A few thoughts on the topic and comments above.
1) How much is enough and how much is too much? If you can consistently dry for with a penny balanced on the front blade and not knock it off, your grip, trigger control, and follow through is good enough to dry fire a lot less.
2) "For me the issue isn't trigger or flinching control since I do not compete in Bullseye competition." Welcome to the legion of shooters who consistently shoot poorly. Let me give you an example:
A couple years ago while I was in MN for awhile and was shooting at an indoor range. I happened to be shooting bullseye that day, just because it's a good skill to maintain as it demands mastery of the same basics that generalize to all your other handgun shooting. A young police officer, a friend of his and his friend's girlfriend arrived in the lane next to me. Mr. LEO obviously wanted to impress them with his rapid shooting ability and began scattering 9mm para rounds all over a zombie target at 5 yards. It was really poor shooting. Period.
Shortly after I ran my target frame back in and removed my 25 yards short course targets with consistently small groups on them.
Mr. LEO said "I see you are into that accuracy stuff. I'm into shooting fast", apparently thinking that in some way excused his really poor shooting. I nodded and ran out two reduced size bullseye targets one about 2 ft above the other to the 10 yard line. I then drew my concealed carry 1911 and did three failure to stop drills (a double tap to the bottom target and a third shot to the head) at a rate of fire that was faster then Mr. LEOs go fast shooting.
He looked at the small groups in the black on each target and then looked at me. I told him "it's all accuracy stuff".
I hope he really took that to heart as ALL handgun rounds are inadequate in terms of incapacitation and shot placement ALWAYS matters. I suspect he didn't as he packed up and left not long after.
He's pretty typical of the guys I see shooting pistols on non private ranges. They get in a hurry to shoot fast and ignore the value of the basics of sight picture, grip, trigger control and follow through. They never realize that with proper training and skill development they can shoot both fast and accurately. With enough training and repetition your well developed grip and muscle memory ensures the sights are always aligned as the pistol rises into your line of sight, and good trigger control lets you keep the sights aligned as the front sight comes on target and you release the shot.
But you do you. If you say so, then trigger and flinching control doesn't matter.
3) wear and tear on the gun. The M9 is a good example. The US Army had issues with its M9s suffering high rates of fire control parts breakage on comparatively low round count pistols. A friend of mine, a former Army marksmanship minor armorer, was asked to look into it. He started with the units experiencing the high rates of breakage and how they used the guns. It didn't take him long to understand the problem. In some units where they were carried daily and or on a shift basis, the pistols were function checked each time they were checked out and then function checked when they were turned back in.
Worse were pistols in training units where pistols were function checked multiple times as part of training drills.
The US Army function check, dropped the slide, then included two trigger pull and hammer falls to check DA function followed by racking the slide again with another hammer fall to check SA trigger function followed by more abuse to check decocker function.
Do that even twice a day for a couple decades and you'll start getting breakage due to embrittlement of the fire control, parts due to repeated impacts
Walther PP series pistols, especially the older pistols have a known issue of potential fire control parts breakage. The PP was the first modern DA pistol and it incorporated a DA/SA trigger with a decocking safety lever. Like the M9, each time it is decocked the hammer falls on the decocker and over time the hammer and decocker become increasingly brittle until they eventually break.
In both the M9 and the PP the issue is that fire control parts are made of comparatively soft still to provide the toughness required to withstand repeated impacts, while being face hardened to give them the surface hardness needed to not wear out from metal to metal contact.
Over time the large number of repeated impacts causes the hard, but brittle crystalline structure on the part's surface to migrate deeper into the structure of the part. Eventually the part becomes to hard and brittle to with stand the shock of the impacts and it fails.
In that regard, on my PP pistols, I don't dry fore them, and I use my thumb to manually lower the hammer when I decock the pistol. Why beat up the hammer and decocker on an administrative reload, etc?
The same is true with my 1st, 2nd and 3rd gen S&W pistols.
However, on my current production pistols and 1911s where parts are readily available, I'll dry fire them with no significant concern as the hammer and firing pins can be replaced, although I have spares on hand that I have never had to use.
On a 1911 the hammer is tough as nails and if anything fails due to dry firing it's the inertial firing pin which ends up with all he energy and doesn't pass it on to a primer of the chamber is empty. However, on the hammer cocked SA operated 1911, you can install a snap cap to absorb the energy transferred to the firing pin and dry fire it with no worry at all, and no need to cycle the slide.
