TX Rancher wrote:If you don't practice failure to fire drills, there's no time like the present to start!
For dry firing I have practice inert rounds...
I have, in the past, gone into gun stores asking for snap caps and have gotten a "snap caps are for kids" look. But in my humble opinion I believe they're indispensable for autoloader shooters of all levels. They may or may not provide any significant firing pin protection, but:
1. From a safety standpoint, racking a colored plastic inert round in to the chamber before dry-firing is just one more precautionary step. You can't have a live round in the chamber if there's a plastic one in there.
2. Snap caps are one of the best ways to practice failure-to-fire drills. That's easiest if you shoot with a buddy. Have him or her load a magazine and insert a snap cap in at random somewhere between round two and the next-to-last one. Have them seat the magazine if you have "windows" in yours that would show where the inert round is. Best if you can do rapid fire at your range because you can then put a timer on yourself, say six rounds in five seconds...with the inert round in there somewhere that will require a tap-and-rack to clear. Even alone at a slow-fire range, you can still make this a beneficial practice technique...just fill several mags with the inert round inserted in different places, shuffle 'em, and don't look when you select one and load it.
3. Also IMHO, it's almost impossible to dry-practice mag reloads without using snap caps. First, I never let my slide close full-force on an empty chamber; but that's just me...so that means I can't actually rack the slide or practice slide-lock reloads without snap caps. But even if you're willing to let your slide ram home without a cartridge, unless you have a capacious mag well--which most carry guns won't--practicing fast reloads without inert rounds in the magazine isn't realistic because the mag has a completely different profile with a round in it: no edges that can catch on the well. And if you're
really trying to go fast, you risk jamming those empty-mag edges on your gun and possibly damaging the magazine. This is more a factor for single-stack pistols, and I even use mags I never shoot (my production Kimber mags) for practice. With snaps caps in 'em, they have exactly the same profile as the Wilson Combat's I use for real.
4. Ever practice one-handed tap-and-rack? I remember a Mas Ayoob article I read. It began with the description of a home burglary. The home owner heard the noise in his house and grabbed his pistol. The BG rounded a corner into a hallway the HO was clearing and both aimed and fired. The BG was hit, dropped his gun, but didn't fall. He wasn't neutralized and started toward his gun. The HO fires again. Click! He goes to tap-and-rack...and realizes his off-hand ain't moving. He was hit. There was an immediate threat, his gun had failed to fire, and he had only one arm to work with. A nightmare scenario, but if you practice one-handed tap-and-rack, not much slower to accomplish than with two good hands. Several ways to do it, but without practice the odds of success in a real situation are virtually non-existent. Since none of the one-handed techniques can be accomplished with the muzzle pointed downrange near the target, you
sure don't want to practice these with live rounds.
5. There are more reasons to spring the few bucks for some snap caps, but this reply is already so long nobody will read it.
) I woke up, and decided to do some more dry fire drills. So I, once again, removed the magazine, carefully unloaded the... wait? Where's the round that usually pops out of the chamber? Oh, there it is, in the magazine!! I never racked the slide after reinserting the magazine yesterday!!! 
). I suspect you practice failure to fire drills, and a “tap and rack� would have cleared the problem. Not desirable, and the delay could prove deadly, but still better then a rock.
