mountain Division
Fort Drum, New York

A friend recently asked me if she should give her son the rifle she bought for him. She said he is right handed and left-eye dominant, and his instructor is training him how to shoot left handed. She was concerned the semi-automatic rifle’s ejection port would throw the hot spent brass across his body. I am a left-handed, left-eye dominant shooter; both of my kids are right-handed, right-eye dominant shooters. I assured her that her son would not have an issue shooting that particular rifle, as I have the same weapon and shoot it left handed all the time. However, I did question the instructor’s wisdom in teaching a right-handed student to shoot left handed.

The current conventional wisdom is to teach people under the age of 20 how to shoot rifles according to their dominant eye, regardless if it is not the same as their dominant hand. The reasoning is a shooter under the age of 20 is easily trainable and will naturally align with the target if they use their dominant eye. While this may be true if one shoots with both eyes open, it makes no difference if you shoot with the non-sighting eye closed. This theory does not take into account emergencies that occur on a firing line or in the field — only what will be easier to teach. Are we accepting an unnecessary risk for our young people by following conventional wisdom?

I had the unfortunate duty to investigate a fatal accident on a live-fire range that involved a left-eye dominant shooter who was right handed but shot left handed due to his eye dominance. While there were many factors that went into the causation of the accident, the one that stuck in my mind was the shooter’s cross-eye dominance.

A left-handed person who shoots a rifle left handed will instinctively reach for a hot piece of brass in their shirt with their trigger hand. A right-handed person who shoots right handed will do the same — use their trigger hand to grab whatever is causing the problem. In both cases, the chance of a negligent discharge is reduced because the trigger hand is away from the trigger and the forearm is keeping the weapon orientated downrange. The right-handed person who shoots left handed will use their forward hand to grab whatever is causing the problem. This leaves the trigger hand on the weapon and the support hand dealing with the situation.

The potential for loss of muzzle control and a negligent discharge are exponentially increased because of the cross-eye dominant shooting position. I believe there is a problem with conventional wisdom. We are placing our future generation of shooters at risk of being involved in a catastrophic incident by teaching them to shoot with their non-dominant hand in favor of their dominant eye.

There are many ways to train a cross-dominant-eye shooter to use their non-dominant eye. Placing an opaque piece of tape over the dominant eye shooting glasses lens, a piece of metal or other material that blocks the front sight from the dominant eye’s line of sight, closing the dominant eye, and wearing a patch over the dominant eye are all extremely effective measures and leave the dominant hand as the trigger hand.

Training should always be done to accomplish the goal. Training should also take into account emergencies that may/will arise during the exercise of the task and how the individual is going to instinctively handle that emergency. Cross-eye dominance in a shooter is a common phenomenon these days. As trainers, we should look at the whole picture instead of taking the conventional approach. Are we putting our young people at risk by switching them to their weak hand right off the bat? It’s a question worth considering.