According to Texas-based gun guru Ron Grobman, “home is where you master technique, the range is where you practice it.” Given the cost of ammo and the time and money required to get to a range, that’s just as well. But first, a quick word about safety . . .
Never practice with a loaded gun. Always unload and safety check your firearm before an in-house drill. Store ammunition away from the firearms.
1. Practice your trigger press
Shooting accuracy demands a perfect — and perfectly repeatable — trigger press. You have to pull the trigger straight back without moving the gun in any direction. Even the slightest variation — left, right, up or down — takes the bullet off course.
Mastering a smooth trigger press during live fire is extremely difficult. For one thing, there’s a natural tendency to anticipate recoil. For another, shooters focus on the results rather than the process. A target with widely spaced groups is extremely de-motivating. And again, ammo costs mount-up faster than a testosterone-crazed bull.
The answer: dry fire.
Begin by unloading your firearm completely. If you’re shooting a semi-automatic pistol, remove the magazine and make sure there chamber is empty. Rack the slide and check the chamber both visually and by touch. To prevent any damage to your handgun’s firing pin, purchase fuel line hose. Insert it into the gun through the barrel, down and out through the mag well (as above). Cut to suit.
Aim your handgun at a specific point on a wall (e.g., a light switch). Count down from 10 to one out loud, pressing the trigger slowly and evenly all the way to the rear of the gun. Keep the gun rock steady. The only thing that should move: your finger. Even after the trigger breaks, keep counting down. Keep the trigger pressed against the rear of the gun.
‘When you reach one, rack the slide. Put your sights back on target. Count down from 10 to one out loud releasing the trigger. Keep counting down even after the trigger resets. Then count down again from 10 to one, pulling the trigger. When you think you’ve got it down, you can stop counting. If the sights move at all, go back to counting.
This is where a weapon-mounted laser really comes into its own; you can see if your gun moves during your dry fire trigger press. Anyway, assuming you’re not completely ignoring your family or job, you can’t do this dry fire trigger press exercise too much.
2. Practice drawing your gun
It’s widely believed that the vast majority of defensive gun uses end without a shot fired. The bad guy sees the good guy’s gun and decides not to attack. If true, your ability to quickly and efficiently draw your firearm from concealment may be more important than your gun’s caliber or your accuracy. And even if it isn’t, it is. The first person to land bullets on target is most likely going to be the winner.
So you really need to practice your draw — to get ahead of the self-defense curve. Or at least keep up with events as they’re occurring. Unfortunately, most ranges don’t allow shooters to draw and shoot. So drawing at home it is. Again, begin by unloading and safety checking your firearm. Visually and physically inspect the chamber. Then practice your draw. Some recommendations:
– Wear your normal clothes, using your normal carry method
– Search YouTube for trusted videos on the proper technique
– Don’t worry about speed – you want to create the smoothest and most efficient draw possible
– MOVE! Always move when you draw, even if it’s one step to the right or left
– Practice drawing to threats on either side and behind you
– Put your sights on target and keep them there as you move
– Keep your finger OFF the trigger
– SPEAK! Yell a command as you draw, such as FREEZE, DROP YOUR WEAPON or LEAVE! (NB: I don’t recommend JWT’s DIE HIPPY!)
You might want to add dry firing to your practice draw. If you do, do not dry fire every time you draw. You don’t want to get into the habit of automatically drawing and firing. As mentioned above, the bad guy may see your gun, reconsider his options and stop the attack. If so, you are no longer legally allowed to use deadly force.
3. Visualize
Practicing your trigger technique and gun handling skills at home will go a long way towards increasing your confidence. Expert self-defense training — especially force-on-force — takes you to the next level.
But if you can’t get that training, and even if you can, visualization gives you a mission-critical mental mindset. It can help keep you positive — and thus productive — in the direst or dire situations.
Find a quiet place, get comfortable. close your eyes and imagine a successful defensive gun use. See yourself defending life and limb against a range of threats, in a range of situations (one at a time).
