I think it is well founded and recognized by lots of us here shooting can be hazardous to our eyes, one of our most precious senses/ organs. Almost all organized ranges I shoot at require eye protection, even the US Military recognized the importance of eye protection and issues troops multiple types of eye protection for range and mission use.

Things happen. Ejected cases, case failures gun blow ups black splash from metal targets and much more than can risk our eyesight when shooting.

I see more and more pictures and videos ( seems very prevalent with rifle shooters especially ) where people are shooting without eye protection ( or worse coaching youngsters without eye protection) in a lot of cases they will have eye protection propped up on the brim of a hat. Doesn’t do you any good up there meathead.

I lost a good bit of my hearing in combat, and certainly do feel it’s loss on a daily basis, but can still get by with limited hearing. I would be. Near helpless without my eyes though.

Please explain why and encourage all shooters and event spectators to wear eye protection!

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
Please explain why and encourage all shooters and event spectators to wear eye protection!

Preach it, Brother!

I too have noticed the lack of eye protection in the many videos I watch, and especially those of precision rifle shooters. I can understand why a military or law enforcement sniper who was in a real incident might take the risk of not wearing protection for a couple of reasons, but for anyone else in any other situation that doesn’t involve a life or death shot, it’s insanity.

I have been hit in the face many times by bullet or other fragments, sometimes with enough force to draw blood. After a shooting at steel training event I have found bullet fragments on tables 20 yards from the target line.
I’ve had only one cartridge failure in recent years, but it peppered my face with unburned powder particles and could have caused real damage if I hadn’t been wearing proper protection.

I've been dinged by bullet or jacket fragments from as far back as 100 yards when we were shooting steel targets. I keep a "guest" range bag for when I take other people out with me, that contains both eye and ear protection besides what I always have in my primary range bag for myself.

What about the Gunny with the spent cases in his ears

I don’t know why anyone would rely on cartridge cases for hearing protection today, but at one time there were no other good alternatives, at least not that were widely known. Cigarette filters were sometimes used, and if unused might have been safer and more effective, but not everyone had them available or were willing to sacrifice a couple of smokes for the purpose. Based on what I saw in my youth most shooters just put up with the noise.

In the late ’60s my father gave me a pair of the earliest commercial plugs I’m aware of, the Sonic something or other that had mechanical valves(?) that were intended to close when exposed to loud noises. They were better than nothing, but not very much and as a consequence I didn’t always remember to use them. If I had done so all the appropriate times in Vietnam, I might have better hearing today, but of course that wasn’t even possible.

Eye protection when shooting was also something that was adopted slowly. At one time the Ray-Ban company offered glasses with yellow lenses that were popular among some rifle competition shooters. Although it was never obvious to me, the idea was that the yellow tint increased the contrast when looking at the common bull’s-eye targets of the era. Later the company started advertising the glasses’ value as eye protection. I still remember an ad that featured a shooter who had a case rupture with an M1 Garand (IIRC). He reported that the glasses had been pitted by the debris and could have caused serious eye injuries without them. That was the first time I gave any thought to the issue, but it was still many years later before I adopted eye protection myself.

Not all of the old ways were better than today’s.

My eyesight is pretty shit. So my normal glasses are pretty much all I ever wore because I needed them to be able to see pretty much anything past about 5-6 feet.
Young and dumb I guess. I could never justify the expense of prescription safety glasses vs gas, ammo or tuition at the time. Wearing the big yellow plastic glasses over my regular glasses was a cheap solution, but about as comfortable as it sounds.
Now I don't shoot enough to make it worthwhile.

I shoot Skeet and one of my spring "chores" is to steam up dents and then fill in any pits that don't steam up. Because when you are shooting at an incoming target it's pretty routine to feel bits of the shattered target hitting you. I've had chunks that hit my safety glasses dead center in the lens. I also do duty as RSO on some weekends and I am a real SOB about Safety glasses being worn on the field. You wear them or you get told to leave.

I no longer worry about the rest of the world. Stupid people exist.