Do you know first hand of breaking a firing pin by dry firing (poll)

[ParadiseRoad]

...a week or two ago...I bought a Crescent Empire 60 Hammerless double barrel shotgun...it is in very nice shape for it's age...made in 1927...I had never before seen a firing pin break from dry firing...and of course I was dry firing away when the rear trigger for the left barrel quit clicking...I opened the action several more times to cock the action...and then it happened...a small piece of the stock right behind the top of the action exited...and laying in the hole was the rear portion of the left firing pin...I have a lathe...so I will be making two new firing pins for it...and the small chip out of the stock fits back in perfectly...so all should be good again...but now I can say I have experienced a firing pin broken by dry firing...

 

[CO_Kid]

A buddy brought me a Colt trooper MKIII with a busted firing pin once to see if I could did it. It was from dry firing but the MKIII had a specific warning to only dry fire with caps to keep the sintered pin from breaking.

 

[YogiBear]

Aloha,

While I did not personally see it, I was told by the folks

at a LGS I used to frequent, that one of their good customers,

a Federal Agent was fond of dry firing his Smith back up.

The gunsmith asked to see it and found that the firing pin had broken,

he fixed it for the agent.

It was the agent's back up gun.

 

[Sevens]

I did it. Or rather, it was very likely that I did it, although it could have been my Dad or one of my brothers, but odds were, it was my dry fire that did the deed because I'm certain that I did the highest volume of dry firing.

The gun was a rifle, a .22cal Browning semi-auto, the very classy little take-down model, the one that is tube-fed through the butt-stock with a bottom-eject, this is a Grade 1 rifle, but extremely classy and beautiful as "old .22 rifles" go.

A friend of the family got the new firing pin and replaced it for us.

 

[rwsmith]

Wha-a--a-a-a-a??????

That's the only gun I've ever broken a firing pin on.

I don't know about yours, but my CZ 52's hammer release lever performs the same action as the trigger.

Are you saying you can fire it by operating the decocker??? This is one reason I had a difficult time accepting semi autos. Older, foreign and less dependable designs were just jinky enough to have an occasional AD. I really need to get the details on this but a well versed gun friend of mine just manipulated the slide and had an AD.

 

[Dave_n]

Broke the nose off of a CZ52 firing pin while dry firing. Found out the original firing pins were cast. Replaced with an aftermarket milled firing pin from Makarov.com.

Class III

This was a major problem when the CZ52's first came in. I have one from roughly 22 years ago and it came with a warning in reasonable English not to dry fire ever! Dave_n

 

[2152hq]

I just fixed an Ithaca NID shotgun (1930's) with a broken firing pin.
The gun had been dry fired to demonstrate the single trigger and ejectors functioning correctly.
The ejectors didn't ,,and the left firing pin broke the tip off of it sometime during one of those show and tell sessions.

The ejectors work now and a new pin was made and installed and functions fine.

Stuff wears out,,stuff breaks,,it's just a machine like any other.

Broken firing pins are not uncommon in shotguns that I see. Most of them see a lot of use in Sporting Clays and other target games.
But the majority of the guns I work on are older (pre-1965 or so). Many are vintage guns approaching or over 100 yrs old.
So that age factor has to be taken into account not knowing their round count or how they were treated.

I just normally have a rule that says don't dry fire. It saves a lot of repairs, but things can still break, even on the first time out.