To dry-fire or not dry-fire, this is the real question

If you were to take the top 100 shooters from every type of shooting competition there is, you would find that probably 99% of them dryfire. And the ones at the top either do it a lot currently, or they did it a lot to get to where they are now.

If you wait until live fire to practice things like grip, stance, trigger pull, and sight alignment, you waste money with every shot.

As an instructor, I can usually spot the people who never dryfire within the first couple minutes of class, because they're the ones wasting valuable ammo trying to figure out how to pull the trigger straight back.

As for wearing your guns out, our first simulator gun was a Sig 226. A simulator gun has a laser in the barrel, and basically gets dry fired thousands of times a day. After the first year, of this thing getting hammered every day, we had finally broke that one pin that goes through the top of the slide. Sig sent me a free one.

I'm curious about a Savage 64F I bought this past weekend. It being a semi-auto .22LR rifle without a last-shot bolt hold open feature, I found myself accidentally dry firing after losing count of rounds fired. I got better as the day went on and got to a point where I wasn't dry firing at all.

Having said this, I wonder how Savage could design this gun in such a manner where you had to count shots in order to keep from dry firing? Seems like they would either a) design the gun with a last shot hold open bolt, or b) make it so the firing pin isn't damaged with dry fire.

In any event, after several accidental dry fires, gun seems to function fine. No misfires, FTF or FTE's.

I dry-fire semi-regularly for both Bullseye Pistol competition as well as IDPA.

Dry firing is a staple of every form of competitive shooting that I've seen.

so much hostility over a thread about dry firing.

I have dry-fired my .22lr competition guns thousands of times. Of course I always have the dry-fire plug in it when I do. It is the best way to build patience, good sight alignment, trigger control, etc.

My father always told me, "never dry-fire any gun." I believed him, and for many years, I never would. Then I learned some things about the way different guns work and I learned the value of dry-fire practice. I told my Dad what I had learned and he said, "huh, I guess it's okay then."

I will dry fire to test a trigger pull or to take tension off a spring but definitely not as a form of practice. I am not sure about whether or not it will break the firing pin (never broke one).

The main reason I don't practice dry fire is I don't want to get comfortable pulling the trigger on an unloaded gun. I've read enough ND stories to know that "unloaded" guns are correlated with NDs. More than 99% of the times that I pull a trigger a bullet will fly. I prefer expecting that to any improvement in skill that dry-firing practice can add.

Early on I checked with the manufacturer of my revolvers who said dry firing is fine. Since they are the ones that pay for warrantee work...

Dry firing is great for observing all the mechanics of the gun and the shooter's body without the interruption of recoil. Recoil hides a world of issues,

I do not dry fire rimfire as I do not think firing pin against receiver steel is a great idea. Haven't checked with manufacturer.

ConfuseUs, that's why when you dry fire you do it toward something that could stop that bullet, after triple checking it's unloaded.

I dry fire all my guns with empty chambers, my Anschutz .22, .45s, 9mm, .380, but I put snap caps in the 870. If the .22 was made like it should be with a firing pin stop so it can't slam the breech you can do it all day every day and dry firing is part of the reason I can compete how I do with that rifle.

I was surprised to read that my new 10/22 is OK to dryfire. I assumed this meant it had some sort of mechnical stop before the pin strikes the barrel face.
As far as I know this is unique to Ruger. Is it true of all current Ruger rimfires? Any other manufacturers incorporate this feature?

Also, notably Keltec adamantly says NOT to dryfire their pistols. They attribute firing pin breakage to that practice.

only exception i know about is that my mossberg 500 says not to do it with the barrel off.

I never dry fire a .22 rimfire, but I dry fire my centerfire pistols all the time. I do use snap caps just because they're cheap and I'm anal about my guns. It DOES help. Occasionally, I'll be having a poor day at the range. Then, I "pretend" I'm dry firing... groups tighten up considerably.
Marty

All the time or centerfires for me.

As for rimfires, as noted higher up, it all depends on the gun. Some are safe to do so, some are not. Rugers have a firing pin stop that prevents them from hitting the edge of the chamber and so are safe to dry fire. The CZ452/453s are also safe to dry fire. The Marlin bolt guns are safe to do so but will allow the firing pin to hit the barrel with an empty chamber but away from the edge of the chamber as the striking surface of the firing pin is stepped.

Know your rimfire gun to know if it is safe to dry fire. If you are unsure or it is not safe to do so, use a snapcap or manually decock if able to do so.

Dry-firing is fine and harmless, with a few exceptions like rimfires and certain specific guns with known weak firing pins (or at least internet rumor SAYS they are weak and will break) like cz-52's, my Galesi, etc.I pesonally havent had a problem yet, even with rimfires, although I rarely do it with them as I fully beleive they CAN easily be damaged, due to thier design).

I'm not crazy about it, but many here highly suggest it.

But I've also never read so many stories about people dry firing a round through a TV or a wall.