Best Shooting Glasses | Top Eye Protection for Shooters in 2024

Why is Eye Protection Necessary?

If you are spending time around firearms you will inevitably be exposed to all kinds of material hurling at your eyes, including cartridges, debris, excess powder from blowbacks, dangerous metals, and even ricochets if you happen to be extremely unlucky.

Then there are the dangers of the natural environment itself. While hunting, for example, you will no doubt brush up against branches, leaves, and twigs that could damage your vision if they happen to clip your naked eye. Also consider that while shooting into direct sunlight you can damage your eyes looking into harmful UVA, UVB, and UVC rays if you aren’t wearing a protective lens.

Finally, there’s an obvious point to be made here that high-quality shooting glasses will not only protect you, but also help you see better. They can help create a clearer sense of contrast between the target and the environment and help reduce unwanted light refractions/glare from distracting you.

What to Look For When Choosing Shooting Eye Protection

Some form of protective shooting glasses are almost always required when visiting a shooting range. So it is likely that even novice shooters have gotten their first pair of cheap eye protection. However, as one becomes more serious about shooting, the time quickly arrives where making an investment into higher grade shooting glasses becomes necessary.

It will likely take some time and effort to find the pair of shooting glasses that are best for you. And given the importance of your choice, especially as it pertains to safety, it’s wise not to rush your decision. With all this in mind, here are some characteristics to look for when choosing eye protection for shooting.

ANSI and US Military Certification

A good way to narrow down your search from the get go is to only shop for products that meet the safety standards laid out by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) or the US Military. Eye protection meeting ANSI standards is easy to spot, as it will include ‘ANSI z87.1-2015’ in the product’s description.

There are numerous other symbols that can be included in the products ANSI description, which provide further information on added safety standards these product meets.Added markings to a product’s ANSI description imply one of the following:

1. Impact vs Non-Impact
2. Splash and Dust Protection
3. Optical Radiation Protection

Impact-rated eye protection has passed high-mass and high-velocity tests, and also provides side profile eye protection. If impact-rated, you will see a ‘+’ included in a product’s ANSI information (e.g. ‘Z87+’).

Chemical Splash and Dust Protection break down into subcategories beginning with the letter ‘D’. For the purposes of shooting glasses, we are primarily looking for ‘D4’, as this means that the eyewear provides dust protection.

Finally, ANSI’s Optical Radiation Protection scaling also breaks down into numerous subcategories. However, for the purposes of shooting, we are primarily concerned with Ultra-violet (UV) filtering and Visible Light (glare) filtering. UV filtering will be indicated with a ‘U’ followed by a number on a scale from 2 to 6. Glare filtering, meanwhile, is marked as ‘L’ and scaled from 1.3 to 10. Standard clear lenses have no additional markings.

A product meeting ANSI standards is certainly a product you can trust, but you may also see eye other products that meet US Military standards. There is, once again, a coding system associated with these standards, but what you will most commonly encounter is the code ‘MIL-PRF-31010’, which means that the eyewear successfully with withstood impact of a .15” diameter projectile traveling at 650 FPS (feet per second). Generally speaking, military standards are even higher than ANSI, and this is one of the reasons products meeting these standards are less common.

Practical Categories to Consider

While understanding trusted safety standard information is certainly important, the two most practical factors that go into good shooting glasses are comfort and protection.

As far as comfort goes, you want glasses that fit snugly onto your face, without being too tight. You don’t want, for example, to worry about your glasses falling off your face if you are forced to start running or if you need to move through thick branches on a hunt.

At the same time, you don’t want your glasses to fit so tightly that they become irritating. You also want to be sure that no part of the glasses, including the lens, has the potential to scratch or irritate the skin. Potential allergens present in a product’s materials might also be something to consider.

We now have some of the most important basic information covered for what to look for when shopping for shooting glasses. Let’s now get into our top picks.