Is the gas piston a new thing?
I remember the first time I pulled the trigger on an AR15 rifle I thought it was the rich boy gun. Back in the 1990s there was a mentality on the State Game ranges I use to dwell on where a certain level of snotty attitudes went with the expensive firearms. Since just about everyone and there dog owns a 5.56 AR 15 now, I don’t really look at it that way anymore. The new trend in 5.56 calibers is to move away from the direct impingement and towards a gas piston driven gun. There are plenty of people that can honestly claim that their AR15s don’t give them problems, but now that I know more about firearms, this is because they are maintaining their firearms properly.
Alth0ugh you can get the job done with a DI gun, I really have to say the that biggest reason I would want the United States Military to change to an H&K 416 style weapon is so our troops don’t have to break down their guns every day and do as much maintanace. If we all drove a car that got 75 miles to the gallon, but needed an oil change every 500 miles, I think we get annoyed at how much time we are spending changing the oil filter or dropping it off to get done every month. The beauty of market we are in is that piston conversion kits are being made for many of the DI guns and for a few hundred bucks we can convert everything over.
Today I took my newest LWRC rifle to the range to break it in. This is a combat rifle and I expect that it eventually get pretty beat up, but it’s always a good idea to run through some firing drills before you rely on it. Some of the biggest malfuntion problems I have seen on the firing line were with supposedely brand new out of the box rifles. Sometimes there are bugs or issues that are easy to fix, but you really need to put some lead down range with your rifle or pistol before you rely on it. I’ve mentioned before about a time when I saw a guy show up with a Beretta 92FS inox pistol and it jammed after every round. The shooter was very frustrated because this was it’s first range trip. Well, turns out that the pistol was bone dry and had absolutely zero lubrication on it and with one wipe down, the gun ran flawlessly. The same should go for any firearm. I strongly suggest cleaning guns every once in awhile, even if you haven’t shot them. Lubrication can run off of guns or drain off, and I also highly recommend using a small level of grease on even pistols, especially if they may sit in a gun safe for long periods of time.
Cleaning more than one rifle at a time can be a really pain in the neck. Depending on the number of calibers you are using, you’ll have to change each brush you use, each punch, and each cleaning patch to properly clean your rifle or pistols. I never really felt the need to change from a traditonal rifle rod to any fancy gun cleaning kits for a long time. Some of these gun cleaning kits look very nice, but the reality is there are several cleaning kits out there that have made traditional gun cleaning obsolete. Granted, I will have to say that I do have a few friends that sweat that they still need to use their cleaning rods to clean bolt action sub-moa rifles, because Otis gun cleaning kits and bore snakes aren’t 100%. I’ll have to leave that up to personal choice, but I don’t see it.