Should I wear glasses while shooting?

[Scratch]

My eyes are getting old... Well it ain't just my eyes, but this thread is about them. I went to the eye doctor a few years ago and found out I really should be wearing bifocals. I can see very clear from about 16" to about five feet. It hurts my eyes straining them for close up work, and things are fuzzy but no pain, at distance.

I need a very light prescription for distance, too light for WalMart cheaters, so I had to actually get prescription glasses. I decided not to get bifocals since I really don't do much close up work, but did get some distance glasses for watching movies, and shooting. Those are really the only time I wear them since I usually don't mind life being a little fuzzy...

My concern is, should I not be wearing prescription glasses while pistol shooting? Yes I can see the target more clearly, but I really don't need to do I? I can see the front sight on my pistol fine.
Since I'm not competing, but doing mostly IDPA style training for real world scenarios, and I don't wear my glasses when I'm out in the real world, am I hurting myself training with glasses?

Yes it's nice to be able to see the hits on paper easily at 10 yards, after the last shot, but I really don't "need" them to see. When I shoot with a scoped rifle, I don't need them at all since the magnification in the scope makes up for it.

Should I not be pistol training with my prescription glasses on? I really like the idea of just using safety glasses since the offer more wraparound protection while shooting. I am not planning on wearing glasses until I absolutely need to.

[ttousi]

Same situation for me..........I chose plain safety glasses because I see the front sight clearly which is where your focal point should be

ETA you can't stop and put on your light prescriptions when under attack

[Grandpa Rex]

I would propose you train like you live. If you are mainly training for defense situations, wear or don't wear glasses as you would normally in real life.

Since you don't regularly wear glasses, train without them.

Wearing glasses though, will give you better immediate feedback on how you are doing so if it were me, I would train both ways so you are prepared either way. Safety glasses that fit over your regular glasses are available and rather inexpensive (though they take some getting use to).

This is probably a moot point, because most of us have eyesight that gets worse over time. In five years, you may have no choice!

[westhope]

Since you don't regularly wear glasses, train without them.

I hope you are not saying to not to wear ANY eye protection when shooting.

I hope you meant to say "Since you don't regularly wear PERSCRIPTION glasses, train with NON-PERSCRIPTION SAFETY glasses.

I have a piece of a 9 mm jacket taped just above my computer that I pulled from my bleeding forehead, just above my safety prescription glasses, that I received when RO'ing a match at the Burnsville Pistol Range. It surely would have taken out my eye if it had hit me in the eye.

[Nougat]

another point toward wearing them beyond the possibility of eventual need is extra wear and tear from not using them now, due to squinting and trying to see what you're doing ''out there'' even if you don't '''neeed'' to?

[chopper]

[quote="Scratch"
Yes it's nice to be able to see the hits on paper easily at 10 yards, after the last shot, but I really don't "need" them to see. When I shoot with a scoped rifle, I don't need them at all since the magnification in the scope makes up for it.
Should I not be pistol training with my prescription glasses on? I really like the idea of just using safety glasses since the offer more wraparound protection while shooting. I am not planning on wearing glasses until I absolutely need to.[/quote]

If shooting steel targets most definitely use eye protection I have had several rounds bounce back and hit me although not with much power but have stung a little but take one in the eye can be bad. The paper hangers at the range I shoot at are angle iron with chicken wire across for the targets and have had some bounce back. I wear glasses all the time so it isnt an issue. Best be safe than sorry.

[Scratch]

Oh, I would definitely wear some sort of eye protection. Even if shooting paper.

[Hmac]

The problem with aging eyes and pistol shooting is that it becomes increasingly impossible to be able to focus on the front sight due to presbyopia. If you can focus on the front sight well, then you don't need bifocals. If you can focus on the front sight and still have good distance vision to see the target, then you don't need glasses at all.

People with presbyopia usually need some kind of compromise lens correction that is different than their near-vision prescription and their distance vision correction...one that allows them to focus on the front sight reasonably well, as well as focus on the target reasonably well. One other possible solution is progressive bifocals, but that can represent a tricky learning curve. Usually, it's a lot easier and cheaper to just experiment with various power readers.

[jshuberg]

I'm in a similar situation. I'm slightly nearsighted. I wear glasses most of the time, but can see well enough out to around 10 feet, then things start getting fuzzy.

The problem is, as my eyes have slowly gotten worse, I really have to strain to see my front sight clearly when wearing my glasses. It's gotten to the point where I just can't see the sight crisply enough for precision work with glasses. I've found that using a front sight with coarse serrations gives my eye something crisp and precise to lock onto, so I can tell if my eyes are actually properly focused on it or not. The problem is that without glasses, that target can become too out of focus to be able to see well enough. A 3" target at 25 yards all but disappears, and my groups open up considerably. This kinds sucks, since just a few years ago I was able to consistently hold 2" groups at 25 yards, and an occasional sub-inch 5 round group.

