The only guns I know that don't get damaged by NOT cleaning them are the highly specialized .22 Target Rifle Barrels used by serious competitive shooter, who actually find that their rifles shoot tighter groups when the barrel's grooves are filled with a coating of lead and the outside lube that is used on target bullets. At most, these target shooters will run a string looped around a cleaning patch, DRY- through the barrel to remove powder residue from the barrel after each shooting session. They do oil and clean the actions, and check the screws for tightness, and I have met some shooters who have a small chamber brush to clean JUST the chamber of the barrel, But most don't even want to do this.
I don't fail to clean any of my smokeless powder guns much less let them go for 5000 rounds. I once fired more than 200 rounds through my .45 Colt Auto one day, and was expecting to fire the same the next day. I cleaned the gun even though I had been up for more than 20 hours at that point. The next day, my gun went on shooting without a hitch, while another student in the class, who had not cleaned his .45 suffered stoppages, stove-pipes, failures to feed, etc., until an assistant instructor in the course loaned him his gun to use while he took the student's gun back to his truck and cleaned it. After the cleaning, the gun worked fine.
I consider Semi-auto pistols to be the acid test for cleaning and functioning issues. I consider black powder revolvers to be the acid test for cleaning and functioning issues in our sport. With 5 or 6 shots being fired before you get back to where you can clean the gun, you learn very quickly just how much neglect a gun can take before it starts to hick-up.
I agree with the sentiment that this marketing department B.S. :bull: And its always obvious that the pinheads that are in charge of marketing have never fired a Black Powder firearm, and have never talked to BP shooters when they come up with " solutions " to problems that should never exist. As I understand it, Pioneer Powder was originally brought out for use in the Black Powder cartridge Cowboy Action Shooting( CAS) matches. Most of those folks just want to shoot a lot of times, often. They come to the sport with modern revolvers and smokeless powder loads. Most end up reloading their ammo. Pioneer was brought out so they could meter it through their powder droppers on their reloading presses, and qualify for shooting in the Black Powder cartridge sections, where there were few competitors, and prizes that went unrewarded. The shooters didn't want to deal with the demands of black powder, as if having a jar of water and soap handy with a rag or two to wash and wipe off the cylinder pins, the cylinger face, and the back of the barrel was such a burden. Oh, and occasionally running a wet patch down the barrel!
I base these comments on observations I made when I saw a CAS demonstration and someone actually used a ROA revolver to shoot the match. He had a peanut butter jar with soap and water in it, a cleaning rod, some patches and 2 towels- one for the gun and one for his hands- and a toothbrush, quickly cleaned his gun between loadings, to a very large audience of shooters who apparently had never seen a BP gun cleaned! I was listening and watching his audience, and not concentrating on what he was doing. I had to walk away before I said something I should not to some of that audience. " Lazy " would have been the kindest word I would have used.
