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Dry Firing
Ricci.Wright
Member Posts: 5,129 ✭✭✭✭
I am seeing and hearing a lot of adds for the electronic targets for shooting practice at home. I have tried some of those a few years back at shot show and they are fun and interesting. I was taught how to call my shots back in high school on the ROTC rifle team, thank you Sgt. Campbell. I dry fire often here at my desk using a double action revolver and I can still call my shots. I have a two inch piece of blue painter's tape stuck on the filing cabinet across the room and that works great. Dry firing can really help if done correctly and the results will become evident on the range with real ammo on target.
Comments
Great reminder Ricci, but remember to use some sort of snap cap though.
I think I seen a add a few months ago for AR type rifles that allowed a better faster trigger reset ?
In my younger days I damaged several guns due to dry firing. Sometimes the firing pin would break, other times the hammer spur would break off. Other times the hammer nose would pean over enough to cause problems.
I use the “Smokeless Range” software with a SIRT pistol (Glock 17) that I mounted a Buris Fastfire red dot to.
the age of this group, a new depends could be considered dry firing...........
I guess I have been lucky cause I have dry fired thousands of repetitions with various guns (not rimfires of course) and never used snap caps and never saw any damage. I do remember inserting a small piece of wood, like a piece of ice cream stick, in the slot behind a 1911 firing pin. I am using snap caps with the GP100 I am using now, but I don't remember ever seeing any damage from dry firing and I have bought a lot of used guns while running two range/gun shops. I have seen rim fire guns messed up, but not center fire. Just lucky, I guess.
That is the a beauty part of the Colt 1911, it takes about 2 minutes to change the firing pin if it should break. Over the 50 years of carrying and owning a 1911 I never had a firing pin break, but I do have a couple extra if needed. The metal and the temper used in making firing pins over the last 80 years has greatly improved. I don’t dry fire rim fires but any thing made after 1940 seems to hold up pretty good.
Dry firing is practice, and practice makes perfect.
I like my Mantis X system.
And fiery auto crashes
Some will die in hot pursuit
While sifting through my ashes
Some will fall in love with life
And drink it from a fountain
That is pouring like an avalanche
Coming down the mountain
I have broken exactly 2 firing pins in many years of pulling triggers, and they were both broken while shooting ammo. The guns were a J C Higgins Model 20 pump shotgun, and an FN M49 in 8 m/m.
In Gen. Hatcher's book "Textbook of Pistols and Revolvers" (1935) he recommends dry firing centerfire handguns with nothing in the cylinder. To test your grip on the weapon, place the muzzle against a door frame or something. Then when you pull the trigger, push sharply against the wood to simulate recoil and to see if the gun jars loose in your hand. If it does, then change your grip until you can maintain it through several fast tries. I have done this for a long time and it does help to develop a hold which won't shift during rapid fire.