by Chris Cerino
About the author: Chris Cerino is a nationally known firearms instructor and competitor who’s been training law enforcement officers and military for more than 12 years. He has worked in peace keeping positions for municipal, county, state and federal agencies spanning more than 20 years. Literally immersed in pistol training for years his skills are founded in life experience. Chris is the director of training for Chris Cerino Training Group LLC, teaching in a “do as I do” fashion. You can contact Chris by email: chris@ceriniotraininggrouup.com, or phone: 330-608-6415.
“My daddy said never to dry fire,” was once said by a student in a law enforcement class. With everyone in the class working diligently on skills by dry firing and working with their gear, I noticed this one fella doing everything but pressing the trigger.
We weren’t using antique guns and I told him to go through the entire process, including pressing the trigger.
He came back at me with the aforementioned quote. He was told that he would participate fully or leave the class. He participated and his gun managed to handle it.
Dry fire is probably better termed “dry practice” because it can be so much more. A great deal can be learned from dry practice and modern firearms are up to the task. There are actually very few guns these days that you can’t. The whole “don’t dry fire your gun” myth is starting to lose momentum.
If you are unsure about whether you can dry fire your gun, check the owner’s manual or email the company with the question. I recently purchased some Ruger LCR .22 caliber revolvers for training. Being a rimfire, I was concerned about dry firing and ruining the chambers. I checked the owner’s manual and found a statement that read, “The LCR can be dry-fired without damage to the firing pin or internal components.” What a great thing to know.
Never dry fire with a loaded gun.
Funny, but true. Always go through proper clearing procedures before handling any firearm you are cleaning or practicing with. People have been killed or injured with “unloaded guns” every year. Heck, I have friends that have shot plenty of stuff with their “unloaded guns:” windows, closets, lockers, TVs, mirrors and the occasional family pet. A large Federal agency had to ban dry fire because too many agents had shot mirrors and TVs in their hotel rooms while traveling.
You can hide a lot of stuff until your bullet pierces a water pipe. Then, it gets complicated.
Clearing your firearm should consist of these steps: • Remove the source of ammunition (magazine, clip, individual rounds, etc) • Lock the slide to the rear or open the action • Visually and physically inspect the chamber and magazine well LOOK AWAY! • Again…visually and physically inspect the chamber and magazine well • Close the action • Point the gun in a safe direction and press the trigger.
Never shortcut safety. Don’t be too lazy to lock the slide open or check the magazine well and chamber twice.
Over the years I have had several shooters do things half-assed and crank off rounds unintentionally. Steps get mixed up or focus is lost on the task and they just go through motions.
Then, when they point the gun in a safe direction, downrange, they get a hell of a surprise when it goes off. Of course it’s usually one of their best shots of the day, since they assumed the gun was empty. We check it twice because the second check is a conscious decision to verify what we saw the first time. It’s almost inconvenient.
So much more than just dry fire, dry practice involves many of our weapon handling skills. I like to focus on trigger work the most but I don’t disregard the many other dry fundamentals.
I think about: Grip; Presenting the firearm; Sight alignment; Sight picture, and Trigger management.
Dry fire has helped me cure a right tick—always getting impacts slightly to the right of my intended target. I diagnosed it by dry firing with intense focus on the sights. Sure enough, I noticed the light spacing on the right side of my front sight close ever so slightly. I tried different finger placement on the trigger with no luck and finally realized that it was my strong hand grip causing it. My strong hand was too relaxed and it allowed the back of the pistol to slip across my palm causing the muzzle to tick to the right. Live fire indicated that I had an obvious issue but the dry practice helped me finally see what I was missing due to the recoil and movement of the gun.
A great way to dry practice is to use a blank wall without so much as a pin point to look at. Practice your draw and presentation to the wall with your muzzle about two inches from the wall’s surface. Watch the sight alignment intently as you squeeze the trigger and the hammer falls. When the hammer does fall, see if there is any deviation in the sights. If there is, change something in your grip or trigger finger placement. Be sure you do this with both single action and double action if your gun has both functions.
When you get tired of shooting at a blank wall you can place a two inch circle on the wall and use it as your desired target area. Focus on the circle until the gun interrupts your plane of vision, then change your focus to the sights as you squeeze the trigger.
Again, watch the sights and now, sight picture for any deviation and, if necessary, change something to get the results you need.
Dry practice will give you the extra time on task you need without the added costs of hard to find ammunition, distractions of recoil and muzzle blast. It’ll also give you the repetitions necessary to build the physical and mental skills you need when live ammunition is introduced to your training. Before you can fix anything you need to identify the problem. Dry practice will give you that opportunity.
It’s all about the fundamentals!
