Deanimator
Member
The one ND I've had occurred during dry firing. It wasn't CAUSED by dry firing. It was caused by my own negligence. Negligence can happen anywhere. Don't think that it's less dangerous on the range than in your living room. Not paying attention has an infinite number of consequences that can happen anywhere.I stopped being a beliver in dry firing when I had my one and only ND doing it. Since then I've made a point of treating all firearms as loaded and just go to the range more often to get practice in.
Aside from the dangers, I really do question how useful it is. The dynamics of live fire, esp. with a handgun, are totally different from the dynamics of dry firing. Being good dry firing doesn't mean much when you add recoil, noise and the problems overcoming flinching.
The principles of dry firing and firing with ammunition are EXACTLY the same. Sight alignment, trigger control, etc. work in precisely the same way with the same firearm, whether it's loaded or not. If you don't believe me, combine the two by doing "ball and dummy" drills. Have somebody partially load a revolver for you. Shoot it and see if you have a flinch when you get to an empty chamber. The psycho-physiological mechanism of that flinch is EXACTLY the same, with or without ammunition. It's a violation of the fundamentals. The lack of recoil and muzzle blast make that deficit even more obvious.
I'm shooting a DA revolver league right now. I'm certainly not the best, but without a lot of dry firing, I pretty much guarantee I'd be among the worst. Everything I do wrong, I see in dry firing.
I'm in the Bullseye-L mailing list. Pretty much EVERY top level bullseye shooter I know dry fires.