On Safety Glasses

Brigid has a great write up on safety glasses for shooters.

Most shooters wear hearing protection, but few wear eye protection and often when they do it’s just sunglasses or prescription eyewear that may not be able to handle the impacts. You may need hearing protection more often than eye protection, but when someone whizzes back and hits you in the face what then? Your ears may be able to take a lot of blasts before you lose your hearing, but your eyes will probably only take one hit before you lose your eyesight. I can take losing some hearing, I can’t take losing my eyesight… I could deal with being deaf, I don’t know if I could deal with being blind.

My trouble has been that I wear prescription glasses and it’s been difficult to find protective eyewear that can fit comfortably over the glasses. What I’ve found so far works for protection, but not for comfort. Granted there are some options (Brigid mentions them) but they are wicked expensive. I admit, that there are times I wear just my prescription glasses alone. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not ideal because 1. they only cover so much, leaving things like the sides wide open, 2. they’ll only take so much impact, 3. if they do get damaged, even slightly (e.g. a little lead ricochets back) then I’m out an expensive pair of glasses and perhaps “blind” for a while with the loss of the glasses (good luck driving home from the range).

Lo and behold, a few days ago an email from the NRA Store arrives in my inbox, and it advertises a pair of NRA OTG Shooting Glasses. They are designed to fit over most prescription glasses. They have two styles for indoor and outdoor shooting. Meetings ANSI standards and UV protection too. Seems like a win-win and yes, I plan on ordering a pair.

2 thoughts on “On Safety Glasses

  1. You could get a pair of prescription safety glasses just for range use. I wear prescription safety glasses daily in my line of work. They’re surprisingly inexpensive (compared to designer frames) very durable, and not completely stupid looking.

    I’ve never liked wearing anything over my prescription glasses. I have too much trouble with fogging when I do.

    Peter

    • I had thought about that as well and whenever I go to the eye doctor next was going to inquire. In fact, sometimes getting a slightly different prescription could be good because you could get the focal points set up for where your front sight was… there’s various tricks.

      However, I did just get in those “over the glasses” models from the NRA and I’m pleased with the results. I want to write up a piece on them.

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