Thread: Simple practice shooting question

some on here recommend dry firing - and yes good practice with a centerfire especially for trigger control and breathing - but just in case ya did not know absolutely not with a rim fire - many will contact firing pin onto breech resulting in firing pin damage

Many of the "modern" 22 designs are fine to dryfire, Rugers, CZs, Savages etc. Tikka and Anschutz a bit less so.

I believe it's fine to dry fire my CZ 452, think it even says so in the manual, but you hear different things. I dry fire it before it goes back in the gun safe, but don't sit there pulling the trigger hundreds of times.

Older 22s where the bolt faces are flat generally shouldn't be dry fired as it can cause distortion of the rear of the chamber.

Bolt faces which are rebated to hold the cartridge can mostly be dry fired but check by decocking the bolt and put a straight edge across the face. If the firing pin is not proud it will not hit and damage the chamber rear.

I'm still not a fan of lots of dry firing even if the firing pin doesn't protrude far enough to do damage. The reason for this is most firing pins have a shoulder which when dry firing stops the firing pin travel. (No case to cushion or limit travel.) IMO constant wacking of the shoulder may lead to damage. May take thousands but.....

I once broke the bolt head locking pin on my old Omark dry firing. The shoulder on the firing pin was stopped by the locking pin leading to a crack. A damaged bolt head retaing pin in an Omark is not desirable.

I have 2 Walthers that are safe to dry fire, well not in the true sense. I can cycle the bolts but leave them unclosed and something latches and I can dry fire them as though they are cocked.

The issue also comes up as to how do you leave your semi auto. Both my Marlin and my Browning I just close the slide/bolt and pull the trigger. I don't think minimal dry firing like this is too much of an issue.

Originally Posted by muzza

Why not buy some snap caps or dummy rounds so you can practice at home. A photo of your mother in law or the former pm would likely make a good practise target

After reading about them on the Rimfire Central Forum I bought some packets of concrete anchors off Amazon or Ebay, cannot remember which. Much cheaper than being rorted for snap caps locally. The particular size anchors I bought are correct for a 22 chamber and will also feed out of a mag like the real thing, and eject properly. Use them a few times, turning them in the chamber, throw away.

Some dummy rounds are useless for dry firing, only designed to check cycling function. I used to use a nice red plastic 308 one to dry fire my 308 range rifle prior to firing my sighters. It had a sprung thingee inside it. Problem was the spring was so piss weak I doubted it cushioned the firing pin fall at all.