We shoot, we hunt we take very good care of our equipment; well some of the time we take very good care of our equipment.
As we all know is that with shooting and hunting, safety is the number one consideration. Well have you considered that gun cleaning is part of gun safety? Maybe, maybe not..how can gun cleaning be important to safety? Simple if your firearm does not function correctly due to it being dirty and sluggish that can cause misfires, hang fires, bolts not going into battery; any number of dangerous possibilities.
With that dropped on you I am not saying that every time you fire your gun that you need to do a full disassembly and cleaning but I am saying that a common sense cleaning is necessary after every time you shoot and a thorough cleaning is recommended if you are putting your gun away indefinitely, like until next season.
A common sense cleaning should consist of a bore cleaning, the removal of powder residue from your barrel and chamber. For this you can get out your cleaning rods, brushes, solvent and patches or maybe the use of a bore snake with some solvent will do the job. This is necessary on handguns, rifles and shotguns.
Cleaning the action with a solvent with tooth brush/patches/cloth and or high pressure spray solvent which blows the bad stuff out of the action.
Then just wipe down the gun with an “oily” rag leaving a fine/thin coat of oil on the metal parts.
Here I must ask that you do not get carried away with oiling/greasing your gun…a little goes a long way and a lot can soak into your wood after periods of storage and a lot of oil can actually attract more dust and airborne debris.
Now for storage
Most everybody keeps their guns in some sort of a gun safe or secured storage area which is great. Keeping firearms out of the reach of children and others who have no business handling your firearms without permission is very, very important.
Regardless of where you store your guns please be aware of the moisture/humidity in the room and/or safe. Gun safes are made out of steel which attracts moisture and to top that off most safes are kept in basements and often on concrete floors which all are potential bad news for keeping moisture away from your guns.
I have two recommendations: Dehumidifier and gun socks.
The dehumidifier, often an electric heater called a Golden Rod or desiccant do a great job of removing humidity from safes and closets. I prefer the Golden Rod because is does not require drying-out like desiccant does once in a while. The Golden Rods are small, use very little electricity, they’re safe and almost all safes have a way to route the cords out of the safes so they can be plugged in.
Gun socks. I use American made gun socks by a company called Sack-Ups. These are very good quality woven socks for either long guns or handguns and they are treated with a silicone in the fabric that wicks away moisture from the gun. The added benefit of using gun socks all of your stored guns is they protect your guns from “safe” dings and they allow you to get one or two more guns in your safe because you can store the guns closer together.

Another trick that I use is inverting some guns…muzzle down! I do this for three reasons: One, if a gun has a recoil fitted and l store the gun muzzle down then the pad does not get flattened- out. Two, you can get more guns in your safe when every-other-on, or so, is muzzle down. Three, a muzzle down can keep the oil you used to thinly coat the gun from soaking into the butt stock.
So, common sense needs to make you clean your gun before storage and although the process takes a little time, it is well worth the slight amount for effort involved.

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