How much time are you going to waste on cleaning?
I’ve had this argument with friends when they were arguing that direct impingement guns weren’t really hard to maintain and that spending another $500 on a piston driven AR15 wasn’t worth the money because you could basically buy another gun for that money. I’d like to see people use the same argument if someone came out with a car that only needed an oil change every 15,000 miles instead of every 3000 miles. How many times are you going to have to pull over and drop the car off and wait for a mechanic or waste an hour on a Saturday doing an oil change? Keep that in mind the next time you go shooting and bring 3 or more rifles with you and then spend all Sunday night cleaning them. If you could cut your cleaning time by 2/3s and reduce the need for brushes and cleaning patches for $20 would it be worth it?
Even though Hoppes boresnakes have been around for awhile, I still know an awful lot of people that never used them. I can guarantee you that these are not a gimmick and Hoppes boresnakes do an excellent job of cleaning your barrels. Another thing I often see is people jamming cleaning rods down rifles and unknowingly scratching up the inside of the barrel. A boresnake takes of less room than traditional guide rods and they are easy to clean. They are caliber specific so you have to consider picking them up for each caliber. I really appreciated having mine after cleaning 3 rifles that were all 5.56 chambered and just went from one barrel to then next in seconds. As long as you take good care of your guns, the brushes on the boresnake will clean your rifle as good as any rod driven brush.