DemoDick wrote:I paid for it, it's mine.
mnp13 wrote:I just did the triangle test, and I'm right eye dominant so I'm not cross eyed.
cheekymunkee wrote:mnp13 wrote:I just did the triangle test, and I'm right eye dominant so I'm not cross eyed.
I thought you were wall-eyed.
.....I know a number of women who own a weapon for self defense and all shoot for sport as well. There is a decided benefit to weapon ownership. And it's a benefit to others, who may not be armed themselves. For you see, those that want to harm you for wanton gratification, rage against life or your gender, or for profit, do not know who carries and who does not. Over time, they have the decided chance of accidentally attacking an armed person, male OR female. Even if you don't carry to resist evil, you still have some protection by protective mimicry, as in nature, when harmless animals resemble a more formidable foe, giving pause to even the most determined of predators. I think that predators that pick their victims based on their expected lack of resistance, size or ability to fight back will think twice if they believe their small target is carrying a gun. Especially one that has the ability to put a sizable hole in them.
But in order to carry with confidence, you need to not only have a weapon you are comfortable with, but you need to practice with it. Sitting in the drawer after a friend or loved one instructed you in it's use, with dim light in your room, your Adrenalin running, is not the time to be fumbling with your gun. The rapist/home instruder is not going to wait. Participating in some of the activities at the local range is one way to dust off your skills and have some fun and fellowship with fellow shooters. For concealed, obviously I prefer something a bit smaller in size, but good caliber, but my home pistol, and what I fired at the match with, is a .45 caliber.
Many people say that a .22 caliber handgun is as strong as a woman can manage, and some men will actively discourage a woman from purchasing anything stronger. Unless you are weak from illness or have a motor or neurological problem that prevents you from holding onto something firmly, this is frankly not true. Women come in all sizes, but it's a rare woman who is so weak that she could not fire a .45 with proper training and the right shooting stance.
But if someone tries to foist off a small caliber handgun on you, with "That's too big a gun for a girl," you need to talk with one some of the female shooters in the blog world, women who can tell you that a larger handgun is no problem. In sport shooting certainly it only ensures a bigger smile on the face, be it it a Ruger .357 M or a S & W 686.357M in your hand.
It's confidence and stance, not brawn.
The stance I believe I use is known as the modified Weaver (or Chapman stance) and might be a good alternative for most female shooters with a higher caliber weapon. In this stance the body is held similarly to the Weaver (at a 45 degree angle to your target with your dominant hand and foot back) but the gun hand is locked out straight (like a rifle stock), with the other arm slightly bent. The advantage with this, it reduces trembling in someone with reduced upper body strength and allows one to shoot even .357 rounds with few problems. The key is to maintain the "push-pull" nature of the grip. You'll still get good recoil, but not to where it upsets your next shot. If you are cross eye dominant, as I am, it's even better as it allows you to line up one eye with the opposite hand.
"Eye Dominance" is not the eye that's the "strongest" or has the best vision but refers to the eye that the brain "prefers" or the one that has stronger "processing" in the brain. People usually have one eye that likes to "take over" when binocular vision is impaired, or one eye that is more sensitive to visual discrimination. My eyes are green, and sensitive to the light, but it still seems that even with sunglasses on, if I'm going to get "poked in the eye", it will be my dominant one.
For hunters and sharpshooters, it's recommended that one uses the dominant eye to line up the sights for that reason, because visual acuity, or discrimination is better, resulting in better accuracy. In shooting, in which fine monocular coordination and vision is required, the dominant eye certainly has an advantage. During suppression, when the brain "chooses" to process only one eye, the other eye is in essence "shut down". The brain is a very complex yet simple organ, in which a vast amount of visual information can be processed simultaneously or can completely disregard information from the one eye.
