Dry Fire Training?

I have trained by dry firing. It helps with proper grip when drawing, trigger control and keeping your sights on target. It also has smoothed out many of my Revolvers actions.

Be very careful that the gun is unloaded while dry firing and it is a good idea to block the chamber just to make sure. It is real easy to think the gun is unloaded. Be careful that you don't start reloading the gun after you are finished dry firing and then get distracted and then decide to fire it again. Sound like the voice of experience?

iTarget - Shoot Your Gun In the House Someone mentioned this, looks like it might still be in development

There's this:

LASR: Laser Activated Shot Reporter

You really don't need anything but an EMPTY gun and a spot on the wall. Then work on your trigger pull while keeping the sights on the "target." Practice basic gun safety even though you think you are positive the weapon is unloaded.

I think it helps smooth out the trigger pull. I empty the gun and then change rooms to a room with no ammo around. I also aim In a direction with no targets - even outside. You can't be too safe.

I am also interested in how to improve my dry fire practice. So far I've been timing my draw to first shot time with a phone app (which kinda works) and timing my reload time (which really doesn't work with the app).

Here's a resource: Dry-Fire Drills

I use a shot timer, but it's not sensitive enough to react to a hammer drop. Instead, I set it to a par time (say, 1.5 seconds) with a random start beep and try to get the draw and aimed shot off before the second beep. I think that's actually more effective then using it in the "stopwatch" mode. As speed and smoothness improve I reduce the par times.

If you're working on improving your times, you have to be brutally honest with yourself in calling your dry fire shots. You need to frame in your mind's eye exactly where your front sight is on the target when the hammer goes *click*. Then work on getting that shot exactly where you want it.

Post-It notes make nice targets for dry-fire practice; cheap, provide great contrast to your sights, and come down with a tug.

I do a few minutes of dry-fire practice every night. For one thing, it's a very useful training method that allows me to do everything "perfect" during practice and build that muscle memory. The other reason is, it simply gives me an excuse to look over my gun for any unexpected issues, while I'm ensuring there isn't any live ammo within sight. It's almost a ritual, or a meditation. I actually enjoy it!

I dry fire a lot! I practice my hold, sight alignment and trigger pull. All without the noise and recoil. As I have transitioned to shooting handguns more, I also practice my draw and holstering techniques. DR

With a handgun the simplest method is a pencil with an eraser on the end for a large enough caliber to accept it . Set a cardboard box on a stand and put a mark to aim at on it . Cock the empty pistol , slide the pencil , eraser first , down the barrel . Take steady aim at the aiming mark on the box from 6" away . Fire . The firing pin will propel the pencil hard enough to leave a dot on the box . Now , repeat until you can stoot 5 or more times and only have 1 dot at the impact point .
Crude and laugh if you will . But , it works .................

Truckinbutch said:

With a handgun the simplest method is a pencil with an eraser on the end for a large enough caliber to accept it . Set a cardboard box on a stand and put a mark to aim at on it . Cock the empty pistol , slide the pencil , eraser first , down the barrel . Take steady aim at the aiming mark on the box from 6" away . Fire . The firing pin will propel the pencil hard enough to leave a dot on the box . Now , repeat until you can stoot 5 or more times and only have 1 dot at the impact point .
Crude and laugh if you will . But , it works .................

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. . . what the hell did I just read?! :dope:

Eagle_Beak said:

. . . what the hell did I just read?! :dope:

Click to expand...

An easy and cheap way to to dry fire with instant feedback.

When I was on the 8th Army pistol team we used this method for trigger control a lot. The only difference was we'd put the dot on a piece of white paper and then tape the paper to any wall. And, yes it does work! (We used it with our .45 and .38 match weapons, the pencil didn't fit down the barrel of a .22.)

Truckinbutch said:

With a handgun the simplest method is a pencil with an eraser on the end for a large enough caliber to accept it . Set a cardboard box on a stand and put a mark to aim at on it . Cock the empty pistol , slide the pencil , eraser first , down the barrel . Take steady aim at the aiming mark on the box from 6" away . Fire . The firing pin will propel the pencil hard enough to leave a dot on the box . Now , repeat until you can stoot 5 or more times and only have 1 dot at the impact point .
Crude and laugh if you will . But , it works .................

Click to expand...

It does work. I qual'ed expert with a revolver in the Navy right away, but always fell short with a 1911. One day, I wrangled an invitation to spend some time with a Senior Chief SAMI (Small Arms Marksmanship Instructor). A petite female Ensign also showed up. She had never fired a gun of any kind before. He set us up with 1911's and pencils, just like you describe. We kept at it for an hour. Then he took us both out on the range with live ammo and we both shot Expert, first time. That was shooting one-handed, BTW. I went on to compete with the 1911 on a Navy team.

rstickle said:

An easy and cheap way to to dry fire with instant feedback.

When I was on the 8th Army pistol team we used this method for trigger control a lot. The only difference was we'd put the dot on a piece of white paper and then tape the paper to any wall. And, yes it does work! (We used it with our .45 and .38 match weapons, the pencil didn't fit down the barrel of a .22.)

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Thanks . I knew an adult would come along and explain it to him . Navy and Marine competition shooters taught me the trick in the '60's .

I think its reasonable to have a very good (intuitive) idea of how and where your trigger breaks. That being said, I don't think its critically necessary that you sit around dry firing your gun. If I ever need to pull the trigger, Ill pull it. I doubt I will have any recollection of what the trigger pull was like.

Anyone ever heard of the BarrelBlok? http://bloksafety.com/

Allows for safe dry fire training with your own pistol. I have on for my G19 and like it a lot.


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smitty22gunr said:

Anyone ever heard of the BarrelBlok? BarrelBlok

Allows for safe dry fire training with your own pistol. I have on for my G19 and like it a lot.


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Smitty - I looked at the barrel blok website. After you insert the barrel blok and the included dummy round in the magazine do you then rack the slide and press the trigger? After the break do you rack the slide - if you rack the slide doesn't the dummy barrel blok round eject? Thanks