The Tactical Edge – March

The Importance of Cleaning and Checking Your Equipment   

Alright folks, in previous blogs we’ve explained how to use your firearm properly along with various techniques and maneuvers to protect yourself in different situations. Now, we want to discuss the importance of both cleaning and inspecting your equipment both before and while using it. It sounds very easy, but if you miss something, it could possibly endanger you or someone around you. Everybody cleans their gun after they shoot, right? The statistics on that answer might boggle your mind. I’ve heard people say that when they shoot, the first bullet cleans the barrel from what was there when they shot before. Really? The copper, carbon, lead and grease continually build up to the point where they impact your accuracy to a great degree. Even when you buy a new gun, the grease and oil used at the factory to prevent corrosion until the gun is purchased is enough to cause your firearm to jam on a semi auto pistol. I know this from experience. Two of my new semi-autos were taken to the range to test their accuracy. I didn’t clean them first. I had multiple mis-feeds until I cleaned the factory grease out of them. The more precision made your firearm is, the more of a problem that factory grease can be. Even the lubricant in the barrel can affect your accuracy. 

There are no hard and fast rules for when you should clean your gun. If you look on the Internet you will see all kinds of answers to the cleaning question. Some people clean their gun after each use while others never bother. Does it matter? I can approach this from a couple different ways. Is your gun a precision firearm? Is it made to close tolerances to be highly accurate? If your answer is yes to those two questions, then cleaning will definitely improve the effectiveness and accuracy of it. What is your intended use for your gun? If you are carrying it for self-defense or to protect others, then you definitely wanted to work effectively. Your life might depend on it. There are other reasons for cleaning your firearms that I will address shortly. If you’re just shooting tin cans and harmless pieces of paper, then cleaning isn’t that important. Retired military and law enforcement tend to clean their guns after every shooting session. Because of their training, they feel that a clean gun prevents malfunctions. One retired police officer told me, “Clean them as if your life depends on it.” This is somewhat true. Dirty semi-automatic guns tend to fail-to-fire (FTF) and failure-to-feed (FTF) more often than when the gun is clean. If you’re carrying and are suddenly involved in a life-threatening situation, having an “FTF” can get you killed. I hope you’re starting to see that a clean gun is more desirable to have. If you’re like me, I tend to find inexpensive bulk ammunition when I can get it for use at the range. Part of the time, this ends up being surplus military ammunition. Black powder, most Berdan-primed and a lot of military surplus ammunition is corrosive. This means there are salts in the ammo’s primer. These salts will damage your gun. If you shoot a gun using corrosive ammunition, you should clean it after each shooting session. This corrosive ammunition when left in your gun will corrode the steel and cause rust. It will also damage the rifling and impact the accuracy of your firearm. Today’s precision made firearms are not inexpensive. That alone should make you want to take care of them.

What is “corrosive” ammunition? Corrosive ammunition is ammunition that uses a primer that has chemicals that when ignited leave a residue of corrosive salts. Most often these primers have potassium chlorate, or sodium petrochlorate which, when burned, decompose into potassium chloride or sodium chloride. Sharp-eyed readers will note that sodium chloride is also known as common table salt. Potassium chloride isn’t much different than common table salt, and both are very hygroscopic (meaning that they attract water) and, because of that, highly corrosive. We’ve all seen what salt water does to metal. The same thing happens to your rifle when it is left uncleaned after firing corrosive ammunition. Potassium chloride and sodium chloride are pretty harmless alkalis, but when exposed to the hydrogen and oxygen from the ambient humidity in the air they can form a powerful acid that will cause the steel in your rifle to rust and pit.

Most modern ammunition is not corrosive, but old military surplus ammo is different. For surplus ammunition, there are two main types of primers: Berdan and Boxer. Boxer-primed ammunition is not corrosive, so you don’t have to worry about it. Not all Berdan is corrosive, but almost all of the surplus ammunition you find on the market with Berdan primers is corrosive. If your ammunition is Berdan primed, it’s better to be safe than sorry and treat the ammunition as if it is corrosive. Corrosive ammunition is perfectly fine to use. The corrosive surplus ammunition on the market is a great inexpensive way to enjoy your firearm. By properly cleaning your gun after using ammunition that is or is suspected to be corrosive, you can ensure that your gun has a long and corrosion-free life.

This brings me to the next important reason to clean your firearms. It gives you a chance to look it over for mechanical problems, such as a broken firing pin, broken spring, loose screws, or anything else that can impact your ability to use it when needed. Also, and this could be a critical point, it gives you a chance to see what’s inside of it. I’m talking about things that inadvertently end up in the barrel or the breach and go unnoticed until you fire the gun and the barrel bulges or explodes. It’s a very slight possibility but it increases over time for stored firearms. I’m grasping at straws here, but I have known people that had it happen to them.

