Two Eyes Are Better Than One

You do not walk around with one eye closed so why do you do this when shooting? I can promise you that when a thug comes at you in the parking deck or in your home you will not close one eye when engaging. It has been proven that shooters will leave their eyes open in a shooting situation invariably every time. You cannot control this. Because of this we encourage you to practice the skill of shooting with both eyes open before it is needed.

Drawbacks of Shooting One-Eyed

There are many disadvantages to shooting with one eye. For those who carry both openly and concealed, they do so for self-defense or defense of others. Closing one eye negatively impacts your depth perception, balance, and peripheral vision. Shooting with one eye will decrease the speed and efficiency of information processing and it causes the brain to take longer to process the information needed to react. Also remember that shooting under stress complicates things further so attempting to close one eye in a self-defense situation only makes the situation more difficult.

In critical situations, our brain cycles through a process known as the OODA loop. The phrase OODA loop refers to the decision cycle of observe, orient, decide, and act, developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd. Boyd applied the concept to the combat operations process, often at the strategic level in military operations.

Why Shoot with Both Eyes Open

Because you will anyway:
As I said earlier if you ever find yourself in a defensive situation you will keep both eyes open involuntarily so you might as well practice the way it will go down so that if it ever does happen you will be at an advantage.

Fatigue:
With both eyes open you will likely fatigue less. To some extent both eyes are focusing which means one eye is not doing all the work as well as you are not using muscle strain to keep an eye closed.

Balance:
When you have both eyes open your balance is much better. This is much more apparent when you are moving and shooting.

Stress:
When you are under stress from a threat  you will experience what is called the “fight or flight” response. The “fight or flight response” is our body’s primitive, automatic, inborn response that prepares the body to “fight” or “flee” from perceived attack, harm or threat to our survival.

There are people who have more difficulty than others learning to shoot with both eyes open due to eye dominance and other factors. We’ll save these for another article but suffice to say that shooting with both eyes open will work for anyone. In some cases it might take more practice but the results speak for themselves.

Here is an excellent video by Colleen from KeepingPiece2010 on shooting with both eyes open and how to break away from the one eye bad habit.