Can dry firing hurt a striker? Take a snap cap when shopping?

R

river251

New member
I thought I'd learned that striker pistols are not hurt by dry firing. I guess I got this from gun salesmen and the internet. So I've been shopping for a pistol and have been trying different pistols and dry firing them quite a bit to really get a good idea of the triggers. The other day a salesman at Sportsman's Warehouse told me that could be hurting the pistols. Well I felt kind of bad, and if it can hurt them, deservedly so, I'be been dry firing the heck out of the pistols there.

I bought a Ruger EC9s, and from dry firing it a few evenings while watching TV, I broke the striker. Ruger replaced it and paid all shipping, but they told me to use a snap cap because dry firing it can and did break the striker.

So should I conclude that I should not be dry firing pistols in gun shops? Has anybody even taken a snap cap to use when trying pistols?
 
Enough dry firing can cause parts damage to about any center fire auto loading pistol, striker fired or hammer fired and I don't see any reason why striker fired should be more prone to damage than hammer fired . However occasional dry fire should not hurt a well designed pistol and some pistols extensive dry fire does not seem to be an issue. If I am going to say dry fire a couple dozen times or so once in a while I don't use a snap cap. If I am going to be doing several dozens of times I certainly will with any of my pistols as it is cheap insurance. Many of us dry fire a lot and doing 200 dry fired a week is just over 10,000 time a year. I always ask first at my LGS if I can dry fire a center fire pistol a couple times and they always let me and never bring out a snap cap. However they do not allow dry firing of .22 rimfire pistols. I do seem to be reading more problems about broken strikers and firing pins than in the past and I have to wonder if that possibly is because of cheaper materials being used for strikers or poorer quality control in manufacture of them or more people using social media to report problems.
 
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river251: said:
So should I conclude that I should not be dry firing pistols in gun shops? Has anybody even taken a snap cap to use when trying pistols?
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I would always want to dry fire any pistol that I was interested in buying. You should certainly dry fire any gun offered for sale to see if you like the trigger, and that limited amount of dry-firing shouldn’t harm any gun.

In all my years of gun store tire-kicking, I’ve only come across one store owner who insisted I use a snapper to dry-fire his guns. Although I was a bit put off by this at first, I figured his store, his merch, & therefore his rules. So NBD.

After I cracked the plastic striker guide on my Walther PPS-M2, which was probably due to too much dry-firing without a snap-cap, my rule is that I don’t dry-fire without a snap-cap, although sometimes there are exceptions.
 
I broke the firing pin on an HK USP Compact by dry firing. And I have brought a snap cap along while shopping. The store personnel certainly didn’t mind.
 
Keep in mind that the guy selling guns at the box store is the lowest bidder on the pay scale ...... he does not necessarily know squat about firearms.

Any well designed modern firearm should not be harmed by dry firing ..... if it can't withstand the stress of functioning empty, then it is a p-poor design and should not be trusted to function as a reliable tool with live ammo for any serious purpose... and I would never buy a gun I could not assess the trigger on...... just my $.02 .
 
I broke the firing pin on an HK USP Compact by dry firing.
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Whoa! That's mt EDC pistol. I know they had a recall on their (I might be wrong on the year) pre-1995 models. Do you happen to know the year of your USP?


And to the OP, yes. I don't buy into the whole "dry firing doesn't harm" theory. I don't know a single manufacturer out there that hasn't suffered a broken firing pin.
 
One very large store near me tried to go to a "No dry firing rule" on the pistols. There were enough of us that won't buy a pistol, especially a used pistol, without function checking them that we would say, "Sure, then I need a snap cap". They eventually got tired of fetching snap caps and went back to the way it was before. For my own use I do use snap caps if I'm going to be doing a dry fire session of any duration.
 
Thanks everyone, reaffirms "better safe than sorry" so I'll take a snap cap with me shopping. At least it shows respect.

Jim
 
Last time I was in a gun store, the clerk kept handing me pistols, both striker and hammer-fired with the comment, "Here, check out the trigger on THIS one!" After lots of "click, click, clicking" on several pistols, I left with two. My approach is like others have said: I want to test drive the gun first, much like buying a used car. My real preference would be to shoot with live ammo but that may be more than we could expect in a normal store.

