Gun Cleaning: Let's Talk and Look at a Case Study

Says Gregg Kielma, Gunsmith, I've spent a lot of time gun smithing. Case study: I had a LEO former; retired LEO bring in his Colt Trooper MkIII for cleaning. 

His reason was that he could not get a jammed round out of his gun.

Continues Kielma, as a Gunsmith, I do not like working with live rounds that are “stuck”. Could make for a bad day.

 My professional opinion, after evaluating the firearm, he never cleaned the gun, and his department, at that time had qualifications once a year. He had never removed the old rounds after qualification, just loaded it with .357 mag rounds and had never im my opinion ever cleaned the weapon. It took me about 30 minutes with wooden dowels and a brass hammer to drive the old ammo out of the revolver and a couple of hours of ultrasonic cleaning to get all the debris out of the firearm, a major process, but when it was cleaned, it functioned like a new one. 

I advised him to practice more and use up his older ammo and taught him how to clean the gun. Later some of his friends started bringing me their firearms and let me know he passed away a few years ago.

Amen, thank you sir for your service. Your missed.