After I go to the range for target shooting / plinking, I always clean my guns. I am pretty anal about it.
When I hunt (if I don’t shoot it), I just wipe down the exterior.
However, if you were to take your AR out hunting or just to check your zero and fired a dozen rounds, would you clean it before you put it back in the safe?
How anal is too anal?
A rifle barrel is essentially fouled after only 1 shot. Try cleaning the barrel after firing a single shot. It might surprise you… it did me. If you fire a handful of rounds you could get away with just cleaning the bore.
On the other hand, Rob_s only cleans every 1000 rounds or so.
You’re not anal.
I disassemble and clean all my guns after I shoot them. Everything in the safe gets cleaned every few months. Carry guns get cleaned and inspected every week. Carry ammo get rotated every six months. 
A little off topic but I used baby wipes to clean my BCG in Iraq one time(ran out of CLP) - noticed a little rust but it functioned flawlessly in a following firefight.
You will probably get a different answer from everyone.
AR’s have to be cleaned?
Not sure if you had seen this but I think it answers your question: http://m4carbine.net/showthread.php?t=31
Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I actually enjoy the cleaning part. I have grown to love the smell of Hoppes and don’t consider any range session complete until I get my hands slimed with Hoppes, Slip 2000, CLP, etc. Mine get cleaned every time they’re used, and relubed every six months or so if they are not.
A clean and properly lubed gun is a happy gun… 
I do not clean after every range session unless a LOT of rounds were fired. I enjoy cleaning my guns but just don’t feel the need to clean them every single time.
If my AR was not cleaned during the last trip to the range I’ll drop a couple drops of Miltec on top of the gas rings through the holes in the bolt to keep eveything lubed up nicely.
That’s good to know because I have known to clean my rifle after I get back to the range and then out of the blue, I might put a round through my suppressor out in the back yard and then ended up recleaning the rifle afterwards. :o
Wow - cleaning a gun after it has sat in the safe! That is the first time I ever heard that one.
I was always taught as a child that it was just “wrong” not to clean your gun after you shot it. It was bad discipline.
No so much “cleaning” as re-lubing.
OK, I have to admit this - my wife has not fired her S&W 5906 in over 10 years. In fact, I think it was before the AWB! In any case, I keep a golden rod heater and plenty of dessicant in the safe so no corrosion takes place. Just for grins and giggles I pulled her 5906 out the other day. It was clean, shiney and totally dry (well, DUH!). So I took it down and went through it with some of that Slip 2000 stuff I just got and put back in the safe. I’ll see how that stuff looks 10 years from now!
You can often get more crap out of the bore. I used to do this with a particular 308 that was exceptionally prone to copper fouling. About 3 cleanings later it was almost clean.
I was always taught as a child that it was just “wrong” not to clean your gun after you shot it. It was bad discipline.
People who don’t clean their ARs are morally bankrupt.
Fun guns get cleaned when they stop working.
Precision guns get cleaned before and after shooting them.
Goto guns get cleaned after each use, and every few months.
Sounds like the perfect prioritization of use for solvent and bore patches!
Exactly! My rimfires get the lead scraped out of them annually at most.
I clean mine every…
wait, what year is this again?
I clean after every shoot, I brush my BBl out about 3-6 times, then a couple patches and lube. I don’t spend more than 15min or so on the whole AR.
I also use KAC chrome bolts, carbon blows right off with Quik-Scrub.
Match rifle gets a little more detailing tho.
I have a non-chrome lined AR barrel that had about 4000 rounds through it with little cleaning. I left the bore wet with Hoppes for about six months. When I looked at it after the long sit, I thought the barrel insides had thrown up on me. I pushed a few wet patches through and was amazed at how blue/green and how much carbon was on that first patch. It was almost a paste. The bore ended up being in good shape after all, I just couldn’t see it with all the crap covering it.
During a recent Pat Rogers course, I did not clean my Colt 6920 during the 1200 or so rounds we fired in the class, nor had it been cleaned for 300 or so rounds prior to the class–just lube. After another 500 or so rounds following the class, I finally got around to cleaning it. No problems–lube seems more critical than cleaning for carbines.
I actually just cleaned an AR I sold to a buddy the other day for the first time ever. I’ve owned and shot it pretty regularly for a little over a year and never cleaned it. I use a little synthetic lube of some sort or other (often Redline synth motor oil believe it or not) every couple of hundred rounds and other than that I don’t mess with it.
So the other day I took everything apart and there was quite a bit of carbon built up on the back of the bolt, as well as that well known carbon based sludge all over inside everything, but the gun still ran fine.
Now that ammo is so expensive I most likely won’t be shooting as much as I used to. That sucks but I’ll most likely go another year without cleaning my AR’s.