--Wag--
 
I would think that shop owners might be nervous about seeing someone put anything into the chamber to test fire! Unless they personally check the snap cap to make sure it's safe, they don't really know what the customer is doing.

I was in one shop testing a gun dry firing and the clerk asked me to stop because it was not their gun and on consignment. When I went back and bought the gun, he then had more assurance that I was not just in there playing with their guns. So the next time I went is and dry fired another gun, he didn't say a word.
 
HighValleyRanch said:
I would think that shop owners might be nervous about seeing someone put anything into the chamber to test fire! Unless they personally check the snap cap to make sure it's safe, they don't really know what the customer is doing.

I was in one shop testing a gun dry firing and the clerk asked me to stop because it was not their gun and on consignment. When I went back and bought the gun, he then had more assurance that I was not just in there playing with their guns. So the next time I went is and dry fired another gun, he didn't say a word.
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I actually agree. I think letting customers bring their own snap caps isn't necessarily a great idea. Unless the person is sitting there and dry firing like mad (and it isn't a rimfire pistol) I really think it should be allowed.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
 
it isn't just test clicking, serious competitors do more dry firing than live firing, often a lot more. If the gun needs a snap cap they use one. If they break a firing pin, they replace it. But "snapping in" a gun is an established route to trigger control.
 
Instead of snap cap,I use a ''regular'' pencil.Eraser end in,point gun up,and watch how high it flys.
Come to think of it,I don't have an eraser,because I don't make mistakes.Of course the bore must be big enough.
So where are the smileys?
 
JDBerg said:
I would always want to dry fire any pistol that I was interested in buying. You should certainly dry fire any gun offered for sale to see if you like the trigger, and that limited amount of dry-firing shouldn’t harm any gun.

In all my years of gun store tire-kicking, I’ve only come across one store owner who insisted I use a snapper to dry-fire his guns. Although I was a bit put off by this at first, I figured his store, his merch, & therefore his rules. So NBD.

After I cracked the plastic striker guide on my Walther PPS-M2, which was probably due to too much dry-firing without a snap-cap, my rule is that I don’t dry-fire without a snap-cap, although sometimes there are exceptions.
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That is disappointing to hear about on your PPS M2. I own the original PPS and so far no problem but again I use snap caps for more than a few dry fires.

I am curious if the cracked plastic sleeve caused your PPS M2 to malfunction or was it something you found during maintenance?
 
I've always doubted the perils of dry-firing. NRA says it's a myth too (except for rim-fire), because the firing pin simply hits nothing.

https://www.nrafamily.org/articles/2014/7/2/five-gun-myths-exploded/

"Myth 5: Dry-Firing A Gun Is Harmful

To be fair, this is sometimes true. Dry-firing most centerfire rifles and handguns is perfectly safe once you have made certain they are unloaded and pointed in a safe direction. However, excessively dry-firing a rimfire gun is a bad idea. The firing pin of a centerfire gun is designed to strike a primer located in the center of a cartridge's base. When no cartridge is present, the firing pin strikes nothing. With a rimfire, though, the firing pin is positioned to strike the soft brass rim of the cartridge. When no cartridge is present, the firing pin strikes the hard steel of the breechface. Repeated dry-firing of a rimfire can eventually peen the firing pin, dulling it and causing misfires. Dry-firing offers convenient, easy practice, but if you are going to dry-fire a rimfire gun, invest in some snap caps first. These dummy rounds will cushion the firing pin's fall."
 
Brownstone322 said:
I've always doubted the perils of dry-firing. NRA says it's a myth too (except for rim-fire), because the firing pin simply hits nothing.

