Milsurp After Hours

I've been surprised lately when visiting local gun shops to see people dry firing Mosins, Swedes and Enfields without thought or concern. I always thought dry firing could be damaging unless the gun was made for it (as with certain target pistols.) Am I way off base here?

I'd love to dry fire my guns as a way of practicing, but don't want to damage the firing pins, etc.

What do you guys think?

It depends on the weapon but most can be dry fired without hurting anything, these weapons have been dry-fired so many times before you owned them. There are certain few that you never want to dry-fire such as the Type 14 Nambu pistol, the striker tip can break.
Patrick

Dry-firing the Lee-Enfield has no adverse effects and it was part of some drill movements. It was used in training and the troops were encouraged to dry-fire when practicing aiming and trigger control in their spare time.

I didn't like dry firing the SA80, the whole thing could have fallen apart

The CZ52 is the only one I'm aware of that can be damaged by dry firing. They have notoriously weak firing pins.

I suspect that the no dry firing comes from rimfires, they should not be dry fired unles it is a specific (usually target) model designed for this.

Firing a rim fire with out a cartridge in place means that the fring pin can peen on the chamber and also wear the chamber rim, so don't dry fire rim fires. Obviously this does not apply to the vast majority of centre fires.

as a youngster i had been told not to dryfire to any degree - only to relieve spring pressure after use and cleaning ,

i was also told the rimfire dry fire is a major NO-NO , but relieving hammer spring pressure in an enfield is not an issue as depressing the trigger when closing the bolt facilitates that and or one can easily hold the bolt knob back relieving it slowly with these and my springfield collection as well ,

as stated it was common practice and encouraged - id not fret over it