As you can see, if you look closely, as I fire I have my right eye closed. And I am right handed. Which means I am LEFT eye dominant. Or Cross dominant. Most right-handed people are right-eye dominant and most left-handed people are left-eye dominant. But this certainly isn't true for everyone. For some people, hand and eye dominance are opposite, about 15% of the total population, a good percentage of which are women. Cross dominant eye is more common in female shooters and adolescent males, so ladies, do not believe those who tell you simplistically that everyone should shoot with two eyes open. For adult men, the majority who are not cross dominant it is a skill that can be learned fairly easily, but if you are cross dominant, it's much harder. About 70% of men are same-side dominant and they can be well advised to shoot with both eyes wide open. Also, with women, as with younger boys, absolute eye dominance in either eye is not the norm. And unlike the boys, they do not generally grow out of it.
Cross domination does create some differences in participating in the shooting sports, and as it can be subject to some changes due to sex, age and stress, it's good to periodically check which is your dominant eye, it might well result in an improvement in your shooting.If you're new to shooting or want to confirm which eye is dominant, it's easy. There's more than one way to do it. (1) If you hold your hand out at arm's length and make a circle, then view an object across the room by looking through that circle, your brain must choose which eye will actually focus on the object. Since your eyes are about 3" apart, both eyes cannot maintain the direct line-of-sight to the object. So one eye must take command, and you will, without thinking about it, position your hand more to the right if you're right-eye dominant, or slightly to the left if you're left-eye-dominant. In either case, the eye that takes over and maintains the sight-line is the dominant eye. (2) Easier yet - make a small hole in the center of your hands, bring it up to the object you are looking at . . .mmmmm. . . .HP sauce. . . . and with both eyes open, look at the object and bring your hands to your face. The eye you come closest to as it draws near is normally your master.
One other way - (3) hold a CD at arms length. If you're a right-shouldered shooter, hold the CD in your right hand. Left-shouldered shooters hold the CD in your left hand. (Ignore the hand I have selected in the photo, that was simply so I could hold the camera in my right hand). Now look through the hole and focus on a stationary object. If you are a right-shouldered shooter, close your left eye. If you are left-shouldered, close your right eye. Now does the object you're looking at through the hold in the CD vanish from view or move it's position slightly across the hole? Or does it stay in one place? If the object remains stationary, you have the correct eye dominance. If it vanishes, you have a cross "master eye" dominance. Obviously there's subtle variances and some folks have shallow or "middle" vision.
I'm cross eye dominant, not a problem with handguns, unless they are really short barrelled (a low stock may cause a shift of eye dominance on all or, more commonly, some targets -those which cause one to press their head down into the stock). With most handguns, I simply turn my head slightly prior to the draw to line up my master eye down range and thus gain just a little speed on the first shot.
In my opinion , it's a bit more of a problem with shotguns. With a rifle, accuracy depends on a rock-steady hold, as the eye slights the front and rear sights to a stationary target. Shotguns though are dynamic, they're weapons of movement, My shotgun doesn't have a rear sight and to use it, my dominant eye thus becomes the rear sight. Where my problem lies with a shotgun is that I'm a right-shouldered shooter with a dominant left eye instead of a right one. So my left eye is controlling where my gun points and I will shoot behind a left-to-right crossing shot and in front of a right-to left.
If you have cross dominance and you discover it while new to the sport you can likely learn to shoot from the same shoulder as the master eye. For a new, young shooter, this is as easy as learning any new motor skill. But for those of us who have been shooting off and on for years, it's almost impossible to change the master eye, and changing to the opposite shoulder will just feel strange as you've already got some "muscle memory". Some instructors (and I am NOT an instructor - these are just my experiences) state a solution would be to block the cross-dominating eye with an eye patch or tape on the lens of the shooting glasses, to force you to use the non-dominant eye until it becomes more comfortable. However, this will give a partial loss of binocular and peripheral vision, but some readers have recommended it.
What works for me is to close the cross-dominant eye before the shot is taken. By doing this, I've retained peripheral and stereoscopic vision by keeping both my eyes open as I evaluate the shot, until the last split-second. Now I've got a clear picture of my target/barrel relationship with no chance of cross-dominance kicking in.
