Yes, I do have a sense of what that large manufacturer faces when it comes to customer service calls. I have a friend who is the president of a call-center company. I have another who is director of customer service at a very large company. Through him I know another man who is SVP of Customer Care at another Fortune 500 company. We drink beer together, fish together, a couple of us even shoot together. I hear a lot about customer service issues, etc. I also happen to know a person who does technical writing for a large company. So yeah, I have an idea. And the reality is, they try not to make the manuals any more complex than necessary. No, they don’t suggest using “common sense” much, because, frankly, nobody knows what that really means. Or rather, lots of people do, but they’re all wrong. So they put out a manual. Sometimes the manual is a good one, sometimes not-so-good. In my experience, in general the better the product, the better the manual.
But let’s get back to common sense. My dad has done more than a fair bit of shooting over his lifetime, and he taught me way back when, and recently taught his youngest grandson as well, that a responsible shooter cleans the gun every time he shoots, when he’s done. Being so fastidious has never caused him a problem, caused a gun to malfunction, etc. It has helped him keep guns in beautiful condition and excellent operating condition over several decades. If you have some other system that works for you, well, great. But my common sense tells me to go with what I was taught by the guy I know best who still knows more about firearms than I do, after having also forgotten more than I’ll ever know.