Dropping, the slide, shooting without a clip, what will and will not hurt your gun?

I never actuate the slide release on an empty chamber because I think of it as unnecessary wear on the gun. I guess it's the same as slamming your car door closed as hard as you can. What for?

Although, I will say that on my P226, with the .22LR conversion kit, when loading a fresh mag, I lock the slide back and hit the slide release to chamber the top round. The slingshot method, more often than not, results in a FTF.

I wouldn't fire a round without a magazine loaded, unless in an emergency, strictly because of the velocity the slide would be traveling at when returning to battery.
 
I try to never drop a slide on an empty chamber.

"I don't know about the plastic stuff but I know that the above WONT hurt a Colt or USGI 1911."

NOT TRUE. I have had 2 1911's that had trigger jobs that had their sears damaged by someone (not Me ((REALLY:))) dropping their slides. They required new sears and hammers and trigger jobs.

I know the military has taught that it is OK to drop the slide on an empty chamber. But, the rest of us can not just turn it in to the armorer to fix.;)

I do use the slide release to load all my semi-auto's.

If you fired a round without a magazine the slide would then return on a empty chamber. Goes back to the first question.

Just my humble opinion.

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The only thing that is going to hurt your gun of what you stated is not properly cleaning it.

I dont believe the dropping the slide on an empty chamber is bad. I dont believe that after a shot is fired that the chambering of a round slows the slide down to be slower than that of closing on an empty chamber.

There is no real reason you would really even want to practice firing your weapon with one round and no mag. Guns only do that so police or whoever is operating the weapon, if they are good counters under stress they can then reload with one still in the chamber and if it has to be fired it still can be. However like others have said if you shot without the mag in the slide will close back down making you have to re rack the slide to get another round in the chamber. Adding a much unnecessary step in your reload, costing your time, and possibly your life. So basically it is a moot point. But I dont believe it hurts the gun.
 
Usually, this sort of question is covered in the manual that comes with the gun but clearly, they don't all give the same instructions. But I suppose the people that made the gun know what they're talking about. Some cannot be fired without a magazine in place anyway.

Sometimes different versions of a manual (I have three for my Walther P99) give slightly different instructions but not enough to worry about. However, nearly all of them, I suspect, say not to modify the weapon. It also used to be that for a given handgun caliber, there was just about one standard loading but that changed probably in the 1960s. Sometimes that's a source of problems in an automatic.

Suppose for a moment that letting the slide go forward on an automatic would damage it or if you dry-fired it (also a revolver). What would happen. I do know that the part of the slide that closes against the base of the cartridge where the firing pin hole is (if there's a technical name for that area, I don't know what it is) gets a little beat up but I've never noticed any noticable wear on a barrel except where it contacts the slide or slide bushing (if there is one), at least on 1911 style automatics. So I don't think the barrel would be a problem, nor the slide itself. But there are a lot of small parts, which typically are the parts that people who want to improve their pistols like to fiddle with. Some of them are surface hardened and an attempt at smoothing them can remove the hardness, making them weaker. But still, I've not known any to break on mine or those of my friends, which have been "fiddled with." And one of them is slick, too, but it's not an automatic.
 
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BOTTOM LINE


ALL springs "wear out"....
This is why manufacturers have recommended spring overhaul guidelines.

ALL metal-on-metal moving parts causes wear...
This is one reason that we lubricate metal machines.

Dirt, dust and chemical or foreign contaminates can damage parts and/or interrupt function...
This is one reason why we clean our guns religiously.

High heat accelerates wear...
This is one reason why tempering is common. And, why we attempt to lessen or limit the effects of normal usage, by instituting parameters that reduce damage or contamination.

Some guns are engineered to function in a specific way...
i.e. If a firing pin is dropped on an empty chamber, on some guns, without a primer to cushion it's deceleration, part of it slams into another metal part of the gun. This shock can and will eventually cause it to break. Some guns have buffers that absorb some types of shock involved with cycling a weapon. Most do not. Always follow your instruction manual, to limit possible damage to your weapon.

Anytime you are using a gun, you are causing damage to it. They don't last forever. Anytime you minimize this effect, or reverse/stop it, as in cleaning, you prolong the life of the weapon. Hence, all the "rules to go by" that you question.
 
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Pvt. Pyle,
The next time you go to the range, please try this test.
1. Drop the slide from slide lock without a round being fed.
2. Same thing, feeding a round

You will see a noticeable reduction in the velocity of the slide from stripping and feeding the round.
 
I really do not like slamming the slide closed on an empty chamber. I do not like the sound or the shock that goes through the pistol.

There is probably someone that has done it a million times somewhere on youtube but i will rather not.
 
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