Mike,
I think it's bad to dry fire just about any .22 rimfire because of the potential for damage done by the firing pin striking the area at the edge of the chamber and deforming it, or so I've read. I'm not an expert on this, but I try to avoid dry-firing all my .22's as much as possible. I have dropped hammers when I was going to store a .22 for a long time to release the tension on the spring, but I wonder which is worse for the gun. I know when I had a Buckmark, I did this a few times and never saw any deformation - none that I could discern, anyway.
-10CFR