Similarly, I don't change the oil in my car, or vacuum and wash it, or change the brake pads, every time I go for a drive either.
And that's what cleaning a gun after every range outing really seems to boil down to.
I don't care to waste time on things that make me feel like I've done "the very best" but don't actually accomplish anything. At some point it becomes "magical thinking."
Everything is a trade-off, and yes, breaking out the cleaning stuff and stripping a gun every single time I shoot is spending time on that which I would rather spend another way.
You mention something that is really a valid consideration, though: maintenance interval. Many of us have this handed-down idea that the maintenance interval of a firearm is "one use." But is there any record of an industrial engineer or other such type sitting down and calculating the actual, measured and scientifically determined, maintenance interval for the simple machine we know of as a firearm? You'd have to figure out what's in the fouling, how much is deposited on which surfaces per shot, how much can be allowed to deposit before functioning is affected, what the effect of those compounds is on the wear surfaces of the gun, what other, environmental contaminates are likely to be deposited during use and what their effects are, and probably several other things, too. But I don't think the actual answer would be an arbitrary "one use."
And that is a very valid point, but not a conclusion. It points to a question. How many of us shoot our guns, ever, over a lifetime, until they're mechanically worn out from the grime of powder fouling?
Any of us? No? No, of course not. The only people who manage to shoot a gun "loose" (these days*) are very serious competitors who are going to spend something around 20-40 TIMES the cost of the gun in ammo doing so. If they choose to spend time cleaning the gun every time they shoot it, they certainly might extend its life by a bit, but that just staves off the replacement point by some slight percentage.
For the rest of us you might say it is true but not terribly important. Sort of how I could be concerned about the risk of increasing violence because my house is getting closer to Falujah every year. Well...it is. But I don't really have to worry about it in my lifetime.
(* -- back 100 years ago some market gunners who shot ducks and geese for sale to restaurant suppliers were known to shoot a Remington 11 "loose" in a season or two. But that was a LOT of shells, and I'd have to imagine the conditions those guns were subjected to in daily waterfowling had a lot to do with it.)
