Striker fired question

[mikemc53]

OK, this may seem like a stupid question to those more experienced but here goes.

This CM9 is my first striker fired pistol, and overall I have little experience even with the hammer fired semi-autos that I own, so I was wondering:

Every time the slide is racked the striker is "staged" so to speak. When I am dry firing or just working the slide to break in the gun, do I need to pull the trigger every time the slide is racked? Or is it OK to rack the slide multiple times without releasing the striker? I'd hate to find out after the fact that I had caused some issues with the gun by not releasing the striker each time the slide was racked.

Also, I'm a snap cap guy, but from what I've read by Kahr it seems that dry firing is OK even without snap caps or dummy rounds...thoughts?

Thanks gang.

By the way...love this pistol so far.

[scosgt]

You should be able to dry fire without any issues and there is no need to pull the trigger every time you rack the slide. Racking the slide makes the gun better, not worse.

[dkmatthews]

You're not going to hurt it. Just enjoy it!

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 4

[ripley16]

Also, I'm a snap cap guy, but from what I've read by Kahr it seems that dry firing is OK even without snap caps or dummy rounds...thoughts?

Any pistol movement will wear and stress parts that are "snapped" together. That said; some guns are designed to allow dry firing more than others. Your Kahr must be dry fired every time you disassemble it.

Snap caps and dummy rounds are not the same thing. Snap caps are meant to have the firing pin strike it, dummy rounds not so.

[CJB]

Snap caps are not needed.

The only firearms that "need" snap caps are some rimfire actions, and some shotgun actions.

Rimfires that lack a firing pin stop, or whose firing pin stop is questionable, is likely to put a ding in the rim part of the chamber if dry fired. Just about everything since WWII can be dry fired... but there are a few exceptions.

There are some older shotguns - mostly very old doubles, such as Lefeve, etc, may suffer broken firing pins and/or cracked firing pin openings when dry fired. Again, rare items.

So snap away.

[scosgt]

Ithaca 37 should not be dry fired. They do indeed break firing pins.

[muggsy]

Dry firing may work harden the striker causing it to crystallize and fail. I doubt that any of us will ever dry fire our Kahr pistols enough times to cause that to happen, but it is possible.

[jocko]

anythng\ is possable. hell we elected a black/white president..

[CJB]

I'll buy drinks if he the said executive crystializes and fails.

~~~

On another note - the term "crystalizes and fails" is a total wives tale. This comes from old time guns with overly haid firing pins, without proper stops, which would have failed anyway, and which dry firing only hastened the process. Sometimes, entire lines of guns were prone to this.....

Its a bit like the "acid free" gun cleaners. Another wives tale that started with the though that acid in the ammo, or acidic residue caused barrel rusting. Same thing goes for "acid" in the sweat, or from one's hands. Total hogwash... its salt, not acit. But acid free solvents sell, while salt free solvents are.... expected to be salt free. I mean who puts salt in their solvent? Pepper... maybe,but not salt.

Old 37's do fail in the FP dept. The later ones, before they quite making them, were redesigned with a proper firing pin stop and those should last next to forever. I think they revamped that gun in the eaerly 70's and at the sasme time took out the slam fire "feature" as well.

[jocko]

wen Ithaca was sold out and anuutter cmpany wasmakingum they had a hammer interupter in them, but to my knowledge ver original Ithaca 37 until they closed their doors were not. Notsaying that s alm fire would hapen every time but if u held in on the trigger and racked the pump, the hammer would follow.. We sold 37's for over 40 years and they were all old style and I never had a broken firing pin EVER. I think that is also anb old wives tale also. If I recall back then the actions never had a even split second hang back where as the slide was goin forard and the hammer was a tad behind, therefore giving it some momentum. The hammer was merely followinfg the slide bolt as if it was one moving peace. That made it very hard for a real slam fire to happen. I certainly never had a customer report of that andI owned one since age 16 and hard telling how mayt thousands of duck, dove,squirrel, deer rounds that gun had through it. best pump I ever owned. It is now my grandsons. It was one of the under 855,000 numbers where backthen every pump under that number had to go back to Ithaca to have the barrel treaded to fit that particular gun. Send hundreds back then in the day to. We were Goodyear dealers back in the day and they had a car and home catalog and in this catalog they had guns, . that is what got me started in the gun business inside of my fatersw tire business. Model 42 back then was $99 ad the Model 37 back then was $94. Nobody watned the Model 42, as back then people werehunting for food more than sport..