Excellent point 120mm. I think we as a military do a terrible job of training gunfighters who to acutally perform 1st echelon maintenance and inspection of the serviceability of weapons and other "system-related" equipment like magazines. The company I support just went through a wholesale replacement of magazines because of the number of related failures at a recent live-fire cycle.

It goes back to crap like stretching magazine springs b/c of an ill-informed idea that one needs to do that.

It also goes back to issues (at least in the Marine Corps from what I have seen) of custodians - not armorers - being the first point of friction when a Marine walks up to the window and asks if he can get a few new magazines to replace what he perceives are bad ones.

I even had to pull a Gunnery Sergeant Armory Chief aside when he began ripping a new one in a junior Marine for allowing his Plt Sgt to crush a magazine to render it inoperable and unmistakeably in need of replacement after the Plt Sgt inspected its damaged feed lips.

I even shocked the majority of Marines in my first company when I explained to them that carbeurator clean rifles gouged chrome were not my standard of cleanliness. Free of dirt, rust, and caked carbon were my priorities, and if the q-tip came out with some hazy gray on it, it wasn't the end of the world. It's terribly hard to remove bad habits even when it reduces the workload. Go figure.

I guess it's just one more thing where good small-unit leadership matters.