What is cross eye dominance? It’s when a person has a dominant eye that is opposite their dominant hand, for example a left handed person whose right eye dominant. While it can be a problem for rifles, fixing cross eye dominance for handgun shooters is really easy.
There are definitely levels of this problem. Some people don’t have an extremely dominant eye, and can use either eye when shooting a rifle. Other people, like myself, have one eye that is extremely dominant, and a non-dominant eye that’s basically along for the ride to provide depth perception. In those instances, for rifle shooters people often recommend learning how to to shoot with the opposite hand. The most common example are people like me – I’m left handed, but I’m very right eye dominant, so I learned to shoot a rifle right handed to manage this issue.
For a pistol, fixing cross eye dominance is way easier. You don’t need to switch hands or learn a whole new way of shooting – you just have to move the gun three inches. The first step is to make sure you’re using a modern shooting stance and not something old and busted like Weaver. The next step is to move the gun two inches to the left or right so it’s lined up under your dominant eye. That’s it. That is the only thing you need to do.
Some instructors like to overcomplicate this issue. That makes sense, if you’re a hack. I’ve seen all manner of nonsense, like switching hands, laying your cheek on your shoulder while closing one eye, and a whole mess of other things that don’t make sense. At the risk of repeating myself: get in a modern athletic shooting stance, square up to the target…and move the gun two inches so it’s under your dominant eye. That’s it. It’s even easier with a red dot sight pistol, since both your eyes can be open at all times.
Don’t make fixing cross eye dominance any harder than it needs to be. Just move the gun, and get to spitting lead. That’s all it takes.
