What is “Dry Fire” and why does it matter?
Dry fire is a technique anyone can practice at the range or at home! Dry firing is simply the
practice of shooting a firearm without ammunition in the chamber. The user pulls the trigger,
the hammer drops, but nothing happens. Sounds boring, right? Wrong! Once you see how well dry firing your gun can improve your accuracy, you will be a proponent for life!
To dry fire is fairly simple but does require some care. First, you will need to completely empty your gun, as any firing of a gun - even dry - requires observance of proper and adequate gun safety. Check, double-check and then triple-check. You must make sure there is NO AMMUNITION anywhere near your gun and in fact we at HoneyBear Tactical recommend that no ammunition is even in the ROOM.
Now that your gun is unloaded and tripled checked that it is clear, insert a snap cap if desired. A snap cap is a device shaped like a standard cartridge but contains no functional components like a bullet, propellent or primer. Consider it faux ammo! These are used to minimize the stress on your gun's mechanical parts or to practice skills like loading a magazine, loading the gun or clearing a malfunction. Modern centerfire pistols do not actually need to use a snap cap or dummy round, but any rimfire gun will. Older guns, however, may have a more brittle firing pin than modern ones, so you may want to get a snap cap as a matter of course.
Now, to dry fire:
The best dry fire drill for most people is something called the Wall Drill. What you do is find a
empty space on the wall somewhere in a safe direction in your house. Get close enough to the wall that when you establish your good stance, arm extension and grip, the muzzle of your gun is about an inch or two away from it. Put that wall in your sights and pull the trigger. While you are doing this, pay very close attention to the sights. Do they move? If so, you need to work on your trigger technique. The goal is to pull the trigger without disrupting that sight picture you have created between your sights and the wall. You keep practicing until you are able to pull that trigger without those sights moving. However even something as great as dryfire can be overdone. We recommend no more than 30 mins a day to limit muscle fatigue and insure that you are getting maximum benefit. Shooting skills are not like riding a bike, these skills can atrophy over time so practice is very important.
If you want to dial it up a bit, balance a small object on the barrel or slide such as a coin or empty shell casing or snap cap. If the coin or shell casing or snap cap doesn't move when you dry fire, then you're doing it right.
Once again, you need to make sure that no ammunition remains in the firearm and the room,
and keep it pointed in as safe a direction as possible. That said, a bit of dry fire practice can go a very long way to help you improve faster when it comes to time hit the range. So don't neglect it!
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