Beware of the advice from those who say it's
"safe to dry fire any .22 rimfire pistol". They don't know what they write about.
The firing pin stop pin on the right is from a Ruger Mark II pistol. This pin is a bit more than 1/8-inch shorter than the normal, solid firing pin stop pin on the left. The slotted roll-pin was used as a substitute when Ruger ran out of the solid, longer firing pin stop pins. I did an extensive survey on another Ruger forum and found that of the fairly large number of pistols reported, as to whether or not, the bolt has a slotted or solid firing pin stop pin, the response was 50/50 with an equal number having one or the other.
Many small parts are outsourced instead of being made in-house. When the slotted roll-pin is positioned poorly, and because the length of the slotted-pin is shorter on both ends, the driven force on the hardened firing pin will bend the slotted pin allowing contact of the firing pin tip with the chambers edge. Result below:
Now, there will be those who will tell you,
"not to worry, there's a chamber ironing tool you can buy to fix that ding". Again, that's more bovine excrement than it is truth. While the ironing tool does roll the metal that the firing pin moved down and into the chamber mouth, it does nothing to push the rolled up metal on each side of the ding back to flush with the breech face. That requires a much different approach. Here's a picture of a brand new Browning Buckmark Contour after ONE (
only ONE) dry fire hit without protection from a snap-cap or dry wall anchor:
The breech face has a very visible representation from the firing pin tip after that ONLY hit. For anyone to claim that using a cheap, plastic dry wall anchor to cushion the firing pin blow and prevent damage to the breech face doesn't work, they are so full of it that it's running out of the vent just under their nose. I've been using and recommending the use of #4/#6 dry wall anchors for at least 15 years.............they work just fine and I've never incurred any chamber mouth dings when using these as a snap-cap. They even feed from a Ruger Mark II magazine.