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Dry firing bad?

rsumirsumi Member Posts: 91 ✭✭
edited December 2008 in Ask the Experts
What are your thoughts on dry firing? The people at my local gun store said it's bad because there is nothing there to stop the firing pin so you just have metal scraping against metal wearing each other out. On the other hand the manual that came with my gun said it's good to practice so you can get a feel of how far you have to pull the trigger to fire.

They both sound like valid points. Would using blank testing bullets eliminate the first issue and thus this won't be considered dry firing because there is something in the chamber?

I have a Springfield 1911 TRP if it matters.

Thanks!
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    chaosrobchaosrob Member Posts: 1,871 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    If you are that concerned then I suggest snap caps. I dryfire darn near everything I own. If it breaks then I don't want it anyway [:D]
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    Wehrmacht_45Wehrmacht_45 Member Posts: 3,377
    edited November -1
    For a 1911, use snap caps. John Browning did not design it to be dry fired, unlike some pistols that require it for disassembly.
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    perry shooterperry shooter Member Posts: 17,390 ✭
    edited November -1
    Dry firing is a very good training aid to develop correct trigger control With that said I don't like to do it on any pistol without snap caps. The worst thing to dry fie is a rimfire of any kind it can DING the chamber . What happens on dri fire is the fireing pin on many guns will impact the firing pin stop because there is no cartrige primer to take the impact. This will cause the firing pin stop to peen and the firing pin itself to Crystallize and may cause it to fail. The 1911 type pistol has a inertia firing pin and there is very little different in the shock on the parts in dry firing or live fire [^]I have never seen but one kind of failure caused by live or dry firing on a 1911 and that was the beganing of a small crack in the square notch of the firing pin stop . All Hard-Ball pistols at Camp Perry are inspected each year and 4 or 5 out of 500 to 800 pistols are found with this crack it has not caused a problem, poses no danger to the shooter is fixed by replacing a very low cost part .The inspectors will give you one[^] and come from both pistols that are dry fired thousands of times a year and those that are never dry fired.
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    COLTCOLT Member Posts: 12,637 ******
    edited November -1
    ...What Perry said [^]

    Rimfires I'd never dry fire...snap caps are cheap and good for several things other than just dry firing...you can use them to check a lot of different functions of a semi, great little things they are...[;)]

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