Don’t make it easy. Create problems you have to solve to succeed: multiple attackers, gun malfunctions, a serious wound, etc. But always imagine a successful resolution. To paraphrase the poet Virgil, you can because you think you can.
Pinning the trigger is the exact opposite that you want to do.
Practicing proper trigger reset whether you are a slapper or a prepper it is very hard to get as much benefit from dry fire. The first trigger pull is easy, and you can do some reset work, but the most beneficial trigger reset practice will be in live fire.
I don’t even pull the trigger on a good two thirds of my dry fire practice.
Need some viagra for that training aid.
(snicker!)
I don;t disagree with this.
I dry fire a lot – especially with revolvers where i don’t have to rack the damn slide each time.
I dont do the counting thing or anything that might make me slower in real time. I pick a target, aim and fire as soon as I get a sight picture. No need to hurry but no need to dally either.
I do question the moving thing. I get that you want to be a moving target especially if the other guy(s) are shooting. But it does make you slower and if the perp has a bat and not a gun he just got closer to you before you shoot.
I’d like to see something quantifiable on the moving. I can see moving while drawing if you are uncertain about a threat. But i can also see drawing, firing, and then moving toward cover or away.
You can say it only adds a quarter second but I can draw and fire a shot in a quarter second on a good day (and hit).
I think you have to practice a variety of actions so that none seems too foreign in a gunfight. We know from history practicing one way of doing something is usually not as good as practicing several different ways to accomplish your goals.
And why the hell does that pistol in the photo have a catheter?
It is an old Glock, it can not control it’s bladder anymore.
LMAO. Kinda sad and droopy.
Lil blue pills…
They make blue bullets. Just sayin’.
Specialist38,
What leads you to conclude that moving while drawing and shooting slows you down?
Can you move your arms while walking/running? The obvious answer is “yes”. Does moving your arms while walking/running slow you down? The obvious answer is “no”. Well, think of drawing and shooting as a variation of your typical arm movement while running. That means moving your legs while drawing and shooting should not slow you down at all. In fact it might make drawing and shooting faster — just like moving your arms while running makes you run faster.
Because I’ve done it. I am referring to shooting while moving.
Anyone who was a student of Ed McGiverns writings has done the exercises where you shoot while running.
If you are moving while you draw, you may still draw and fire but it will be slower since you have several parameters in a state of flux.
Just as you might shoot and drive but you won’t do either well.
If you want the fastest response – you draw and fire. Anything else is slower. You may be faster moving, drawing, and shooting than I am when drawing and firing. You will be slower than if you drew and fired.
The timer doesn’t lie.
neither does the coroner.
(in a dgu) you will be the one reacting- the perp already has you beat.
i see value in creating the variable of motion, but i concede it may be fractionally slower.
IMHO its all mett tc, finding cover is the first priority if you are directly targeted by an projectile enabled assailant however if you are not the direct target or the assailant does not have a range weapon then speed becomes more important(distance may still dictate).
To caveat, it is dangerous to fire while moving in any direction, much less side to side. the round path may now be compromised by objects either in front of or behind your target. Better to draw on horizontal movement but fire on perpendicular movement,or better yet from a stationary spot that has cover. You get better aimed shots and less chances of friendly fire casualties.
That catheter tube in the barrel is supposed to prevent you from damaging the firing pin. What kind of guns still have a problem with pulling the trigger on an empty chamber? Definitely not the gun in the picture, and only a couple of brands of butt old .22’s that can I think of. He should brush up on trigger facts.
I said yesterday, I don’t see the real point in dry fire. Hey, if it works for you, go for it. Personally I don’t bother with it. Live fire, is IMHO, vastly superior because we learn by doing. The downside obviously is the price.
