Leaving an air rifle cocked? There is a growing concern around this question and that’s why you will bump into it in nearly all active airgunner platforms on the internet. What are the implications of this practice? Is it bad to leave an airgun cocked?
Generally speaking, it’s bad to leave an airgun cocked for long periods of time. Under the tension, the spring gets stressed and weakens over time if the air rifle is not well made. This may affect the airgun’s velocity. A cocked airgun is ready to fire and this is not good for anyone’s safety.
With that said, spring piston and PCP-powered air rifles are the main victims when it comes to the weakening of the springs.
However, for gas or nitro-piston air rifles, you may leave them cocked as long as you want without worrying about any mechanical harm.
We’ll dissect this topic in detail right next. So, carry on with reading and you will get informed.
Is It Bad to Leave an Airgun Cocked? (Into Details)
This question entirely depends on which air rifle you are carrying. There are spring-piston air rifles and PCPs. Then there are gas rams and nitro piston air rifles.
Let’s guess what would make you even think to leave the air rifle cocked. One could be that you are stalking a tricky prey that might give you no time to cock, load, and also shoot before it bolts.
In such a situation, where the air rifle stays only for a short time cocked, there is no harm at all to the gun. And, you can leave it cocked as much as the circumstances dictate in the field.
The most important thing, however, is to make sure that the safety button is on. You don’t want to accidentally shoot something or even yourself.
The moment prey is not in vision, you can always de-cock the air rifle and only re-cock after seeing it. That will help the weaker air rifles to survive.
What else would make you leave an air rifle cocked? Forgetting. This is probably what happens most of the time. Yet, it’s a really dangerous thing to happen if you are keeping the gun away in the store.
If you forget to decock your air rifle and stored it in that state, you risk accidental shooting. The air rifle could just fire on its own in any case it dropped on the ground accidentally. That would potentially cause problems to anybody around.
Back to the springer and PCP air rifles. Both have springs – the spring in the compression chamber of springers and hammer spring in PCPs.
Definitely, the two types of guns can be cocked and left but only for a short time. If the cocking is prolonged to days, months, and years, the springs are going to be no more because they weaken.
How Do I Know If an Air Rifle Has Been Cocked?
Do you know that carrying a cocked air rifle in a public space is a criminal offense? It could lay you right into the wrong side of the law. Think about a scenario like an unintentional squeeze of the trigger sending a blast of a shot down the barrel.
Luckily, you can easily know if the gun is cocked by gently breaking the barrel or activating the lever. If there is some fairly strong resistance, then your air rifle isn’t cocked. But in any case, there is little or no resistance, your air rifle is already cocked.
Being aware of this, therefore, it’d be super-important to know whether an air rifle has been cocked or not. This safety precaution is particularly of huge essence for newbies because of familiarity issues.
The feeling of when it’s cocked and when it’s not will help you protect you and other people and things around the air rifle.
If you do not intend to fire an air rifle, you don’t have to cock it. Even if there is no pellet in the air rifle, it’s still dangerous and harmful to leave it cocked for long.
This is because it could result in dry firing which is a dangerous thing in spring-piston air rifles. Dry-firing damages the piston of the air rifles.
How Long Can You Leave a PCP Cocked?
One of the more understandable fears about air rifles is having them cocked for a long time. It does occur not only to springers but also to PCPs, which then begs the question of how long can you leave a PCP cocked?
As a whole, you are strongly advised not to leave a PCP cocked and yet not in use. This bears not only serious mechanical damage to the hammer spring if the whole thing is prolonged but also places your safety in danger due to accidental discharge.
There are instances when the quarry is in sight and you don’t want the delays caused by cocking. We would say, leaving it cocked at this point is okay because the time you will take to shoot is quite short.
But leaving the PCP airgun cocked for a long time like several days to months, and even to years will surely damage its spring and especially if the gun in question is not of good quality. And that’s the beginning of reduced velocity and generally bad performance.
Besides, how would you trust the automatic safety system of the modern PCP airguns? If it fails, you are looking at a serious safety nightmare in the event of an accident.
With many airgunners holding different opinions on this subject, after all is said and done, it comes down to one person. You. If you are worried about something, don’t cock and leave your air rifle in that state. Read more on this topic here.
How to Cock a Spring Piston Air Rifle?
If you are a new air rifle user, you may have many problems operating it. One of them is how to cock an air rifle.
And this can become are a real problem for many people to the point of some supposing a likely mechanical failure. So, how do you safely cock a break barrel air rifle?
The proper way to cock a spring-piston rifle begins with bracing the butt high on your leg (just below the hip joint). Then slap the end of the barrel, at the muzzle strongly and sharply enough to open the breech. Finally, you pull down the end of the barrel and there you have the action broken.
For the shooters who simply break the barrel and the muzzle drops a few inches and think they’re done, it never stops there. You need to really learn to slap the muzzle.
The modern springers are designed to require plenty of force to cock. If you don’t know how much power is needed to have them cocked, you might think they are defective.
But why would they be hard nuts to crack in the first place? Because they must never leak air pressure that’s sealed inside. So the mechanisms involved in the locking of barrels are designed very strongly to resist leakages of air.
Slapping the muzzle down equals a karate chop and will take someone a great deal of time to master and execute the slap with real zip to it.
When you are breaking the barrel, prepare to handle hundreds of pounds of effort. Many air rifles today come with mainsprings that may require at least 150 pounds of energy to force compression.
Does Leaving an Air Rifle Cocked Weaken the Spring?
Leaving an air rifle cocked for long is an anti-thesis of proper airgun use. The biggest concern has been whether or not the practice leads to a weakened spring in some air rifles
.
There is information everywhere on the internet concerning cocking and how long an air rifle should stay cocked. But the most important thing to note is the quality of the air rifle in question.
A not-so-well-made air rifle does not offer a strong spring. If the springs are compressed over a long long period of time –spanning months and years, there could be a chance of spring fatigue.
If this happens, your air rifle fails to shoot well. But in any case, you are just leaving it cocked within a short or reasonable period of time, there shouldn’t be any worry of weakening a spring.
Can I Leave a CO2 Cartridge in My Pellet Gun?
After the business of shooting, do you need to remove the CO2 cartridges when storing the air rifle or is it okay if you stored the gun with them?
Strictly speaking, you are not supposed to leave a CO2 cartridge in your pellet gun while storing the gun. If this happens, you risk ruining the seals. Also, it is not just safe practice.
Final Thoughts: Is It Bad to Leave an Airgun Cocked?
Generally, just leaving an airgun cocked without reason is not a good idea. What you are rather doing is exposing anything or people around it to danger.
If the airgun fell accidentally and fired, you can imagine what happens if someone was around. On top of that, the springs of some air rifles may not withstand continuous compression without getting damaged.
