Dry fire training: how to practice with an empty gun, safely

Dry fire is running your pistol exactly as you would to shoot it, with no ammunition anywhere near it. It trains what happens before the shot breaks: grip, sight picture, the trigger press and follow-through.

Shooting Sports USA, the NRA’s shooting sports journal, defines it as working an empty firearm as if it were loaded, and calls it an inexpensive, safe and time-efficient way to build skill, sight alignment and trigger control among them. It saves ammunition, and you can do it at home.

What it cannot fix: recoil, follow-up shots and the hit itself. No dry rep tells you where a round would have landed. That is why dry fire works best as one half of a loop, with the other half on paper at the range.

Five steps, every session, in this order. The protocol is what makes the gun empty, so none of it is optional:

1. 01Unload the pistol and check it twice. Magazine out, slide locked open, then look into the chamber and the magazine well. Check again before the first rep. The NRA Family guide to dry firing safely (March 2024) tells you to check several times that no ammunition is in the gun.
2. 02Put all ammunition in another room, loaded magazines included. The same NRA Family guide keeps live ammunition in another room, and Shooting Sports USA (2016) adds: no loaded magazines nearby either.
3. 03Point only in a safe direction, at a backstop that would stop a round. Shooting Sports USA (September 2024) asks for a dedicated dry fire area with a safe backstop where the gun points, and the NSSF rules of safe gun handling say that even when dry firing, you never point the gun at an unsafe target. Tape your target to that spot.
4. 04No live ammunition at any point in the session. If anything interrupts you, a phone call or a knock at the door, start again from step 1 when you come back.
5. 05Reload only after the session ends, and say out loud that dry fire practice is over before you do. The risky moment is the end: the 2016 Shooting Sports USA article tells of shooters who reloaded after a session and then snapped “one more”. Take the target down too, so there is nothing left to aim at.

Shooting Sports USA also says to always wear eye protection for dry fire. And if you have never handled a handgun, take an in-person basic class before you practice alone.

For most modern centerfire pistols, no; for rimfires and some older guns, it can. GLOCK’s owner FAQ says it is OK to dry fire its pistols and suggests a snap cap for long sessions, while the NRA Family guide warns that dry firing a rimfire or an older single-action revolver on an empty chamber could damage the firing pin.

Your owner’s manual has the final word. The full answer, gun type by gun type, is in is dry firing bad for your gun.

10 to 15 minutes: the safety check, then three drills of 5 to 15 reps each, with a follow-through on every press.

This is a home version of the dry stage that opens NES technical sessions at the range, with the holster work left out and the safety protocol above added. It is adapted from the plans, not copied from them: no NES plan contains a home routine.

1. 01Grip, 5 to 15 reps. Pistol unloaded and checked, hands apart at your sides. Bring your hands together into a full grip, built the same way every rep.
2. 02Present and acquire the sight picture, 5 to 15 reps. From that grip, push the pistol out to the target and settle the sights on it. No press yet: the goal is a sight picture that arrives already aligned.
3. 03Dry press on a full sight picture, 5 to 15 reps. The rule the NES technical and combined plans write into their dry stage: press only once you have a full sight picture on the target. Press straight to the rear and watch the front sight through the click.
4. 04Follow through on every press. After the click, keep the trigger pressed and the sights on the target for a moment, and notice whether the front sight moved. Then reset the trigger the way your pistol needs (on many striker-fired pistols, by cycling the slide by hand) and start the next rep.

Count only clean reps. If the front sight moved at the click, that rep does not count. A few slow, clean presses are worth more than many rushed ones. When the reps are done, stop, take the target down and say out loud that dry fire practice is over.

Short and often beats long and rare. The NRA Family guide suggests 10 to 15 minutes, three to four times a week, and Shooting Sports USA warns against over-staying a session: practice tired and you learn to shoot tired.

A simple rhythm: a few short dry sessions on the days between range trips, and the same reps again at the start of each range session. For how live practice fits into a month, see how often to practice shooting.

In the NES plans, dry reps are not homework: they are the first stage of every range session. Every LEVEL 1 session in the plans (technical and combat on CORE, PRO and DIAMOND, combined on PRO and DIAMOND) opens with a dry stage of 0 rounds and 5 to 15 reps before the first live round.

In the technical sessions that stage includes the same work as the routine above: bring your hands together, present to the target, acquire the sight picture, and dry press only on a full sight picture. It is done at the range, with eye and ear protection and under the range’s rules. Then the plan moves to live fire. In the words of the LEVEL 1 CORE plan, the shooter first rehearses each action in dry practice, then gradually brings it into live fire.

The live strings that follow, each with its target, distance and round count, are in pistol drills.

Score the reps at home, then check them live on the same target.

At home: write down the date and how many of your presses were clean (the front sight did not move at the click) out of the reps you ran. Over a few weeks, watch whether that number climbs.

At the range: open with the same dry reps, then shoot the same target you aimed at during the week. Paper is the honest check. The NES plans write a pass standard into some live stages, such as 3 hits inside the edges of each bar, so a result is a count, not a feeling.

If your dry presses are clean but live shots land low, you may be anticipating the recoil. The NSSF’s Let’s Go Shooting guide to flinch describes exactly that: the hand dips as it expects the shot, and the round goes low. That gap is the part only live fire can close.

One target that works for both halves is the free NES Alpha target: a single measurable hit zone, free as a PDF for your name and email.

No. An unloaded pistol and a target are enough; training aids add feedback, not skill. NES Defense sells none of them, and this list ranks none of them. The common types:

• Snap caps and dummy rounds. Inert cartridges that cushion the firing pin. GLOCK’s owner FAQ recommends one for long dry fire sessions, and Shooting Sports USA (September 2024) says to always use one when you dry fire a rimfire.
• Laser training cartridges. A cartridge-shaped insert that flashes a laser when the firing pin strikes it, so you see where the sights were at the moment of the break.
• Apps and laser target systems. Software or targets that register the laser flash and keep score, so reps can be timed and counted.
• Resetting triggers and training pistols. Devices or dedicated training guns that reset the trigger without cycling the slide, for more presses in the same minutes.
• Sensors that attach to the pistol. They record how the gun moves through the press and show it on your phone.

Anything that goes into the chamber must be inert, and you check it the way you check ammunition. The safety protocol stays the same with every device.

Dry fire builds the reps. A plan tells you which reps, in which order, and checks them at the range.

That plan is what we sell: the NES pistol training program is 4 months of range sessions, LEVEL 1 to LEVEL 4, each with a printed plan and targets, built with operators from Israeli special forces units who have fought in active combat. It is not a permit or CCW class, and no instructor is at your lane. The plans and targets are in English; the session videos are in Hebrew for now. More free guides are in Academy & Tools.

Written by the NES Defense Training Team. Last updated October 27, 2026; every linked source was opened and checked that day.