What I will suggest here is this:
I note that the article is correct, many range will not allow movement, drawing from a holster or much of anything else. Even some “defensive pistol classes” won’t allow you to draw from a holster or move. So, if you can, and I understand some folks can’t do this, find a remote area which is safe to practice. Take a friend or two to make it more interesting (and to keep yourself honest and, also to help you out if God forbid you make a mistake and shoot yourself) and do a lot of your practice out there. With no RO over-heated on “safety” you can actually practice without asinine restrictions that negate your ability to train in any way resembling the real world.
Safety is on you in this situation so it’s not for flat out new-comers to handgunning and I suggest repeating to yourself “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast” rather than just trying to go fast.
Sure if you have 100,000+ rounds a year to shoot, have 20 years to reach a high level shooting goal, or have no real goal to reach you might not need dry fire.
But for an average shooter dry fire can be the way to get tremendous improvements at reasonable time investment and cost. And for some aspects of shooting it can help you diagnose issues.
1923 rounds a week would be excessive. Could you be more melodramatic?
Gov and I discussed this yesterday and I’m not going to repeat the entire thing. If it works for you, go for it. I get no benefit out of it and therefore forego the exercise.
Further, I see a lot of people at the range who say this practice is the bee’s knees and still can’t shoot for shit. Maybe they’re just terrible but in truth, from observing them, the problem I note is that dry fire practice isn’t realistic and they therefore are training themselves into bad habits. When they put ammo in the gun all of a sudden it has recoil and it’s noisy, smelly and makes flashes of light. Everything has changed and their work at home goes straight out the window.
Again, if it works for you, go for it. I personally see it as unnecessary and usually a waste of time that would be better spent putting 20 rounds down range.
Now, I’m not going to knock people who are of limited means who find 20 rounds a week to be a hardship but the truth is shooting is expensive. Guns are expensive and ammo prices aren’t going to go back down to 2004 levels any time soon. That’s a reality you just have to deal with. Another reality is that people regularly defend themselves with a pistol or revolver that they haven’t shot in years or sometimes ever. We see those stories here on TTAG all the time. So, in my mind, I’m asking where’s the benefit to this dry fire training?
2,000 rounds a week isn’t excessive. All the people that I know that reached a high level of shooting skill without dry fire shot levels equal to or higher than that. And yes it is expensive and time consuming, the people I knew that did it were either well off, or had someone else paying the ammo bill (like Uncle Sugar). And it requires at a minimum of 2 days a week on the range.
Personally I would argue the people that don’t see the benefit haven’t tried the right dry fire program. I personally saw dry fire after mastering the basics as useless, until it I realized I wasn’t getting appreciably faster. Dry fire allowed me to work on speed without worrying about putting a round into my foot, or over the berm. As since I didn’t have to worry about safety it allowed me to work on pushing pure speed until my body got used to working at that speed.
And yes too much dry fire can hurt, dry fire must be backed up with live fire practice working on the same objectives so you get back to the tempo and noise of an actual gun.
I agree shooting sports are expensive but like reloading dry fire allows you to do more with a given ammo budget. With dry fire I get 200-300% more practice time than I would have with live fire alone.
As I said, I’m not going to re-hash the entire conversation I had with Gov about this yesterday.
Now, you’ve gone and totally lost me. First you said that dry fire was necessary unless you have 100K rounds a year to play with, now you say that 100K rounds a year isn’t excessive. For what? To become a top level competitor? Sure, but the context of this article is defensive shooting, not top tier IPDA competition.
Further, at that point reloading isn’t something you’re going to have time for. If it takes you one minute start to finish to make a round and you reload half of 100K rounds that will take 50K minutes that’s 833.3 hours. 34.7 full days. That’s 17.35 weekends cranking out one round a minute 24 hours a day. Realistically eight hours is pretty much what you can do in a day and if you did 8 solid hours every Saturday and Sunday cranking out one round a minute it would take 52.08 weekends to load 50K rounds. In other words you still wouldn’t quite make it to 50K because you’d be 4-5 rounds short at the end of the year.