I've started experimenting with something called monovision. Having a different prescription in each lens. It's not very commonly prescribed, but is occasionally as an alternative for bifocals for both seeing at distance, and seeing up close for reading, etc. Quite a few competition guys with old eyes seem to be running this precision, where their dominant eye is focussed at arms length for the front sight, the non-dominant for distance. I've spoke with my optometrist about this, and I don't think he has any idea what I'm talking about. I joined an optical forum specifically to discuss this and other optical-related shooting oriented questions, but want to wait until I've played with the technique enough to decide whether it's worth bothering other people about, however, so far it looks promising.

What I've been doing is using my Oakley Fast Jacket sport glasses with prescription orange tinted lenses, only taking the left lens out (my dominant eye) and replacing it with a non-prescription lens that came with the glasses. When I first put them on it's pretty strange, different lenses with different prescriptions (in my case one prescription, one not), but the theory that seems to hold true is that if you wear them for brief 30-60 mins a day your brain will work out how to use them, and the "weirdness" goes away. How it works is that your mind will simply switch between which eye it's favoring when looking at objects at different distances. It sounds strange, but does seem to work.

Yesterday I was able to shoot around a 2.5" group at 25 yards, having not really done much precision work for quite awhile. So this is definitely something that would be very useful when shooting competition and the like. I suspect that an optometrist "in the know" when it comes to shooting would actually prescribe two different prescriptions to maximize the effectiveness of the technique rather than using one non-prescription lens. But this is good enough to play around with before putting any money into an oddball prescription.

My plan is to find an optometrist that understands all this and get a proper set made, and then try wearing them as my everyday glasses for awhile and see how that goes. Based on how the mind learns how to adapt pretty easily, I suspect that wearing this prescription, optimized for shooting will work just fine in the real world, and may work instead of bifocals should my eyes ever get bad enough to need them. At this point anything more than a few feet away works really well, but up close my brain is trying to figure out which eye to use, since either are capable of focusing up close. My guess is that one eye will end up winning, and after that everything will look perfectly normal to me when wearing them, but I'll be able to see both my front sight and the target well enough at distance for precision shooting out past 25 yards again.

So this is kind of a long post, mostly because I'm still in the "playing around" with it stage, but if you've got an older set of glasses try popping a lens out and wearing under safety glasses and see how it works. It's gonna look really weird at first, try to ignore it and just focus on your front sight and let the weirdness dissolve away. After awhile you mind will adjust and things won't look so weird anymore. There are enough shooters out there running a monovision prescription designed for shooting to make it worth looking into. And I suspect that using a "shooters monovision" all the time would work just fine once you get used to it, and might delay the need for bifocals.

Anyways, hope this helps.

[Jackpine Savage]

I went to monovision for my shooting glasses about 4 years ago. I use ESS shooting glasses with the prescription inserts. These were military issue for awhile, maybe still are, and show up on Ebay pretty cheap. Before I went to the optometrist I had my DW measure the distance from my eyes to the front sight. The optometrist didn't bat an eye about what I wanted. I think monovision prescriptions are pretty common for contact lenses.

I thought I had a problem with monovision and my AR's Eotech, sometimes in certain lighting conditions the reticle would get fuzzy and fade out. So I got the bright idea of having both lenses corrected for distance and then added a bifocal to the top of the lense for the pistol sight, thinking I could just tip my down a bit for precision shots. That didn't work for me, I would end up seeing two pistols and two targets. I've since decided that the problem is the Eotech and need to get it sent in for service.

[westhope]

I'm nearsighted. I normally wear transition bifocals everyday. I add sideshields for pistol shooting. I had my optometrist make me a special pair of shooting glasses for open sight rifle shooting. (Used those annual health care dollars.) He moved the optical center of the lens of my dominant eye to the portion of the lens I would normally look through when shooting a rifle. They are single vision lenses, not bifocals. He left the non-dominant focal center in the normal position. For close vision, I take them off.

They work great. The front sight was clear and the edges sharp. Target was in focus too.

Highly recommend you talk to your optometrist about glasses ground specifically for shooting.

[andrewP]

I have a piece of a 9 mm jacket taped just above my computer that I pulled from my bleeding forehead, just above my safety prescription glasses, that I received when RO'ing a match at the Burnsville Pistol Range. It surely would have taken out my eye if it had hit me in the eye.

Yup. I had a chunk of jacket land in my hair at the last match I attended there (found it during my post-match shower), plus something (jacket? bullet fragment?) hit me in the leg. No actual harm done, but if either had been in an eye, I might be minus said eye.