I have no place here that will allow you to actually draw the gun from its holster. So without being able to practice drawing the weapon and running drills, will just punching holes in paper keep you trained for real world defense?
Also, I can't see any real benefit in dry firing. Other than trigger pull practice there is no comparison to felt recoil. So if all you have access to is paper punching, do you feel confident in your shooting abilities if thrown into a real gun fight?
This is why I would think an airsoft type pistol to practice in ones backyard would be very helpful. You could actually draw from a holster and actually shoot at a target while moving.
Your thoughts?
NO offense intended, but this makes me think you haven't been shooting long or haven't done much study.
Every serious shooter I've ever talked with or read espouses the value of dry fire. Many of the best shooters report 50:1 and up dry to live practice. This matters when your talking about guys that shoot thousands of rounds per year. Partly it's a cost thing partly it's training your body where you can break down and isolate minute movements w/o the confounding of recoil. Partly it's just repetition. I recently was reading a bit from a world champion who said at some point on range days he feels a deterioration with live rounds and needs to return to dry practice to maintain top form.
My own very limited experience with an air soft pistol was that it was to inherently inaccurate/variable for anything but speed work on large targets. Perhaps high end guns are better. For training gross movements, movements and trigger discipline i.e. Finger off till on target they are fine. The more finite your training goal the more problems you'll have I think.
My range doesn't allow draw from a holster either, but my home does. I unload- verbalized to myself and double check then do a bit of holster practice.
If you really want to get good then it's a whole different game. Gotta train and work on each little part then putting it all together. Draw, grip, sights, trigger, recoil, follow up, malfunctions, awareness etc etc.
Good luck and enjoy the process, it's a big challenge but I'm having fun along the way.