Look, yeah, if you want to be a top tier competitor then you’re going to shoot A LOT. If you want to be able to defend yourself reasonably well 200 rounds a week will get it done. In fact significantly less will get it done because we’re talking minute of bad guy here and as I said we see people on a semi-regular basis who haven’t shot their gun in years or never have fired it and manage to kill some asshole who broke into their home.
As I said, dry fire doesn’t work for me. Long story short: triggers mean absolutely nothing to me. I have a smooth and consistent pull across every platform I’ve tried and have quite literally never run into a trigger that I thought needed work, and yes, that includes shitty pistols, long heavy pulls on revolvers and even Mosin-Nagants. The “quality” of the trigger never crossed my mind until people started freaking out about “trigger control” and at that point I had to ask WTF they were talking about. I’ve had a freak ability to shoot since I was a kid, an ability that cost a couple of my dad’s friends a pretty hefty chunk of change over the years. As such talk of triggers, “trigger control” and dry firing is something I simply don’t get.
As to the heart of the matter:
As I said, if it works for you, go for it. I don’t see the point. I quite literally don’t “get it” and, further, have never seen anyone gain any serious benefit from it. I’ve heard a lot of people talk it up but I’ve never seen results where the metal meets the meat. If you have good results, great. If you say you have good results I believe you. I still don’t think you get as much from it as you do a even a minimal amount of of live fire on a regular basis. Would I be willing to concede that it may be a great supplementary practice for some people? Sure I would. Everyone is different. I think it’s getting over-hyped but that’s MHO and nothing more.
Keep in mind: My experience is completely anecdotal and I have no way to verify what other people have or have not done. I simply take them at their word that they do what they say they do. So, one last time: if it works for you, great, go for it, practice the way that works for.
When it comes to training with a firearm my personal opinion is that there is a lot of bullshit out there. There’s a lot of hype. There’s always someone who has some method of doing something that’s “better” or “best”. Do *this* and you can officially say “I operate so fucking hard I make Gecko45 look like a f**!!!!”. I don’t buy that. Some granny pulls out her dead husband’s .38 and offs a BG like it’s no big deal. She hasn’t even looked in the box the gun is in for 20 years. How much training do you really need? If she can do that the answer is: You need a limited amount of training and after a certain point it’s a hobby.
You may have implied it, but I never said 100k a year or 2,000 rounds a week is excessive. It is just expensive, and time consuming, that is why I said that the people that I knew that did it were either well off or having their bills paid by Uncle Sugar. If you have the time and money to shoot that much, yeah maybe you don’t need dry fire to be an exceptional shooter.
As far as reloading you have the numbers way off. On my 650 I can do 1,000 rounds in 4 hours (includes loading the primer tubes, and case gauging the ammo at the end), and that is with pulling the handle myself. With a 1050 I could easily get 10-20% increase in speed just by using that machine (the built in swager fixes the crimped ammo issue I have). And on top of that you have autodrived loaders which can dramatically increase your output. If I had an autodrived 1050 with a primer tube loader I could probably load 2,000 rounds, and clean a 5 gallon bucket of brass (approximately 10,000 casings) in a single day. Large volume loaders like competitive shooters typically have streamlined processes that allow them to load ammo quickly.
Ok I get it, your expectations aren’t nearly the same as mine so you don’t need dry fire. And I agree middling level shooters that don’t want to dramatically push themselves forward in skill probably don’t need dry fire because they’ve already mastered the basics. But beginner level shooters that need to work on the fundamentals and those that simply want to push from middling to exceptional can be helped with dry fire.
Also IDPA isn’t top tier competition. At national level they typically have one or two top shooters per division, and then a large gulf between them and the rest of the crowd as they’ve driven off much of the top tier competitors.
You can pick all the nits you want and you can spend all you want on high end reloading gear and spend 8 days instead of 30.
I really don’t care because 100% of what you’re saying is irrelevant to the topic at hand. In fact, you’ve never even come close any of your posts to touching the topic at hand. The point remains the article is about defensive shooting not competition and quite literally no one needs to be even remotely as good a un-serious and rather terrible competition shooter to deal with a DGU. They need basics that can, quite literally, be mastered in a day or two at absolute most.
