Dry Fire Practice: Why Do It? Will It Hurt My Gun?

Dry Fire Practice:

Why Do It? Will It Hurt My Gun?

 

When you hear people talking about shooting skills, you’ll often hear talk of ‘dry fire’ practice, which is a form of shooting practice where the gun is operated without any live ammunition. For many years, shooters were told “don’t dry fire your weapon, as that will damage it”. With most weapons (discussed below), that is not the case, though arguably, it could have been with much older guns. However, there are real benefits from dry fire training, and we’ll cover those benefits in this article.

First, “will it hurt your gun”? There’s a little more to that question than you think, but for modern centerfire guns, dry fire is perfectly safe. However, for rimfire weapons (generally 0.22 caliber), dry fire is not safe, as the firing pin will impact the chamber wall if a cartridge is not in place and will ‘peen’ a divot into the chamber wall, as well as damage the firing pin. Conversely, the front end of the firing pin on a centerfire gun will not strike anything, and is safe. With older guns (generally older than 40-50 yrs), the metallurgy of the firing pins was not as good as in modern weapons, and damage could occur. However, this problem has been solved on modern guns. So the main rule of thumb is do not dry fire rimfire weapons, but (modern) centerfire guns can be safely dry fired.

Either type (rim or centerfire) can be safely dry fired if ‘snap caps’ are used. A snap cap is simply an inert cartridge with no primer or powder; generally, the “primer” in a snap cap is made of a soft material (or sometimes is spring-loaded) to gently absorb the energy of the firing pin without any damage. With use of snap caps, virtually any firearm can be safely dry fired. These simple training aids are inexpensive, reusable, and also are useful in live fire practice to intentionally introduce a stoppage, to allow practice of clearing a malfunction.

So now that we know we can (generally) dry fire safely, we can ask “what does dry firing actually do for you”? Don’t you need live ammunition to practice your shooting skills? The answer to that is both yes and no. While nothing ever completely replaces live fire, the shooter can learn, practice and significantly improve their shooting skills with a good dry fire routine.

Dry firing has multiple advantages. Aside from the obvious advantage of being much cheaper than live fire, it allows the shooter to safely practice most of the skills required in shooting (and tactical use of the weapon) without having to deal with the sound, recoil and safety concerns of live fire. This means that good habits can be safely developed with regard to body kinematics (stance, posture, body motions), drawing from a holster, grip, sight alignment, trigger control, and malfunction clearance before adding in the complication of recoil management. These skills can be practiced much more frequently (often, at home) since no range is required and the cost is low. That development of muscle memory then directly translates into live shooting performance.

One of the historical “knocks” against dry fire training was that there was no feedback to the user, for them to know if they were “hitting the target” during dry fire practice. However, there are now many options that allow the user to actually measure their accuracy and effectiveness during dry fire training. Laser snap caps have been developed that can be chambered, and when struck by the firing pin, will emit a pulse of laser light (usually red colored) that can be seen on a target. This gives the shooter immediate feedback on where their shot would have fallen. There are even electronic targets which will count the number of hits, making it possible to actually measure your accuracy during dry fire training. Still other, even more sophisticated training tools exist, such as accelerometers that can be mounted on the frame of the dry fire gun, to measure and record barrel movement before, during, and shortly after trigger pull. Information such as that can allow a shooter to take their training to a new level; even with the moderate costs of these training aids, this practice will be much more affordable than a similar amount of live fire practice. Such information can also be logged, to measure progress over time….and to keep the shooter honest with themselves about how much they are actually training! These training aids range in prices from just a few dollars for inert snap caps, up to several hundred dollars for the more advanced tools, but these can be used thousands of times, making even the most expensive dry fire tools affordable, compared to high volume of live fire.

Structured, measured dry fire training such as this is used by elite military units and professional shooters, because it works Though it is used by elite shooters around the world, this type of training is accessible to anyone, with many excellent books written about dry fire practice methods. So if you want to improve your shooting skills, and do it affordably, consider adding a structured dry fire routine to your training schedule. Of course, live fire practice must also be done, as nothing can really simulate the recoil of live ammunition… but if performed regularly over a bit of time, dry fire training will produce noticeable improvement!

 

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