This past week I had a chance to catch up with some old NYPD partners of mine. That’s a fairly technical term in the NYPD, and these guys did not meet the letter of the law. We were more like teammates, but I hope any NYPD reading this will forgive me the indulgence, as I always viewed them as partners.
The topic of gun cleaning came up since one of them remembered that I would hardly ever clean my guns. He was always surprised by that, but unlike most, he didn’t judge me for it, it just made him curious. My basic rule of thumb is that any duty grade gun I’m shooting gets cleaned when its accuracy drops off, or its cycling starts to get a little sluggish. That can range from 1000 rounds to 10,000 rounds, and I would guess that on average, I clean my pistols or carbines every few thousand rounds. That’s not to say that I don’t lube them regularly. Lube makes the world move smoother, so I make sure my guns have enough to function properly and to minimize wear.
The way I was taught to clean a gun is probably similar to however you were taught, regardless of how old you are. That procedure came about during a time when people didn’t shoot guns nearly as much as some of us do. The guns themselves were typically blued, and were finicky functioners at the best of times. The ammo they shot was much dirtier than the ammo we shoot today.
Today’s guns have much more corrosion resistant finishes, inside and out. Their tolerances are more forgiving of high round counts and hostile environments. The powder burns more completely and leaves less residue. All of this means that cleaning guns every few hundred rounds is really unnecessary. If you like to clean them that often, by all means, have at it. I prefer to shoot my guns though, and all the cleaning time I save is either more shooting time or more time for other pursuits.
I once had an instructor/administrator I worked with chew me out for sending a dirty gun back to the gunsmiths for diagnosis and repair. It was malfunctioning at an alarming rate, so I sent it in. I decided against educating him, since he didn’t know much about guns, shooting or teaching and I felt it would be a waste of time. The education would have been pretty short though, as the facts were that the gun malfunctioned whether it was clean and lubed or dirty and lubed. In addition, every good gunsmith I have worked with liked to see the guns “as is” since the dirt actually makes it easier (sometimes) to diagnose what was going on.
In any event, since this guy couldn’t shoot well, I was not really interested in his opinion about my high round count guns, the likes of which were outside his experience. Finally, I had already talked to the gunsmith it was going to and he knew what to expect. Not only was he a very good gunsmith but we were friends and he had been my “Q” branch at another agency before we both moved to where we were at the time. He ended up replacing the gun as it seemed incorrigible to him.
So, if you want to train more and clean less, modern duty grade guns will happily accomodate you. If you just prefer a clean gun, that’s fine too, just don’t go overboard and scrub the rifling smooth like the USMC used to do.
