Eye protection for the birthday boy
I’m running up on yet another birthday. (Yes, I’m at the age where they have ceased being fun.) As has long been my custom, I am going to buy myself a present. Normally, this is a firearm of some sort, but this year, I just don’t have a particular itch in that area. Can’t explain it other than to say that short of some esoteric stuff, I’m pretty much as equipped as I want to be for now. Feels kind of odd, actually.
However, always one to honor a tradition of long standing, I decided to go browse through Cool Tools, which is guaranteed to come up with an entire list of things I can’t live without. As always, the site didn’t disappoint me. Along with a digital depth gauge and a waterproof Bluetooth speaker so I can listen to podcasts in the shower (Hey, I’m efficiently using my time, OK?), I decided that improvements to the current eye protection for shooting was in order.
Damn, but that opened a can of worms. Nothing is ever simple around here.
Fortunately, this is a subject where science can come to the rescue. Lucky Gunner had a good look at the subject back in 2012, and the basic data on standards and such is still accurate, even if the tests on the particular models of eye pro might be out of date.
The Smoking Barrel has a review from last year, looking at 5 different pairs of eye pro. It seems that the Champion Over-Spec Ballistic Glasses meet the stringent MIL-PRF-31013 standard and come in under $15/pair on Amazon, where they have very good customer reviews as well. They even have the benefit of being made to fit over existing eyeglasses, something that I have to have. *sigh*
I wish I was back in the days when I could wear contacts and cool shades (I miss my Ray-Ban Aviators) so I could get some seriously high-speed operator-looking eye pro. However, those days are long past, and us fat old men have to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it would be. So I’m ordering up a couple of pairs of the Champions for the range bag and I’ll spend the rest of the money that I would have spent on the seriously high-speed operator-looking eye pro on something useful, like a plastic scorer.
Happy Birthday to me. lol