Of course the shotgun, with its wide pattern, is a forgiving weapon and despite dominance, you will do well some of the time. However, it never hurts to make sure that the eye that is above the rib is the one that you rely on to give the brain the correct ocular information.
Long guns, and long guns/long range are another issue. Whether you are shooting at 100 yards, or 1000, it's a consideration.
If you are shooting a rifle right-handed, it is almost impossible to lay your head far enough over on the rifle stock to be able to sight with your left eye. Here, all you can do is force the mind to utilize the non -dominant eye (with a patch or tape on the glasses). I like the opaque tape idea, better than the patch, as this forces the non-dominant eye to take over and aim without totally blocking vision in the dominant eye. There are also sighting devices for sale but I would hesitate to recommend any one of them as I've not tried one. Talk to other shooters, more are cross- dominant than you think. Find out what works for them. Have fun experimenting, but this is a complex subject and professional guidance (and that is NOT me) can be a real help.
WASHINGTON -- The Senate sided with gun control advocates Wednesday by rejecting a measure that would have allowed people with concealed weapons permits to carry those hidden weapons across state borders.
Senators voted for the measure, 58-39, but it fell short of the required 60 votes for approval.
It is an unusual setback for the gun rights side, which has been able to muster majorities of Republicans and pro-gun Democrats to move its agenda through both the Bush and Obama administrations.
Opponents say the concealed weapon proposal would force states with tough gun laws to accept gun-carrying visitors from states with weaker laws. The sponsor of the bill, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said that was not true and that gun-toters would have to follow the laws of the state they entered.
The gun proposal did not establish national standards for concealed weapons permits and would not have allowed those with permits to carry weapons into Wisconsin and Illinois, the two states that do not have concealed weapons laws.
Gun control groups were strongly in opposition.
Concealed handgun permit holders killed at least seven police officers and 44 private citizens during a two-year period ending in April, according to a study by the Violence Policy Center.
"It is beyond irrational for Congress to vote to expand the reach of these deadly laws," said the center's legislative director, Kristen Rand.
So far this year gun rights advocates have had some successes in Congress. They attached a provision to a credit card bill signed into law that restores the right to carry loaded firearms in national parks, and coupled a Senate vote giving the District of Columbia a vote in the House with a provision effectively ending the district's tough gun control laws.
House Democratic leaders, unable to detach the two issues without losing the support of pro-gun Democrats, abandoned attempts to pass the D.C. vote bill.
The vote comes a day after the Senate completed what is probably the most controversial issue connected to the defense bill, voting 58-40 to eliminate $1.75 billion in the $680 billion bill that had been set aside for building more F-22 fighters. President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates campaigned hard for removing the money, saying the Pentagon had enough F-22s and the money could be spent on more pressing defense needs.
Concealed handgun permit holders killed at least seven police officers and 44 private citizens during a two-year period ending in April, according to a study by the Violence Policy Center
HappyChick wrote:Wow! That video is incredible. Thinking they can take our guns is like BSL, it really only punishes law-abiding citizens who are responsible gun (or dog) owners. If this Small Arms crap comes to fruition, they are going to play Hell getting our guns and ammo, and that of most of the gun owners who I personally know.
Demo you are so right...those U.N. bureaucrats need to stay out of our business!
DemoDick wrote:There is no way that confiscation can happen on a national scale in the United States without some massive cultural changes. We are simply armed to the teeth and there are too many of us who cultivate a healthy suspicion of government to let that happen. What is much more dangerous to the cause of individual gun rights is incrementalism; that is, legislation that progressively makes it more difficult for individuals to buy, possess and use firearms. This starts with bullshit like micro-stamping and registration and leads to a situation where people are legally allowed to own and carry firearms but practically prohibited from doing so. This is how it happened in Canada, Australia, and a good portion of the EU, and it's started here with the CA micro-stamping bill and assault weapons ban. Anti-gunners know that this is a proven strategy, once they convince enough people that gun control is about "public safety".
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