I’ve recently been reading Mike Rayburn’s excellent new book Tactical Urban Rifle and was reminded that not everyone does the following type of dry-fire practice.
During one of the early chapters in his book, Rayburn describes the problems which arise when you practice clearing your house with your inert “Blue Gun” training device (or, a safely cleared and checked rifle).
In essence, he speaks about some of the visibility issues you’ll have in hallways and tight corners when you have the rifle in a proper “cheek weld” as you move about the place. I won’t get into too much of that here (Mike’s book is highly recommended if you want to learn more about his solutions to this issue!), but do want to get back to the basic matter of using inert, replica firearms in dry-fire practice.
There are myriad drills you can do with these tools, and I’m a big believer in them, but perhaps the most useful single drill I’ve encountered is the process of clearing your own home. You know your house intimately — you know where the floors creak and which hinges squeak — but even still, it can be a very good exercise to practice your movements in such an environment.
Take this concept one step further. It’s even better if you have a buddy who does something similar in his or her house, and you can practice together, with the “home” person watching and critiquing the “visiting” person as they clear a relatively unfamiliar environment.
This is the type of off-duty, dry-fire practice that can take very little time, but have tremendous benefits for not just your tactical movements, but your tactical mindset when the time arises in real world where it really counts.
