Prescription Safety Glasses for shooting
Wearing prescription safety glasses for shooting is common sense. In the United States alone, it is estimated that 100,000 eye injuries a year occur during participation in sports. According to Prevent Blindness America, 90% of these are preventable. Preventable? Yes. As a result of wearing appropriate protective eyewear.
I have been unfortunate enough to be the Range Officer when a preventable accident occurred. On a trap detail, a shooter accidentally discharged his shotgun into the concrete stand he was positioned on. The pellets missed his foot but a ricochet struck the neighboring shooter in the eye. The victim was, in fact, wearing prescription safety glasses for shooting. B&L Aviator style frames with prescription yellow lenses. The aviator frame certainly can’t be described as a wraparound shooting eyeglass. In fact, wraparound technology was not freely available 30 years ago. Nevertheless, the pellet entered through the side of the frame and penetrated the eye. A trip to the local emergency room in Edenvale was a pointless exercise. The young Doctor on duty, not too keen to get involved. “I think this warrants a specialist,” was all the assistance we got. The shooter never regained full vision in the eye. Even after subsequently consulting specialists.
A pair of modern wraparound prescription shooting glasses, for sure would have stopped that pellet.
Prescription Shooting Glasses to Keep That Front Sight Sharp
I am going to try and cover a common and reoccurring problem with prescription eyewear for shooters. It is an age-related symptom, so anyone under forty can skip this article. The problem is presbyopia or farsightedness. Presbyopia generally happens to us in our mid-forties. It’s a progressive condition. Simply, a loss of focusing ability. It starts off with not being able to read a mobile phone text or menu as well as you could. Initially, its easily correctable by moving the phone, menu or whatever, further away from you. Eventually, though, your arms just aren’t long enough and you have to admit you’re getting on in age and get reading glasses. It’s not only labels on food in supermarkets that become difficult to read. Keeping your front sight sharp and in focus when pistol shooting becomes an impossibility. Easily correctable but often the wrong approach is used.
The Target is Clear but I can’t get a Focus on the Front Sight
If this is your situation when you shoot then you need to correct your vision to the front sight. Generally, the front sight of a rifle or pistol will be farther away than the distance at which reading glasses “correct.” Reading glasses usually deliver the result that the front sight is still a bit blurry and the target is terribly blurred – perhaps even indistinguishable. Trifocals or more commonly now, progressive lenses will, however, get the front sight sharp for sure. Now the constraint is you will have to tilt your head back uncomfortably to get the sight in focus. This, in turn, is going to affect your shooting stance. The consequence being your eyewear is going to compromise your shooting performance.
Looking at the image below – the shooter is in a perfect stance. As a result of the stance, the shooters eyes are looking through the upper third of the corrective lens insert. In the plane of the blue line. If the corrective lens is progressive or trifocal the shooter would be looking through the “distance” zone of the lens. Not through the intermediate zone. The result is the front sight would not be sharp. 
Prescription Shooting Glasses Solutions for Pistol Shooters
I think it should now be apparent that your dominant eye needs to have a lens corrected to intermediate vision only. The entire lens is now a single intermediate script. The result is that no matter what the head position, your prescription safety eyewear will help you have a sharp front sight. Furthermore, the optic center of the lens should ideally be repositioned into the top third of the lens. That’s where the action is going to be and the most optically correct zone of a lens is around the optic center. These are prescription shooting glasses, so optimise them for the purpose.
Non-Dominant Eye Distance Script
If your distance vision is perfect it makes a lot of sense to put an uncorrected lens in for the non-dominant eye. If you need a corrective vision script for distance it also makes sense to put a distance vision lens in the non-dominant eye and the minimum plus script in the dominant eye. This, for many, is the ideal solution and will give you the best of both worlds so to speak.
Dominant Eye Script
Ideally, you need your local optometrist to assist you getting the right script. As a starting point, I suggest leaving your Glock at home and not asking your Optom to take a measurement from your eye to the front sight as you adopt your best combat squat position. Rather get a friend to take that measurement for you. Armed with this info, then ask the Optom to give you the minimum corrective script to get an object (front sight) in focus at that specific distance. Subsequently get him to check and give you a distance script for your non-dominant eye and you probably have the best solution to improve your shooting experience.
Eye dominance
Sorry I have been going on about dominance. If you are not familiar with the term please read on: Most people have a dominant eye. Normally, but not always, the dominant eye follows the handedness of the individual. Meaning that a right-handed individual normally has right eye dominance and vice versa.
Checking Eye Dominance.
Point with your arm out straight using a raised thumb to mimic your front sight at a distant object with both eyes open. The dominant eye, thumb, and the selected object will all be points on a straight line. Consequently, if you close an eye and the thumb moves in relation to the distant object, you have just closed your dominant eye. Remember, shooting is easier and more effective with both eyes open.