Stop cleaning your guns already...

How often do you clean your guns?

I just got back from a range trip the other day and as I always do, soon set the ball in motion on my post range ritual of cleaning my guns.... Everytime I do it, I always have that little voice in the back of my head saying how pointless it all is, and I quickly begin to ponder the 'is it good enough' question over and over until I finally just pack it all in. Yeah, my guns are probably nowhere near what many gunnies would consider to be clean enough. Yet I continually could care less about it all. Where does it all stem from? Well, all the experts/cool kids seem to be quietly (but repeatedly) saying that you should pretty much never clean your guns.



Dan C. Johnson From G&A:

Rob Leatham once told me he had gone more than 6,000 rounds with one of his competition guns without any cleaning whatsoever. Other top competitors seldom clean as well. They spend their time shooting, not cleaning.

RTB:

"How clean does my AR need to be?" The answer you'll receive from most military personnel will be, "Until you can't pull out any more carbon."  However, this might be a little misleading.  There IS such a thing as cleaning too much. ...  I'm not saying that you shouldn't clean your rifle.  What I'm saying is that often times most people will immediately attribute malfunctions to built up carbon, which is often not the case.

Vuurwapen Blog:

Over the past few years, I've fired a number of ARs (and a number of other weapons, for that matter) for thousands of rounds without any sort of cleaning whatsoever - in most cases, I just kept adding lubricant to the weapon. Recently, as you can see right below this post, I fired close to 3000 rounds through a 5.45 AR-15 without cleaning or lubrication.
"But how?!" you say. "The AR-15 'defecates' where it eats! I know this because people on the internet have been saying it!"

The bottom line is that cleaning for the sake of reducing malfunctions is a waste of time. Cleaning may make the weapon prettier, cleaning may make you feel better - but cleaning will not drastically improve the reliability of the weapon, unless unrealistically large round counts are being considered. 

Mike Pannone also debunks the big M4 Myth:

Fouling in the M4 is not the problem. The problem is weak springs (buffer and extractor), as well as light buffer weights (H vs. H2 or H3).

I reliably fired 2400 rounds (80 magazines) on a bone dry gun, and I would bet that is a lot more than any soldier or other armed professional will ever come close to firing without any lubrication whatsoever. So, disregard the fouling myth

So where do you stand on cleaning? Are you one of those religious zealots? Or do you give the middle finger to the mere idea of picking up a cleaning brush and some solvent? I am most definitely somewhere in the middle, but I think my willingness to actually pick up the box o' cleaning supplies is based more on a feeling of guilt rather than actual need.

*BTW - I am very interested in knowing where you competition shooters who are reading this stand on the matter.

Fouling in the M4 is not the problem. The problem is weak springs (buffer and extractor), as well as light buffer weights (H vs. H2 or H3).

Source: DefenseReview.com (http://s.tt/13fjv)

Fouling in the M4 is not the problem. The problem is weak springs (buffer and extractor), as well as light buffer weights (H vs. H2 or H3).

Source: DefenseReview.com (http://s.tt/13fjv)

Fouling in the M4 is not the problem. The problem is weak springs (buffer and extractor), as well as light buffer weights (H vs. H2 or H3).

Source: DefenseReview.com (http://s.tt/13fj