Why You Should Shoot Your Gun AFTER Cleaning it

 

The title sounds pretty confusing, shoot your gun after cleaning?  Wouldn’t that negate the entire cleaning?

The idea is, that after take apart your gun to clean it, you have to put it back together and perform a function check, but since you don’t actually fire it, you aren’t 100% sure that the gun works.

In several law enforcement courses I have taken I have heard anecdotal stories of an unnamed police officer that has some essential piece inside their pistol break during cleaning at the annual firearm re-qualification, carried the inoperable firearm all year and never knew it did not work until the next year’s range.

I cannot verify the story.  It sounds like a 1 in a million stroke of bad luck.  However, what can it hurt to shoot your gun after cleaning it?

Especially since many glock owners take the marketing hype of glock seriously and never clean their firearms.  Seriously, a single round in a clean gun in modern times won’t impact anything – we aren’t talking about corrosive ammo in a WWII bolt gun.

I do think this is a little on the high odds side of things, BUT – getting in a gunfight is also on the high odds against side of things and I still prepare for it.

Gun cleaning is important and I have several posts on this topic.  If you want to know how to make your own cleaning kit or you want a gun maintenance PDF download, or just some basic information on gun cleaning – I have that information at your fingertips.