Left / Right Hand Shooting

[lowspeed]

I'm already glad I joined this site; I've never seen so many lefties in one place, count me among the overlooked minority. I'm completely left handed and over the last year or so have become right eye dominant. Prior to the change in my eyes I stressed the importance of shooting both eyes open and up. Since we're mainly concerned with picking up add'l threats and often operating in reduced light keeping both eyes up creates a big advantage in CQB handgun and AR15. By the way we believe the "police effective range" of our AR's is around 150 to 200M due to the fact that the naked eye cannot ID a threat based on clothing, facial recognition, etc beyond this under ideal conditions. It's basically a liability issue. To maintain flexibility no scopes are used on our rifles, iron sights, EOtech's, Aimpoints are the only sights used.

To establish NPOA with the strong hand we use the FBI method of NPOA development from the Weaver stance. Once NPOA has been identified and practiced enough to equate muscle familiarity (building to muscle memory) the shooter uses that stance and NPOA, then copies it in the prone position resulting in the prone shooter and rifle forming an "L" when viewed from above. It also forms the basis for kneeling, speed kneel and squatting.

Now for weak hand shooting,using myself and officers in my classes as test dummies I've found that a small majority develop weak hand rifle skill a little faster if they develop the NPOA from a roughly isoceles stance. Just as with strong hand the NPOA developed in the standing position is the basis for all other positions including prone. I came to realize this when I watched guys shooting handgun weak hand, regardless of what strong hand stance they used they all shot iscoceles when using their weak hand, when I forced them to use the Weaver stance they would always revert back to the iscoceles. Obviously they must shoot with the dominant eye closed.

While this works fine for patrol rifle and handgun stuff at CQB distances I don't think many will be able to shoot standing unsupported with the weak hand at distance. I don't think this would work well with a scope though.

So... I suggest that if weak hand shooting is your personal Hell try starting all over from the ground up as opposed to copying your strong hand stance, etc. I've found the more neutral iscoceles stance removes the confusion the body and mind, allows the development of NPOA and prevents the mind from fighting the body.

From then on regardless of the firing position NPOA is obtained via the standing body's orientation to the target. After sufficient repetition the mind will ID good NPOA in any shooting position. For what it's worth no one has found that having two NPOA's depending on which hand/eye combination is used to be insurmountable.