Rule 5:
Sand and mud are your enemies. The two things keep magazines from running are sand and mud. I have been on plenty of firing ranges that had each and some that had both. In fact, if you shoot regularly you're sure to face one or the other.

Know the proper way to take your magazines apart, and do it one at a time. Keep all the parts together, and don’t mix and match tubes, springs, followers, etc.

Sand is simple: Knock and blow as much of the sand out as you can, and then use a mag brush to brush the rest clean. You can get brushes from Arredondo Accessories (arredondoaccessories.com) or from Kleen-Bore (kleen-bore.com).

If you want to, you can take the baseplate off and then brush it out. Wipe the sand off the follower. Put it back together and get on with shooting. No secret lubricant, no space-age coating that shrugs off dust or sand and (repeat after me) no oil.

What if you've picked up your magazine and it is gooey or runny with mud. What to do? First, unload it. Not because muddy ammo is a problem but because it makes the next step easier. Find a clean puddle and swish the magazine around. Work the follower and swish some more. If there is no clean water in puddles, then either use the cleanest puddle or rinse it off with water from your drinking bottle.

Work the follower up and down a bit to feel for grit, then load and get back to work. If it makes you feel good, disassemble the magazine and then swish it in water. Stop cringing. Water washes away mud.

Magazines are a key component to a well-running pistol, but unfortunately they get subjected to a lot of use and abuse. Know what to sweat and what not to.

Rule 6:
Guard them with your life. Okay, so that's an overstatement, but there is another route to ending up with bad magazines, and that is to lose yours in the jumble with other shooters. At the law enforcement classes I teach, we can have 20 to 40 officers on the line at once, and a drill or qualification string that requires multiple magazines will have a jumble of mags at the end of the time.

If your magazines aren't marked, sooner or later you'll end up inadvertently swapping magazines with other shooters on the line. If theirs were bad, you just inherited a bad magazine. Lucky you. So mark your magazines. Use marking labels, paint, a permanent marking pen, whatever. I've even seen magazines that had their owner's initials scratched in the tube with an awl. Whatever works, make sure you get yours back.

If you really, really must, loan out your magazines, loan them only to those you trust. If you have to hand them over to someone you can't trust, assume when they get back that they are new, and you have to test them all over again.

In the end, I have to agree with Glock on excessive fussing over magazines. Ask yourself "Does it work?" If it does, then who cares about cosmetic dings, an imperceptible dimensional variance of the feed lips or a little bit of paint, etching or mud? If they work, I leave mine alone. If they don't, I get them fixed. If a particular one can't be fixed, I salvage any usable parts and ditch what's left. No dodgy magazine lying around for me, thank you very much.