Dry fire a rimfire

It depends on the individual gun. MOST centerfire rifles and handguns are OK to dry fire. But there are a lot of 22's that don't recommend it. Check with the individual manufacturer. I know Ruger says it's OK.

jmr40 said:

It depends on the individual gun. MOST centerfire rifles and handguns are OK to dry fire. But there are a lot of 22's that don't recommend it. Check with the individual manufacturer. I know Ruger says it's OK.

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The ruger pistol is fine as long as the pin that retains the firing pin is not lost. After thousands of rounds it can drop out and be lost during normal disassembly of the pistol. Basically it will get loose.

When I was a kid I broke a 22lr firing pin on a rifle dry firing it, that was not easy to find or cheap to replace.

In 1970 I broke the firing pin on my first and (at the time) only .22 rifle. No one ever told me the no-dryfire rule.

It took a very long and sad month to get that rifle repaired.

In the intervening 52 years I have learned to never dry fire a rimfire gun, no matter what the manufacturer says.

Been using those plastic drywall anchors for several years ago in my 22's and they work great. Just replace them before they start breaking to pieces after many ''firings''. Thanks for posting Velocette!

Will they work in a Marlin 39 A lever action.

^^ They should. Just rotate them as the rim will flatten, offering less buffering for the pin.

I've cycled them through bolt-action and semi-auto rifles, as well as autoloading pistols. These are the yellow drywall anchors I'm talking about, pretty much the exact same size as a typical .22LR round.

I have never liked storing any gun cocked because it places unnecessary stress on the spring so I always place a fired case inside the chamber before I dry fire and put away rim fire rifles or pistols. I have always thought the fired case would buffer the firing pin from direct strike with the hard steel edge of the chamber. I have never heard of any other way of doing this until now.

why not just use .22 fired cases?

hdbiker writes:

why not just use .22 fired cases?

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You certainly can, if you're shooting somewhere where it's easy to collect a few. Just remember to rotate them also in the chamber so that the pin is hitting "fresh" rim each time. You'll get several "shots" from each one before they'll need tossing, just like with the drywall anchors.

They are hard to cycle from a magazine into a chamber, though.

I just use old rimfire cases though sometimes I need to remove them with a cleaning rod because I can't easily remove them via the rim.

Supposedly the newer Browning Buckmarks can be dry fired but I don't like to do it more than occasionaly without using an old rimfire cartridge. I am more worried about peening the cahmber than breaking the firing pin because the firing pin is easy to replace but so far absolutely no sign of peening to the chamber and Browning did machnine what appears to be a "releif cut" at the end to of barrel where the firing pin would otherwise hit if there was no bullet in the chamber.

I do use a snap cap in my center fire pistols if I am doing more than a couple casual dry fires. Manufactures may say their pistols can be dry fired but I am not sure if that means thousands of times as some of us may do over time dry fire practicing and they are cheap insurance. These days I use laser training cartridges anyhow for dry fire practice and the end switch cap acts as a snap cap.

Looks like this:

The best thing about the drywall anchors is that they feed just fine from the magazines of my semi-autos, as well as cycling through the pistols.

gc70 said:

The best thing about the drywall anchors is that they feed just fine from the magazines of my semi-autos, as well as cycling through the pistols.

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It doesn't matter how old we are there is always something new to learn. Drywall anchors make so much sense.