鉄砲道 — teppoudo

Bruce Gray, wrote the following in his article – Zen And The Art Of Hitting Stuff

It’s true the good Lord didn’t design us to well tolerate an explosion 18 inches in front of our eyes. Guns were our idea.

This statement led me down the path of analyzing the reasons for a flinch, at least for me. How did I perceive the event of the gun going off in front of me at a conscious and subconscious level.

Looking at the second order details, what actually causes the flinch ?

• Is it visual ?
• Is it auditory overload ?
• Is it related to the actual recoil ?
• Is it one or more of the above ?

For me the cause seems to be purely visual.

I have recently moved from shooting using only one eye open to shooting with both eyes open.

The reason I had been shooting with only one eye open was that I am cross dominant (right handed, left eye dominant) and it was having a hard time picking up the sights with my right eye. After doing a ton of dry practice to train myself pick up the sights with my right eye, I went for a live fire session with both eyes open.

What I noticed was rather interesting. When I shot with both eyes open, I couldn’t keep my eyes open during the shot. I always blinked.

Shooting with one eye open was not a problem, I could watch the sight lift, notice the muzzle flash and see the slide move. With both eyes open, I couldn’t help blinking both eyes.

So why I was blinking my right eye when I had both open, but not when I had just my right eye open ?

As an experiment I taped my left eye. Ok, not my eye, my shooting glasses

Keeping both eyes open (one eye behind the taped up lens), there was no issue with blinking. So essentially my problem was my left eye getting overwhelmed with the visual aspect of the gun discharging. This would cause a blink reaction with both eyes closing together.

It was interesting to learn that the blink/flinch is purely a visual reaction for me.

Now to work on curing it so that I can see “what I need to see” with both eyes open.