https://www.nrafamily.org/articles/2014/7/2/five-gun-myths-exploded/

"Myth 5: Dry-Firing A Gun Is Harmful

To be fair, this is sometimes true. Dry-firing most centerfire rifles and handguns is perfectly safe once you have made certain they are unloaded and pointed in a safe direction. However, excessively dry-firing a rimfire gun is a bad idea. The firing pin of a centerfire gun is designed to strike a primer located in the center of a cartridge's base. When no cartridge is present, the firing pin strikes nothing. With a rimfire, though, the firing pin is positioned to strike the soft brass rim of the cartridge. When no cartridge is present, the firing pin strikes the hard steel of the breechface. Repeated dry-firing of a rimfire can eventually peen the firing pin, dulling it and causing misfires. Dry-firing offers convenient, easy practice, but if you are going to dry-fire a rimfire gun, invest in some snap caps first. These dummy rounds will cushion the firing pin's fall."
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On at least some pistol designs during dry fire the firing pin will hit a firing pin positioning pin or even the breech face. I have seen examples of badly damages firing pin positioning pin in CZ pistols and have heard of at least one Glock that the breech face was so damaged from the inside that it failed but that Glock user admitted to tens of thousands of dry fires and he did mentioned that later generations of Glocks beefed that up. Plenty others have reported broken strikers/firing pins with extensive dry firing. That force has to go some where when a center fire pistol is dry fired. A couple hundred rounds a year will most likely not damage a well designed pistol but when that becomes several thousands a year, that may be a different story. For me snap caps are cheap insurance.
 
When no cartridge is present, the firing pin strikes nothing. With a rimfire, though, the firing pin is positioned to strike the soft brass rim of the cartridge. When no cartridge is present, the firing pin strikes the hard steel of the breechface. Repeated dry-firing of a rimfire can eventually peen the firing pin, dulling it and causing misfires.
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The firing pin/striker NEVER strikes nothing. It always hits something.

When there's a live round chambered, it hits the primer or cartridge rim. When there's not a live round chambered it hits either the breechface, the edge of the chamber (rimfire) or a firing pin/striker stop.

The primer or rim is much softer metal than the firing pin and the crushing effect cushions the impact to some extent. When the firing pin/striker is stopped by a steel part, the impact force is much greater because there is no cushioning effect.

The damage that occurs from firing a rimfire that doesn't have a firing pin stop is typically to the chamber edge, not to the firing pin. The firing pin is typically much harder than the breechface or chamber. The hardened firing pin will strike the softer steel around the chamber. Eventually this damage can push enough metal out into the chamber area that a cartridge can't be chambered. Clearing out that peened metal will allow a cartridge to chamber, but there is metal being pushed away from under the firing pin by the peening and eventually enough metal can be moved that the firing pin can no longer pinch the primer in the rim sufficiently to fire the cartridge.

Anyway, the gist of all of this is that when there is no live round chambered, something else must stop the firing pin, and, depending on the design of the firearm, either the firing pin or whatever is stopping it can eventually be damaged by a sufficient amount of dryfire.

This isn't really a complicated topic, but it does get contentious because there are some people who don't understand that just because something is OK doesn't mean it is OK to do it hours and hours every day for months or years.

Dryfiring in 5 simple rules:

1. Dryfiring stresses certain parts of the gun in different ways than live fire does. Some guns are designed to tolerate that stress (to one extent or another) some are not.

2. EVERYTHING breaks eventually. Even a gun designed to tolerate dryfiring can eventually be broken with a dedicated effort. A blurb in the manual stating that dryfiring won't hurt the gun isn't a guarantee that the gun will hold up to an hour of dryfire practice every night for the next several years.

3. Some rimfires can be damaged by even one dryfire. These should not be dryfired at all as there really aren't effective snapcaps for rimfires.

4. Older centerfire guns may not be designed to tolerate dryfiring. If you have a gun that is 40 years old or older, it would be wise to do some research before dryfiring it. It would be wise to dryfire it only with snapcaps even if the research says it's safe to dryfire, and it would be wiser still to do your dryfire practice with a modern firearm approved by the manufacturer for dryfire.

5. Not all guns are the same. Even some modern firearms may have prohibitions against dryfiring. Read your manual.​

One simple rule for dryfiring other people's guns (including while shopping).

1. Ask before you dryfire someone else's gun.​
 
As far as taking your own snap-cap when shopping, I would make darned sure the sales person is informed EXACTLY what you are doing! People have gone into shops, looked at a gun, loaded it, and committed suicide. They have also loaded, robbed and/or shot the salesman.
Appear to be loading a gun in a gun shop could easily get you killed!
Mention what you want to do to the salesperson. Let them inspect and load the snap cap if they want- but NEVER stick anything into a gun that isn't yours.
 
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