Look, I am about as meticulous as any person on this planet when it comes to cleaning my guns.
I shoot AR's in competition, and I do everything within my power to make sure the gun does not go down in the middle of a match. I'm getting too old to waste a whole day of what's left of my life with a gun that fails because I failed to prevent it from failing.
When I clean my AR - that is, when I clean it like I really mean it - I take the bolt/carrier completely apart. The extractor is removed each time. I do NOT remove the ejector.
First I wipe-off everything that has crud on it.
Paper towels are great.
Next, I use a utility knife to scrape the carbon off the azz-end of the bolt. Some folks call it the "tail" of the bolt. Whatever. Any old scraping tool will do - even your granpa's pocket knife.
Next, I use a thin-tipped flat-tip screwdriver to dig the carbon out of the bolt carrier. You do NOT need one of those fancy, expensive tools from the fancy-expensive tools catalog. Just dig at it with the screwdriver from the dollar bin until you get most of the carbon out. (I'll even admit to having one of the fancy-expensive tools - and I think it sucks. The screwdriver does a way better job, and is faster.)
Next, I blast aerosol CLP through the gas key, so it fills up the carrier with foam. I use a paper towel wrapped around a chamber brush to swab the excess CLP out of the carrier.
Next, I give the bolt a similar treatment. Blast CLP into the firing pin channel until it makes a big mess, and then wipe it down with CLP. Blow compressed air (I use a canned keyboard duster) into the firing pin channel to remove excess CLP there. If you are real anal, you can even use Q-Tip swabs to clear out the channel even more. The Q-Tip trick requires a lot of finesse, so be prepared to figure out how to get a stuck Q-Tip out of the channel when that happens.
Make sure the boltface is wiped as clean as you can get it, and wipe each bolt lug to get any brass shavings or carbon off the lugs.
Wipe your cam pin, firing pin, extractor, and extractor pin with a paper towel soaked in CLP. You should have plenty of CLP-soaked paper towels already by now.
Reassemble the bolt/carrier assembly.
I won't get into details of cleaning the bore during this rant.
But, you need to also make sure the locking lugs on the barrel extension are as clean as the lugs on your bolt.
Everything is going to have a fine coat of CLP on it now.
INCLUDING THE GAS RINGS.
The gas rings will have lube on them merely as a consequence of you hosing CLP everywhere. The lube certainly won't hurt the gas rings. But, I don't believe for a second that the rings themselves require -or benefit from - lubrication. The rings get too hot, and they are under too much pressure during firing, for ANY lube to stay on them. With all due respect to the esteemed, and highly-qualified Mr. Rogers, it is truly everything EXCEPT THE GAS RINGS in the bolt/carrier assembly that requires lubrication.
If you doubt any of this, clean and lubricate your rifle as I have suggested. Then fire a magazine. Take the bolt/carrier out of the gun and inspect it. Everything will have lube on it except the gas rings, the azz-end of the bolt ("the tail") and the bottom-inside area of the carrier. The heat and gas pressure will have vaporized all the lubrication at those spots.
Some will ask, "What about the manual, that says put oil in the holes on the carrier?... Isn't that putting oil on the gas rings???"
No.
As a matter of fact it is not.
Pick up your rifle.
Look down into those holes.
Do you see anything?
You should see only darkness.
Now, retract your charging handle slowly.
You will see the gas rings pass by the holes.
OK.
So does putting oil in those holes lubricate the gas rings?
Of course it does!
And it lubricates everything else in there.
Most especially the oil travels in ALL directions, and very importantly, the oil travels in the direction of the cam pin and the locking lugs of the bolt.
When the rifle is fired, any oil that has migrated in the direction of the gas rings will be blown FORWARD - in the direction of the cam pin and bolt locking lugs.
Any oil that actually accumulates on the rings will be burned off almost instantly.
If you are still reading at this point, you may be asking, "Why does the COLT manual not say anything about putting oil on the locking lugs of the bolt?" That is a fair question indeed, and one that I have pondered. I suspect - and I am speculating here - that the reason COLT does not specifically direct the user to put oil on the bolt locking lugs, is because some percentage of the users would HOSE-DOWN the bolt lugs, and allow copious amounts of lube to enter the rifle chamber. I hope I don't need to tell anybody here that a whole bunch of oil in a rifle chamber is a really bad idea.
So, by regularly squirting oil in the holes in the bolt carrier, the oil MIGRATES to where it is most needed - which is everywhere FORWARD of the gas rings.
You will notice too, if you click the link in my prior post, and you look at the entire COLT manual, there is sparse direction about how to clean the gun. There certainly is no mention of drowning parts in CLP, or spraying parts with compressed air.
You can clean your own gun however you want. I'm sure some folks actually use Vagisil (with all due respect to Mr. Rogers' article) just for grins. There is for sure more than one way to skin a cat, or to clean an AR. What I have posted is simply how I do it. I hope it gives you something to think about, and I hope something I have said will be helpful to you.
It puts the lotion on...