How To Clean and Maintain Your Handgun
Properly maintaining a handgun is a basic move for every gun owner, and it is absolutely important for maximum protection and performance! Maintenance is the best opportunity for the owner to check the weapon and its components for unnecessary damage like rust spots or any internal breakage. If you’re an expert at shooting and know things like holding a handgun, but doubtful about maintenance and cleaning, keep reading this article.
It’s important to remember that improperly handled or unmaintained weapons will end up becoming increasingly unsafe. This lack of reliability will have bad consequences if you need to fire your handgun in an emergency and it doesn’t work properly.
Step 1: Unload your gun
Hold your weapon safely. Keep the muzzle pointed away from you in a safe direction, treat the gun as if it were loaded, and keep your finger away from the trigger. Then, eject the magazine. Once you do this, empty the chamber thoroughly and take all the bullets out, keeping them in another room for safety reasons.
Step 2: Completely strip the gun
This is a fairly easy method if you have a modern handgun. De-cock the hammer (or striker) and press down the buttons. After pulling backwards towards the back of the frame, the slide should be able to slide and unclip freely off of the front of the gun. Please ensure your gun is unloaded before you start any of this.
Now, make sure you know what it is that you’re going to be cleaning. There are four main components: the frame, barrel, slide and recoil spring. When you remove these, put them in a safe space so you can keep track of them.
Step 3: Start cleaning the gun
Wipe down all the components with some cloth rags, but note that a lint-free wipe is not required. Wipe off as much of the dense, caked-on carbon accumulation produced by friction and gunpowder as possible. Wipe off any old oil and residue of unburnt powder too. Then clean the inside of the magazine, the ejector, guide rails and the chamber floor.
Once you’ve done this, apply solvent all over the components. Make sure you use a solvent that is made specifically for your gun and nothing that contains acrid ingredients. Let the solvent sit for a while then wipe it off with the cloth you used earlier. Now, scrub the gun with a soft toothbrush to get out any soft debris or gunpowder and make sure everything is squeaky clean.
Step 4: Reassemble the gun
Once you have thoroughly cleaned your gun inside out, start the reassembling process. Take all the components from where you separately kept them and start putting them together. Once the gun is reassembled, wipe it down with a separate, clean cloth to clean any excess oil and/or residue from the solvent. Lastly, swab the barrel with a dry cloth before you start target practice with your gun again. Stay safe and happy shooting!