If you want to sit around your house pointing and drying firing your gun, as I said, go for it. I care not a whit.
How much training and practice do you really need for defensive purposes is the main question. The answer is: not a whole fucking lot because a 90 year old lady can pull out a gun she’s never shot before and off two bad guys in her living room when she hasn’t even laid eyes on the gun in 20 years.
A gun isn’t that hard to use. It’s really quite fucking simple, as exemplified not just by granny but by dumbfuck gangbangers who off each other all the time.
If you want to train for competition, fine. If you just like practicing your shooting, again fine. If you simply want to improve your shooting do whatever it is that you think helps you do that. Standing on your head in a corner jerking off to Hillary Clinton pictures while James Yeager repeatedly screams “It’s a fucking silencer!” on YouTube in the background helps you be a better shooter? Go for it.
However, if you really think you need to sit there and dry fire a gun hundreds of times in case there’s a home invasion or you get jumped in the Wal-Mart parking lot, IMHO you’re wasting your time and there is a hell of a lot of evidence in the form of real DGU situations that have happened to real people which back up my statement. This isn’t rocket science. If granny and the gangbangers (a great band name btw) can do it without all this fancy training and practice so can you.
The crack-ninjas are not going to come roping down from the ceiling in full kit blazing MP5’s at you and IF they do you’re fucked anyway.
A vast majority of people that get in self defense shootings have little to no training. Just because it works, doesn’t mean that it is optimal.
Tom Givens gives an excellent presentation of AARs from self defense shootings that involved his students. He had 53 students involved in self defense shootings at the time I saw the presentation. The take away point from that is though the 3 yards/3 seconds/3 shots is the average there are numerous examples of situations where you have a determined attacker(s) or extended distances. And that matches what overs have told me, I know a deputy whose three gun fights all involve the attacker being 25 or more yards away.
So yes you don’t need much training for the average scenario, but if you have a pretty minimal skill set and find yourself in non-average scenario things might not turn out so well. Hey if you don’t need the above average skill set you only lost an hour or so of time from your week, most people spend that much time in a day screwing around on the internet, but if you do find yourself in such a scenario where you needed that extra practice it is sure nice to have.
Now as far as the reloading equipment, 60 rounds a hour is absurdly low, the only ammo I ever produced at that rate was match grade rifle ammo on a single stage press. Yes my equipment was a bit of an investment because I jumped in whole hog. But you don’t need to jump in whole hog lots of shooters load 300-400 hour on cheaper equipment. I just like to be extra careful, so my load rate is a bit lower than others, and many shooters like to do an hour or two a night instead of doing it in one long session like I do. Besides which though buying it is an investment most high volume shooters will probably see the equipment pay for itself in short order. As I save 9 cents a round over cheap low quality commercial reloads that I bought for practice. And 24 cents a round over the match grade reloads that I bought for matches. With the added bonus that I am shooting the same load in both practice and matches.
In my own experience it takes me about 1000 rounds over a month or two to become proficient with a new gun/weapon system or draw technique. It take atleast monthly practice at about 100~200 rounds to stay proficient, I completely loose the ability after 6 months. I am not a dead eye sniper but I have qualified expert on the full gambit of firearms from side arms to long range. While basic practice(dime and washer drills, remedial action and breathing) is good to get the fundamentals down nothing beats training with live ammo. 50 rounds down range is equal to an hour or more of PMI.
always practice taking the safety off while dry firing.
Or carry a gun without a safety, the less steps in the battery of arms the better. Especially for slow witted like me.
I dry practice because it’s fun. When I’m lounging around watching tv, I often clear my gun then start aiming at objects of varying distances, in varying lighting conditions, checking out the effectiveness of night sights and so on. I also love the feel of the Glock 19 in my hand. People often complain about the grip or grip angle, but it’s like a song you hear for the first time. You hear it and don’t think much about it. Then you hear enough times that you start to sing along. Next thing you know, you like that song. Experience the Glock long enough and you’ll find it quite pleasing.
