I figured I'd make a page where I share things I've come up with about guns.
Snap caps are basically dummy rounds. You can get away with dry firing a gun, but to keep it working longer you should use snap caps when you want to do something like test the mechanisms or trigger the firing pin to take tension off the spring (another thing to increase longevity) without firing a live round. My Sig pistol does this thing where if you dry fire it sort of locks up, where it's not impossible, but a lot harder to pull the bolt back. I have to cover it with my shirt for grip. I don't know if it's a design flaw or if it's supposed to happen, but even if it's a flaw I'm actually fine with it, just because like I said you really don't want to dry fire a gun anyway. So what I do is since I happen to have six .22 lr snap caps, so I keep one in each magazine. That way when I'm not counting shots and I run out the gun simply clicks and doesn't lock up, because it's striking the snap cap like it's an ordinary round. So if you have removable magazines, I would make the first round you put in be a snap cap every time you reload. Just make sure you watch where they fall when you eject them because I've had a hell of a time distinguishing mine among the brass on the ground.
As much as I would like to in case of an emergency, I don't keep my mags loaded. Unless I plan on going shooting in the next couple days, I don't load my mags ahead of time. I wouldn't keep mags loaded indefinitely only because of fear that all that tension against the springs will bend it into shape until they don't push up as they need to to hold up the rounds. I wish I could keep them fully loaded all the time, but I really don't think it's a good idea.