You aren’t doing anything wrong if you clean your gun after every range visit. Some find it relaxing and therapeutic. Others just love breaking down their gun and putting it back together.  One seasoned shooter I know says, “If it doesn’t work dirty, than it’s not a dependable gun.”  Whatever your cleaning routine is, it is important to remember that guns are a machine, periodic maintenance never hurts it and will only keep it in proper working order. The most critical task of any firearm maintenance plan is a good inspection. You should be familiar enough with your firearm to know if something doesn't look right and you should have an idea of how long each gun or gun part has been in service. If you shoot a lot, failing parts will generally reveal themselves over time.

‘Nuff said! What about the rest of your equipment? When is the last time you checked the other equipment that you use? Is your holster still functional? Do you know how to use it? Do you actually pay attention when you put it on? This reminds me of a funny story that I was told by another instructor. He is one of those people who only takes his gun off when he goes to bed. His habits are so ingrained that he doesn’t think when he puts it on. It’s an automatic thing. It seems he and his wife were at the local gym and he had changed into his gym outfit and just clipped his concealed carry holster to the inside of his gym shorts. Sounds simple enough but he didn’t double check what he did. A short while later while running on the treadmill, he could feel the holster sliding forward on his waistband. Just about the time he thought he should stop and readjust the holster, the holster containing the gun fell out of his shorts and went tumbling down the treadmill and out onto a floor filled with a group of women exercising. To say that he was slightly embarrassed doesn’t express the reaction he got from that group of women when they saw it slide into their group. The gun was fully loaded and being carried cocked and locked. It was a scary sight! When he attached the gun holster to his gym shorts, he didn’t get it fully attached. Had he double checked, this would’ve been prevented. This is a funny story but it could’ve been tragic also.

Any equipment that you use or carry should always be checked. Things like magazine pouches, your magazines or speed loaders, your mace containers if you carry them. Did you ever go to reload on the range and find that your magazine that you took out of your magazine pouch was empty? What if that happened while you were on the street and suddenly found yourself in a confrontation? What if your magazines were full but they didn’t function right? A full magazine is useless if the bullets don’t feed into your firearm’s breach. These are things that you need to know ahead of time not at the time. “At the time” may be too late during an armed confrontation. I have another funny story, but it could have been a sad story also. Police officers are required to periodically qualify with their firearms. The timing and frequency of this varies by state and jurisdiction. Where I came from, this was done semiannually. While running qualifications, the officer had to unload his firearm and present it for inspection prior to going on to the range. I happen to be present when an officer arrived who was a village constable for a small community in our County. After introducing himself and stating that he was required to come for qualification before he could go back on duty, we asked him to take his gun out, empty it and make it safe. That was the start of his problems. He was having trouble removing it from his holster. It was an older revolver and the leather of the holster looked in bad shape. After he got it out, he tried to open the cylinder with some difficulty and was unable to remove the ammunition. The bullets were a strange shade of blue-green and very corroded. He was sent outside with his gun until we could retrieve a hammer and wooden dowel at which time we literally pounded the cartridges out of the cylinder. He was sent away with instructions to thoroughly clean and inspect his gun before he comes back and also his holster which had mold and gunk in it. This person was a town constable in a small community that had very few incidents requiring police action. He was also the local dogcatcher at the same time. Luckily, he had gotten by up to that point without needing his firearm because I guarantee you that it would not function the way it was intended.

Guns are arguably the most critical tools of our concealed carry or self-defense plan. When everything else fails, we have to resort to our trusty firearms to save lives, sometimes our own. That being the case, proper maintenance and inspection is paramount. We need to know our rifle/pistol/shotgun is not only going to shoot true, but shoot at all. This same thing holds true for you the shooter. Are you functioning the way you should be? Do you double check what you’re doing? A fully functioning firearm is only as good as a fully functioning operator. We should all be fully functioning operators. But, at the same time, we should all be looking out for each other to make sure that we all are fully functioning. If you research what we have discussed here, you will not find one absolute rule that everybody agrees on. What we recommend to our friends and students here at Black Mamba Tactical is “Treat all of your equipment as if your life depends on it…it very well could!”

 Well that wraps up another month’s issue of the blog.  We hope you’re reading it, enjoying it, and most of all, benefiting from it. If you have comments, please send them to us.  We love to get email.  In the meantime, keep your gun clean and your powder dry and take someone to a shooting range or training class with you. You owe it to them to improve their skills and enjoy our sport.