Went to the eye doctor and got a new prescription last night. Through the wonders of the internet, I have discovered that buying frames and lenses online is incredibly cheap. Now, insurance is going to pay for my everyday glasses, but I was wondering:
Should I get prescription shooting glasses? I have this problem sometimes where my glasses don’t naturally cover my entire sight picture on my AR. Might be operator error, but it’s probably the fact that my glasses aren’t very tall.
If I get some, are there styles or brands to avoid? What about lens color?
I know shooters that have dedicated glasses for competition. While I applaud the idea if you are only going to shoot competition, I don’t recommend it if your focus is self-defense practice.
I wear my “regular” everyday glasses for IDPA matches just as I shoot my everyday carry gear. The only improvement I have in my glasses is that the lenses are made from the polycarbonate material used for shops as required by OSHA. The advancement on material is such that they are thing and light enough you can use with your choice of frames and nobody will notice you are wearing safety lenses.
And I got mine through FourEyes so they should be available anywhere.
My dad got the ICE system from ESS (http://www.esseyepro.com/ICE-Series-Eyeshields_18_category.html).
He has one temple set and three lenses. If you wear prescription lenses, the system has a Rx lens carrier nosepiece. So, you get lenses ground to your specs, and install them in the nose piece. The lenses are real easy to swap out. He leaves them in his truck as his driving sunglasses, and then he has them when he’s at the range. He has the amber, clear and smoke lenses.
I want to get them too, but I’m going to get 2 temple sets to go with the three lenses. Then, I can have the smoke and amber already set up, and all I have to do is swap the nose piece between them to transfer my prescription lenses.
I wear Sawfly glasses
http://ncguns.blogspot.com/2011/10/longer-review-of-my-revision-sawfly.html
They will fill your prescription for the inserts. If you want something more normal looking, they will also sell you a pair of safety glasses that look like sunglasses.
Alphawing for the Top Gun look – http://www.revisionmilitary.com/alphawing.html
Hellfly for the sporty sunglass look – http://www.revisionmilitary.com/hellfly.html
Vipertail to look like Justin Bieber – http://www.revisionmilitary.com/vipertail.html
Given my recent incident, I’d say get some shooting glasses if your normal ones aren’t protecting your eyes when shooting.
Better Half and I have been fairly satisfied with Zenni, but only if you have time to wait for the glasses to come from Hong Kong. They do offer polycarbonate lenses, but I have no idea how impact-resistant they actually are, so I am not sure of their suitability for range purposes.
Do you just google eyeglasses to get them online?
Do you have some good links to online vendors for glasses? I did some searching but can’t tell which are scammers and which are legit?
@chris and Rob:
This is the first time I’ve gone to the eye doctor in 5 years (7 years between visits before that, and my prescription hasn’t changed since I was 16). The last time I bought glasses, I didn’t know you could buy them online.
Lifehacker did a few articles about retailers their staff has used:
https://www.google.com/search?aq=0&oq=lifehacker+eye&gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=lifehacker+eyeglasses
That’s as much of an endorsement/advice as I can give.