It’s kind of a long story, but I’ll cut it short. I am currently RT handed, RT eye dominate, but due to some issues with my RT elbow/forearm I may have to switch permanently to LT handed shooting. I wore 70% of the way thru the tendon that controls your middle two fingers on my RT hand. Had surgery SEP 2019 to repair the damage, still having issues after physical therapy and am scheduled for surgery #2 next week. I honestly don’t feel like I am ever going to fully recover and I did take additional supplements and quite a bi of therapy last time. I shoot pretty well LT handed, slower, but accurate. Anyone ever run into something similar?

Update: 21 May 2020
It will be 12 weeks since my #2 surgery at the end of May and so far no luck shooting. I went out about two weeks ago with my son and I put 6 bullets down range with my Glock 19 and it looked like a shotgun pattern. It also felt like I was being stabbed in the forearm with an ice pick. After my first surgery it was nearly 16 weeks until I could fully use my arm without any pain or swelling. Guess I'll give this until the end of June and see what happens, but this sucks!

Update: 4 Jul 2020
It has now been 4 months since my second surgery and I shot a S&W 617 (.22LR) revolver yesterday with my son and pulling the trigger in DA mode was painful to say the least. I could do it, but I really felt it. I am signing up for physical therapy this week, so I'll see how that goes. My elbow did pop a few days ago and it sounded like a walnut being crushed. The same thing happened after my first surgery, but I really didn't get my full motion until after I had that pop and a few other after. So perhaps this is a good sign.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: jcsabolt2,

A shooter here had a right elbow injury. He could still shoot righthanded but anything over about a magazine full was painful. So he converted to left hand and got quite good.
He was competitive in IDPA and when the course of fire called for a short string "weak hand only" he was all set.

A shooter in the USPSA group is shooting lefthanded purely for the challenge. He does OK.

A noted Skeet shooter lost his right eye to a shot pellet glancing off an unusually hard clay pigeon in the era before safety glasses were routine. He changed sides and built back up to the championship level.

So carry on.

A senior Sgt. at work had surgery (tumor, base of the skull IIRC?) many years ago when he was a Deputy, and afterward has grip issues with this (dominant) right hand. So, his new "dominant" shooting hand is his left hand, and he's had a very long and very successful career.

Sorry you have to go through the trouble, but be encouraged that it's very, very doable. Just another opportunity for you to be successful in a very unique way.

Yet, before you resign yourself to switching, give the 2nd surgery a chance and give yourself plenty of time to heal up.

Only temporarily when I had my shoulder surgerized. I always worked on my offhand shooting and it paid off bigtime.

I am primarily left handed and left eye dominant and don’t know why or how it started but carry and shoot a pistol right handed.
Eye dominance is NOT a big deal in pistol shooting don’t try to change that.

I switched over to southpaw for a year in the military due to a bad shoulder injury (took a long time to heal, so learned to shoot with my left). I switched back once shoulder was back to 95%. Now I am faster with right hand but much more accurate with left when pistol shooting at distance. Yeah, I am weird.

I also had to switch to southpaw for boxing and kickboxing. I have a really bad right knee so I lift it up just a bit on punching from right side. I also don't have the push off when moving and using footwork when sparing proper right hand stance. Boxing coach switched me to southpaw and drastically huge improvement in movement and overall power from both sides.

We have to adapt to our body.

I shoot left handed from time to time - especially if I am getting sloppy right handed. It forces me to focus on sight picture and mechanics a lot more. I started doing it years ago after a thumb injury was very slow in healing.

+

Pistol shooting? You'll get more and more used to it with practice. Eye dominance will be less of to no problem with pistols - just move the gun over.

Cross eye dominance will be more of a problem with long guns. You may have to experiment with an eyepatch or the fuzzy dots you put on your glasses to block your dominant eye.

Both of my hands have been altered by Dupuytren's contracture and it's only going to get worse. I feel you, man.
I've had one surgery and several injections, but there's no stopping it.
So far I've only (I say only..) had to adjust my physical grip on the pistol and grip types, also.
Good luck to you. For a long time I finished all my range sessions with weak hand shooting.

I have what my doctor refers to as a voluntary tremor in my right arm. I switched to shooting bullseye with my left hand along time ago and eventually became a US Army Distinguished Pistol Shot. If you are young enough, the transition is not difficult with practice. In no time you will equal your right handed skills.

I'm probably the oddest shooting ergonomics person you'll meet.

Ambidextrous, write with my left hand, shoot pistols and tactical rifles with my right
Used to be right eye dominant then I started wearing glasses, now I'm left eye dominant
I shoot precision rifles with my left hand
I shoot shotguns with my right hand but need to tape over my left eye

So...here's what I've found.
1) The best tool I've ever used to shoot with any type of cross-dominance is a pistol mounted red dot. I'm waiting for all the RMR haters to arrive and tell me that if JMB didn't invent it then it must be garbage. But both my carry G19 and my home defense G34 wear one and flat out work great. Both eyes open shooting without my brain going "Huh? Oh, right, there's the front sight."

2) You maybe probably have less dexterity in your left hand than right. And probably less strength too. Strength can be fixed, dexterity not as easily. I can group about 2.5" at 25 yards off-hand with a 1911 but that's just about at my limit with what my hand can do. If really, truly wanted to be an Olympic class shooter I'd probably switch to my left hand just like you're thinking. So the moral here is, admit to yourself you'll hit a ceiling with how outright accurate you can be and you may never be as accurate as you currently are. However...

3) There are workarounds. The first one is easier and cheaper, and that's to make sure you have a perfect grip. Take a class and have an instructor who knows what they're doing critique how you're holding the gun. You have to reset your muscle memory. Most people undergrip with their support hand and overgrip with their shooting hand. Use this to your advantage and learn the perfect grip from the start.

4) Get a trigger job. All of my handguns are set in a very similar fashion after much trial and error -- flat trigger, short reset, and somewhere around 4 lbs. for a break. If I'm shooting DA, it better be super smooth with no stacking. I find that the shorter the distance I have to move my finger, the less I'm prone to jerking the gun.

5) It matters a lot less in action shooting. An isosceles stance should be distributing force across left and right sides equally. The change is a lot less versus shooting bullseye or target.

Good luck, hope the surgery goes well and everything I said is moot.

quote:

Originally posted by captain127:
I am primarily left handed and left eye dominant and don’t know why or how it started but carry and shoot a pistol right handed.
Eye dominance is NOT a big deal in pistol shooting don’t try to change that.

Same for me. I'm left-handed, but I shoot and use kitchen knives right-handed. I can, and probably should run a long gun left-handed, but my eyes are mostly equal.

I also have very mild cerebral palsy that affects my right side (mostly R leg and hips though). People have wondered whether I ended up LH (writing, batting, throwing) due to the CP and wondered whether otherwise I would have been right-handed.

Strangely, the last time I was at the range with my sister, she (though left handed) ran everything RH, too.