I do recommend them now that they are cheap. I talk to a lot of guys every day. There are a lot of guys out there that do not clean right and have ruined barrels or lost accuracy because of carbon build up. You can still learn how to clean a barrel with out one if you are paying attention to details. I did when I first got into shooting BR. But even now that I know how to clean a barrel I still use it on new chamberings because different powders and cartridges lay down different amounts of fouling and need to be dealt with differently. So it shortens my learning curve on those. I want to clean as little as I need to get the bore in the condition I want it, and thats not necessarily squeaky clean to bare steel. The other obvious use is to inspect a new barrel and chamber job to make sure its what you paid for. Any of the good makes will replace a barrel with tool marks, and any good smith should stand behind a chamber job thats not concentric to the bore. I like my customers to bore scope chambers. Will any of this make you shoot better? Maybe, maybe not. The fact remains that you will learn something from using one and $50 for a little knowledge is cheap. When you had to pay $900 to get one worth buying I did not recommend them. For what I do, and what I have learned about throats and barrels it would have been worth $10k to me.