I will be the first to admit that not every gun needs to be built to withstand the rigors of a combat deployment jumping into the artic followed by leading an insurgency in a tropical island and then off to the desert to fight the Taliban with no maintenance.

But this isn’t a question of nitride barrels, vs chrome lined where there are pluses and minuses for each. These were purely corners cut for the purpose of saving money and not as part of any trade off for some other benefit. Which was my point from the beginning. If a user doesn’t need it, if the increase in reliability or durability isn’t needed etc, they might as well save the money. But they also shouldn’t assume it is intrinsically just as good, even though it would be just as good for their purposes.

PSA also shouldn’t hide the fact, by calling shit milspec though that isn’t (not that that is the be all and end all) or only providing partial specs.