Hey everyone,
I'm in the process of buying my first handgun for home defense.
What are some things you would recommend I purchase to complement the gun in terms of maintenance, storage, and other must-haves or even nice-to-haves?
Already on my list is a carrying case, fire-proof safe, dummy rounds for dry-fire practice, and a good pair of ear plugs for the range. Not sure if I should throw in a speed-loader with that or not. I feel like I'm missing some stuff, hence this post.
For the future, I plan to build the gun out. I have already decided on purchasing an optics-ready pistol, so I can throw a red-dot on it down the line, and also a light.
Looking forward to your responses, cheers!
This is a late tangent, but:
Steel? Does that not cause issues? Every metal I stick inside a gun to clean it is brass because I have always been told and do worry about causing undue wear and scratching on surfaces.
The sets I get have polymer, steel, and copper(? Brass?) heads. Break free and polymer works most of the time, but some carbon is stubborn. Yes, I don't use the steel ones much, but I use the copper ones all the time. What are your bore brushes made of?
TBF, some of the chemical products these days, I've been tempted more than once to just hose the barrel down with lead and carbon dissolvers, rinse the whole thing off with break free, give it a wipe and call it good.
All the metal bits like bore brushes, barrel snake brush bits, and metal picks are all brass for me. I would rather leave a microscopic speck of carbon that dig up the whole area with steel dental picks.
For cleaning the barrel just a bit of oil and a few runs with a bore snake are usually enough. The only time I go further is the special ritual when shooting Soviet surplus ammunition, where boiling water is first run through and then lots of barrel snaking to get everything dry.