Also, a side note.
The proper statement is not “Die hippie!” but rather “Die hippie scum! And take your bag of naturally sourced, environmentally friendly, non-GMO tree bark “granola” with you to hell!“
You aren’t just practicing “get off the X” when you practice drawing while moving. You may be moving when you are forced to defend yourself.
At no point in any of my comments did I comment on moving other than to say that most ranges don’t allow it and that you can get away from such restrictions if you can find a safe and remote location to practice.
Were you trying to reply to Specialist38?
Yeah, hit the wrong reply
Happens to everyone. No worries. I was just confused until I scanned the other comments.
Not saying don’t practice moving while drawing. Saying not to always practice moving while drawing.
Practicing a variety of actions and techniques allows greater familiarity and adaptability in a given situation.
The best thing to do may be to draw and fire. It also may be prudent to move, dive, run, squat, fall while drawing.
So first on my list of practice is draw and fire. You can get creative after that in your practice.
“purchase fuel line hose. Insert it into the gun through the barrel, down and out through the mag well.”
Far as I can tell, a pistol will not go into battery with that hose sticking through there. And if it’s not in battery, the trigger isn’t going to work.
Have to admit that you won’t damage the firing pin/striker that way.
Yah, I found that procedure to be odd, as well. At this point I have to assume that RF is trolling us.
You don’t have to be an engineer to realize that a plastic tube shoved in the barrel not only has absolutely no effect on the firing pin (it won’t even come in contact), but as others have pointed out, it will also likely interfere with cycling the action to reset the striker on the glock depicted.
So feel free to shove a tube in the barrel. It will protect your firing pin just as much as a rabbit’s foot in your pocket will keep you out of a car accident.
Have to ask what was meant by “pull the trigger straight back.” Obviously the mechanics forces the trigger to move only straight back or forward. If you mean the trigger finger moves straight back….have you ever filmed your finger’s motion. I’m right-handed. My trigger finger comes slightly left at the start, then fairly straight back, then a bit to the right near the end.
For slow fire target sports things may be different, but for defensive shooting I follow the lead of those pros who say that skilled pistol shooting amounts to this, being able with a death grip to hold the pistol still during the time you’re slapping (or pulling or pushing or squeezing) the trigger. Enos and Leatham fall into that crowd, as do most of the former-soldier-sailor type trainers.
I’ve never heard of the fuel line thing. My most-frequent carries are either Ruger or Glock and both advertise themselves as being suited to repeated dry firing.
In no way am I a great shooter but I use snap caps for dry fire. And practice racking the slide. I have no idea about laser practice. I don’t seehow having no bang would help your aim…
The nice part about no bang is it allows you to develop muscle memory without flinching. The really nice thing about laser snap caps is that you again develop muscle memory, in this case for point shooting and you have a visual indicator if you are moving the gun when you fire. I’m of the opinion that you can slap that trigger as hard as you want as long and the gun doesn’t move.
If on the rare chance you break your firing pin or pin cups/channel, the replacements are ridiculously cheap, in the Glock example above. I wouldn’t worry about dry firing any modern centerfire guns. Rimfire is its own animal.
4. Circulate rumors among unsavory characters that you are holding a huge stash of illicit drugs in your home, and wait for the break-ins. There’s nothing like a live fire exercise to tighten up your technique, and you can do it in the friendly confines of your own home!
And Ralph wins the Intertubez today!
The best way to fix yo’self isn’t dry fire, it’s unknown fire. Go to the range with a revolver and play target-roulette… i.e. load a couple of the chambers, rotate the cylinder so that you don’t know which are loaded, aim downrange and start firing.
If you see a huge movement down when you pull the trigger on an empty chamber… you’ve found your flinch problem and why you’re shooting like crap.
That works for finding flinch, it doesn’t work on fixing it. Nor does that work on helping you speed things up like draws, reloads, and transitions.
