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[–] buggermeevenharder [S] ago 

Is this to carry or have in your home?

Good question. I plan to keep it in home for now. Carrying has some complications I'd rather avoid, and I don't leave the house often enough to make it worth the hassle.

The most important thing of all it to practice.

Understood. I plan to practice semi-regularly, maybe several times per year. Can you tell me about "dry firing"?

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[–] acheron2012 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

"Dry firing" is to pull the trigger of a weapon without a round in the chamber. Most people will tell you it is a catastrophically bad idea. I would probably leave out catastrophically and just go with "not very good". Many decades ago it was likely to damage the weapon - break the firing pin. But gun designs and metallography have advanced to the point this is mostly baseless at this point.

That said even if it won't break your weapon it isn't "good" for it. You can buy dummy rounds that have a spring loaded percussion cap that will cushion the firing pin. In practice you probably won't dry fire enough to worry about it. One time (or 10, or 30) is just not something to worry about. 5000? Well maybe that's not such a great plan. But why would you do that? You'll find you won't.

It is a good idea to dry fire a weapon when you go to purchase it. You should ALWAYS squeeze the trigger. The faster you pull it the poorer your accuracy. However when trying out a new one squeeze the trigger as slowly as you can. Does it feel rough? Bind up at spots? Does it creep down with steady pressure? Any sort of dynamics is a sign of a poor quality weapon. In competition weapons a person will spend nearly as much on trigger work as on sights.

So yes. Dry fire at least once. It will tell you more, faster, about a weapon than much anything else you can determine. Of course for pure self defense it doesn't matter as much as for target practice. But still, if the trigger pull feels like it has sand in it the weapon is of poor quality. And if you get something that you cannot get at least decent accuracy at the range with you will be disinclined to bother. If you go to practice as a self defense labor of work and become a "gun nut" and end up shooting competitively every month... well you wouldn't be the first.

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[–] buggermeevenharder [S] ago 

Someone suggested that dry firing is good practice. Seems that you disagree on that count.