How to dry-fire practice without a real pistol?

[miko]

The municipality I often find myself in does not allow me to have a pistol.

I would like to practice dry-fire daily with something that feels similarly. What are the reasonable substitutes for a real pistol, say a S&W 686 revolver of others?

While I am at it, are there reasonably inexpensive replicas for real pistols like the same S&W 686, S&W snubbies, etc?

miko

[lycanthrope]

http://www.airsoftextreme.com/

Not bad if you can afford a good airsoft pistol. Can't help you on revolvers.

[miko]

Is trigger pull really comparable?

How about this stuff - http://www.iar-arms.com/detectiveblanks.htm - does it feel like a real trigger?

miko

[Black Majik]

I think the closest you'll get would be a match air rifle or air pistol.

Some could be quite good, but you're talking about hundreds or even thousands for a real high end air pistol.

The Crossmans, Daisy, or Marksman pistols have the most atrocious triggers ever. Good trigger on a airgun comes with a price.

[lycanthrope]

I've shot some gas operated airsoft guns that are mag fed and have the exact same dimensions as the real weapon. The best one was a 1911 style gun. The slide cycled and you actually had a bit of front sight bounce. The trigger was pretty good (My real 1911 have 2lb pulls, so that's saying something)! The only real downside was that it was a bit lighter than a loaded 1911. Overall, I was impressed with the quality and the ergonomics were identical to a true 1911.

I find that my dry fire drills have carried over into all my shooting regardless of platform. I think dry firing helps to train the eye to keep seeing the sights and helps to just observe the inputs you get from the gun. I can certainly see more than when I started pistol shooting (like being able to see muzzle flash and the front sight track up and then back into the notch).

In that sense, I think ANY pistol style training tool would be of benefit whether it be airsoft or air pistol, but I've really considered one of those SVI style airsoft guns just to have an incentive to get more handling time in.......of course, I keep telling myself that the cost works out to about 2500 rounds of componenets for ammo and I could just shoot the real thing.

In your position, if I was serious about improvement, I wouldn't hesitate.

[Geno]

I did a Google search for "authentic 1911 replica".

http://replicagunsswords.com/weapons_gallery/home.php?cat=21&page=6

Looks like they have MANY styles.

Doc2005