Exactly about the flinch. If for some reason I start flinching during live fire, I will start dry firing.
“If the sights move at all, go back to counting.”
Caveat: the reaction force of your handgun’s striker/hammer movement may cause your handgun to move slightly no matter how steady your hand is.
Yep. The Glock 19 striker hits extremely hard. That little vibration noticed during dry practice should not affect accuracy when live firing.
Starting from zero at an older age, I can say that dry fire has helped me quite a bit. I saw a youtube video made by a competition shooter that I thought was interesting, though I have not gone thru the hassle of the setup. He mounted a video camera on a tripod and pointed it at his standard target. He then went thru his standard target practice, dry fire, but with a laser.
So replaying the video, you can see the placement and motion of the laser spot at the exact moment that you hear the striker click.
Get a sightmark laser round. And plenty of extra batteries.
Practice dry firing with that baby turned on. Your trigger pull will rapidly improve as you figure out how to hold and pull, it is slightly different for everyone.
There is a video course out there called the 30 day sharpshooter. Inexpensive and very useful.
YMMV.
Also, practice a proper grip. Having your thumbs up near the slide and or slide catch can be an issue, especially on sub compact guns. The Glock and many other guns have an indention to rest the thumb on the frame. The support hand thumb will be kept far away from the moving parts of the gun so no interference with action can occur.
Practicing draws from holster might be strange…….or undoable……….with a hunk of fuel line hose hanging out of the gun. Really….if you’re going to buy something….buy a snap cap.
“…Aim your handgun at a specific point on a wall (e.g., a light switch).” Um…NO! Dry firing should be done with a safe backstop (kinda like live fire). Unless you live in a concrete house or log home, just aiming at a wall in the house (or apartment) is not good practice.
Well I’m not going down to the range and renting a lane just to dry practice. If you can’t verify an unloaded gun then you have bigger issues than anything dry fire can solve anyway.
Ahhh…Suit yourself. But FYI: Ranges aren’t the only places that have safe backstops. Depending on the firearm, there’re lots of (safe) places to dry practice (a good bookshelf, mound of dirt, block wall, gun safe, wood stove, steel plate, etc, etc, etc.). A wall in the house with your wife/kids on the other side isn’t one. But yeah, go ahead there and learn yourself some bad habits. Oh, and I can verify just fine. I guess it’s OK to point unloaded weapons at people… just as long as they’re unloaded and verified right?
If you can’t make a point without adding bullshit I didn’t say then you are admitting you have a weak argument.
I never said to point the gun at people.
There’s a web page that pops a target up on screen and you have to draw and fire before the PAR time…AT YOUR COMPUTER OR FLAT SCREEN TELEVISION! OMG!!!
OH! are we actually having an “argument” on whether or not someone should dry fire against a safe backstop? HAHA! Wow!
I admit, my point about muzzling people might’ve been a bit too much for you to grasp, so let me try a different angle. …Now pay close attention: When you point the dangerous end (of a gun) at something and pull the trigger, you must make doubly sure that whatever you’re pointing at isn’t something you want to destroy. ***Since bullets travel through things (like walls), then you must make sure nothing is on the other side. Better yet, use a safe backstop because safe backstops stop bullets from destroying things you don’t want to destroy (like people). Now here’s the kicker: These rules must be followed at ALL times, regardless if the gun is empty or not.
Ever hear of the 4 rules of gun safety? I suggest you use google and take a looksy.
There are certain things you can do with an unloaded gun that you should never do with a loaded one. The four rules don’t always apply. It’s just a rule of thumb for beginners and dumb asses. No offense to beginners.
I thought dry firing was ok (except for rim fire guns). What’s with the rubber tube?
I can only guess it’s some “Internet trick” RF picked up from arf.com or glocktalk. Or he’s just trolling us.
Ignore it, because it’s just as stupid as it sounds and looks; that tube ain’t doin’ jack squat for the firing pin, or anything else for that matter.
Dry fire away, or get snap caps if you’re OCD. It literally doesn’t matter.