I am new with guns. I just bought a tikka 270 wsm. I was looking it over and checking the action out and such, and I accidentaly dry fired it. Is this a bad thing?? I have heard some folks say that they dry fire their guns to get use to them. and some say that this is not good. So which is it??

Dry firing won't hurt your Tikka. It will help you get used to the trigger. But if you want to be safe, buy yourself a snap cap in the appropriate cartridge for use in dry firing.
I store all my firearms uncocked to keep the tension off the firing mechanisms.

I don't think a moderate amount of dryfiring a center fire will hurt anything, but you should NEVER dryfire a .22 or any other rimfire, as the firing pin can strike the edge of the chamber and cause serious problems. I also agree that a snapcap in your cartridge size would be good insurance.

You can dry fire that gun every day for the rest fo your life and it won't hurt it at all.

A snap cap isn't going to do squat to slow down or cushon a bolt actions firing pin. The spring pushing it is just too strong. The firing pin actually has a shoulder machined on it and this shoulder makes contact with a shoulder on the inside of the bolt and this is what stops the firing pins foward movement. Snap caps are jsut someting they tell you that you need so they can make more money.


Now snap caps are a good idea to use in side X side and O/U shotguns and rifles becasue the firing pins just float there, some on a very thin return spring, and can get hung up. But for a bolt action, or pump, or semi auto they aren't needed.

Hey Bigbulls, thanks for that bit of knowledge on the firing pins. The only snapcaps I have are for my 12ga shotguns. On my bolt actions I usually just hold the trigger back and lower the bolt to release the sear for storage. For my rimfires, I always save a couple of fired cases and use them like snap caps. Isn't it true that rimfires can have their firing pin damage from dry firing because the firing pin strikes the chamber (where the rim of the case would be). I could have sworn I read this in one of my manuals.