Self Defense Skills: Dry Fire Handgun Training

 Dry Fire Should be a Mainstay

This is common knowledge among pistol experts that compete and trainers who teach handgun skills.  Yet, most people spend almost no time with this method of practice and rather just go to the range with a box of 50 round of ammunition and think they've done enough training.

Dry Fire - the secret to better shooting 
This is a good article on the subject and the reasoning behind the need for dry fire training.

Alternatives - There are other ways to get your trigger and gun handling skill practice.

Practice Guns/ Dummy Guns - They sell these specifically to practice handling and trigger pull practice.  I've used a number of them and used them to the point where the mechanism broke.  Rather than spending the money on that you might consider just getting a BB gun with a pistol design that also has a realistic trigger.

My favorite is the  Daisy 980415-242 Hunting Air Pistol.  You can find these online or at your local Wal Mart.  The nice thing about this Co2 pistol is that not only does it work for dry fire but it is great for inexpensive simulated live fire practice.  It fits a holster for many full size semi-auto handguns and holsters for the HK P30 fit very well.  BB gun practice using draw and fire while engaging multiple targets can be done safely in places that you couldn't use for live ammunition.