Shooters’ concerns: Cleaning supplies important to firearms industry

If you put away your guns for half a year without cleaning and lubricating them, you might find in the fall that at best they are covered with rust. At worst, rust will have corrupted the inner works and compromised their functionality or rendered them inoperable.

For decades, this was a major concern only for duck hunters who hunt a lot and fire hundreds of rounds in a compressed amount of time. If you fired two rounds through a bolt-action deer rifle in a season, you needed only to run a few patches down the bore to remove fouling and leave a light coat of oil.

Over the last 30 years, cleaning has has become the most important aspect of ownership for people that shoot modern sporting (AR-15 style rifles and tactical-style handguns). Many of them shoot hundreds of cartridges in a single outing and thousands of cartridges a year. AR-15 style rifles are the highest-performance end of the firearm spectrum. Like owning a high-performance automobile, you must keep the moving parts in immaculate condition to keep it running at peak performance.

Roger Ayres, gunsmith at Sunrise Outfitters in Searcy, Ark., said that anything dedicated to an AR-15 sells, including cleaning products.

"There's no doubt that with the amount of AR platform style rifle available, that opened up a whole market all to itself," Ayres said. "If you could put the word AR on it -- oil or cleaner -- people will buy it. Anytime something new comes along, we're going try it."

That includes solvents and lubricants as well as tools. CLP (Clean, Lubricate, Protect) products germinated from the AR market. Again, Hoppe's augmented its traditional line of lubricants and solvents with CLP products, but the race never ends to develop easier, more effective products.

"An AR-15 is what we call a 'dirty' weapon," Ayres said. "If you go out and shoot 300-400 rounds, you have to disassemble it and clean it. Most people don't. That's why people like me exist."

Otis Technology and Real Avid lead the gun cleaning segment of the firearms industry.

Heather Pleskach, director of marketing for Otis Technology, said the evolution began with an easy, efficient way for soldiers to clean M-16 rifles. The solution was a kit made by Otis that features a plastic-coated cable and a selection of caliber-correct jags and brushes that allow users to clean a rifle from breech to bore. Hoppe's BoreSnake is another popular item that performs all of the bore cleaning steps with a single pull.

Every gun owner needs cleaning supplies. Offering the best and latest signals to customers that a dealer is current with every other trend in the marketplace, as well. That engenders confidence, and it also attracts new customers whose needs aren't being met elsewhere.