If you dry fire a rim fire gun, the firing pin is going to strike on the outside edge of the barrel. If you do it enough, either the firing pin or the barrel is going to chip or deform. If you use spent cartridges, you are likely going to keep hitting the same spot and any cushion the shell provides will be gone after the first couple of strikes.

Buy some snap caps and your guns will last a lot longer. They are made to take the repeated impact from firing.

I partially agree. Not all rimfire guns strike on the breech when empty. Slide a piece of white cardstock in against the breech face and close the slide. Squeeze the trigger. Open the slide and pull out the card. If there is no impact mark on the card stock from the firing pin, your gun is fine for dry fire. It's not reaching the breech face.

Check this frequently, as things move around through lots of shooting, but most modern rimfires can now be dryfired. The tolerances are better then years ago I guess.

I got this off the rimfirecentral.com forum.

JeffWard

so, definitely not on DA or SA revolvers but maybe on semiauto's?
and use snap caps

It has never bothered my Ruger Single Six's

If I was going to make it a habit of dryfiring the gun without snap caps, I'd check with the manufacturer before I got too crazy with it.

The book for my 2206 says to dryfire to drop the hammer, but also says that excessive dryfiring will damage the gun.

If you use the snap caps, you will be OK with any of them - or - be safe and use protection!

***EDIT***
I just looked at a couple of manuals for rimfire guns. It seems like the newer ones can be dryfired without causing any harm to the gun. Live and learn!

My Ruger MKII has to be dry fired to disassemble for cleaning, Other than that I always kinda preferred having a round in the chamber when I pulled the trigger.