One thing that has been bothering me a lot about dryfiring lately is that some peculiarities of dryfiring (and resulting habits developed during dryfiring) might negatively affect one's effectiveness during "real" shooting (and much more so during real-life engagements that involve body-threat response and strong tendency to default to one's habits).
Here're couple of examples of these "peculiarities" and "habits":
1. "Shooting" without recoil. This affects one's grip dynamic, posture dynamic, sight re-acquisition, etc.
2. With double-to-single action pistols, one either has to rack the slide (or cock the hammer manually) for the second trigger squeeze to be single-action, or use double-action repeatedly if one practices shooting multiple times per draw. This situation is worse for firearms that require their slides racked in order to reset the trigger (e.g., glocks).
The danger is that such discrepancies between dryfiring and real firing might lead to bad habits being developed during dryfiring (e.g., wanting to rack the slide after the first round is fired, using suboptimal strategies for mitigating recoil). This reminds me of the incident that happened to some cops who were trained to pick up their brass after firing on their departmental shooting range. When they got into a real-life engagement, their habits kicked in and they automatically started picking up brass after emptying their revolvers. Expectedly, this turned out pretty badly for the cops who ended up dead but with pockets full of spent brass casings...
What do you folks think about this? Am I making this into a bigger problem than it ought to be? Does dryfiring actually hurt more than it helps?
Here're couple of examples of these "peculiarities" and "habits":
1. "Shooting" without recoil. This affects one's grip dynamic, posture dynamic, sight re-acquisition, etc.
2. With double-to-single action pistols, one either has to rack the slide (or cock the hammer manually) for the second trigger squeeze to be single-action, or use double-action repeatedly if one practices shooting multiple times per draw. This situation is worse for firearms that require their slides racked in order to reset the trigger (e.g., glocks).
The danger is that such discrepancies between dryfiring and real firing might lead to bad habits being developed during dryfiring (e.g., wanting to rack the slide after the first round is fired, using suboptimal strategies for mitigating recoil). This reminds me of the incident that happened to some cops who were trained to pick up their brass after firing on their departmental shooting range. When they got into a real-life engagement, their habits kicked in and they automatically started picking up brass after emptying their revolvers. Expectedly, this turned out pretty badly for the cops who ended up dead but with pockets full of spent brass casings...
What do you folks think about this? Am I making this into a bigger problem than it ought to be? Does dryfiring actually hurt more than it helps?
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