A good pistol-shot does not focus his eyes on his back sight. That comes in line by itself when he gets into the mechanical lift of his arm.
As I have already mentioned a long-sighted man can continue pistol shooting without wearing glasses after he needs them for reading. But a long-sighted man is apt, when he finds he begins to see the hind sight of his rifle not as clearly as formerly, to use glasses. Then he has all the insurmountable imperfections of a glass which cannot accommodate itself to varying distances like the eye can.
Instead of wearing glasses all he needs to do is to shift his hind sight forward on the barrel till he can see it distinctly.
The long-sighted pistol-shot does not have this difficulty. He holds his pistol so far from the eye that the back sight is right for his long sight.
It is a most extraordinary thing that men who have such bad eyesight that they have to wear very strong glasses and even then blink and are half-blind in the sunlight, can shoot very well in those dark coal cellar shooting galleries.
A clerk who, when writing, puts his nose right down on the paper, holding his head on one side, in fact a man semi-blind and suffering with extreme myopia made extraordinary good scores with a miniature rifle in a coal cellar shooting gallery, at a minute stationary bull’s-eye.
A cellar in which a normal-eyed man would not be able to shoot or to see his sights!
He is longing to get to the open air ranges with a full charge rifle, but I discourage him all I can as I know he will be painfully disillusioned of his skill in rifle shooting.
It is the abnormal conditions of a coal cellar gallery which suits his abnormal vision. A normal sighted person would only blind himself by trying to imitate him.