If you follow the rules, you will find "dry firing" would not be allowed.
Absolutely untrue.
There are safe dry firing practices, and unsafe ones.
Too many people become complacent and chuck the Four Rules out the window simply because they need to get some dryfire practice in. Foolish! The purpose of dry firing is to engrain certain physical habits into your memory -- so deeply engrain them that your body will automatically behave that way under stress.
You do not want to engrain poor safety habits. Dry firing without following the Four Rules is
worse than not dry firing at all, because it accomplishes the exact opposite of its intended purpose.
"All guns are always loaded" means that you
always treat your firearm with the respect due a loaded weapon. When you follow this rule, even when you have just checked to see that your gun is unloaded, you
still treat the gun with the respect due a loaded weapon. All other safety rules follow from this one cardinal rule.
(Oh, there are people who believe that merely checking to see the gun is unloaded means you can then treat it like a toy -- that you can point it at your friends to pose for a picture, or at your training partners for disarming practice, or at a flimsy interior wall to check trigger function. A foolish, foolish idea that kills a certain number of misguided simpletons every single year...)
Rule Two,
"never point the gun at anything you are not willing to destroy," simply states the logical consequence of Rule One. When you choose a direction for dry fire, you choose a direction in which you
would be willing to fire a loaded weapon. You don't point it at your dog, at the big-screen TV you can't afford to replace, at a friend, or at an heirloom vase. You point it at something that, if shot, would result in only minor property damage.
One of the reasons people dry fire is to learn Rule Three,
"keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target." This rule needs to be contained not just in your thinking brain, but in your body's physical response to holding the gun in your hand. It should take a
conscious effort to put your finger on the trigger; you should never, ever, ever find your finger resting on the trigger or within the trigger guard when you didn't consciously put it there on purpose. Intelligent dry fire helps to build in that response.
Rule Four,
"be sure of your target and what is beyond it," is particularly important when dry firing. Because you are following Rule One, you
know that the gun in your hand is a deadly loaded weapon. So you are not going to shoot it at a flimsy interior wall which you know will not stop a bullet, or at your own reflection in the bathroom mirror with your baby's crib on the other side of the wall. You won't fire at the TV when your wife is fixing dinner on the other side of the TV. Instead, you'll set up a useful target with a safe backstop.
***
When I dry fire, I get all the ammunition out of the room and out of sight and I even go so far as to lock the door where the ammunition is kept so that it takes several deliberate steps to get the ammunition back together with the gun.
I check and double check that my gun is unloaded.
I turn the ringer off the phone and make sure the front door is locked & bolted. I don't want any interruptions.
I check and double check that my gun is unloaded.
Then I tape up my target on my brick fireplace. The brick would stop a bullet and I wouldn't mind a dent in it. If I didn't have a fireplace, I would use a basement wall, or the end of a jam-packed bookcase, or an old bulletproof vest. But I wouldn't point at a TV (doesn't necessarily stop a bullet, though it
might) unless something more substantial were behind it.
I check and double check that my gun is unloaded.
Then I do my dry firing.
When I'm done dry firing I take the target down immediately,
before I reload the gun.
When I reload the gun, I
say aloud, "This gun is loaded. It will fire if I pull the trigger. This gun is loaded, this gun is loaded, this gun is loaded." I say this the entire time I am reloading the gun. I
always say it aloud, repeatedly, so that my thick skull has no excuses.
Some people suggest locking the gun up after dry firing, because you've just trained yourself that the gun won't fire when the trigger is pulled. That's probably a good idea, but I dislike leaving my gun inaccessible. So instead I put the gun back on my hip, and
leave the house. I thus stay out of the room where I was dry firing for at least an hour or two. The target goes down before I reload the gun, so I don't have the temptation to try "just one more dry fire" after I've reloaded, and I stay out of the area until my conditioning to fire there has been replaced by conscious thought.
pax
