I had a barrel rust once, so I try to at least get the powder fouling out of my center fires before the are set aside for a long wait. 22s almost never get a bbl cleaning, but you have to keep after the powder fouling in the actions. S&W handguns had better be clean under the ejector star or it may take a notion to not work someday when you need it. I clean mostly the frame opening and outside of my SA handguns mostly because they get ugly if you don't.
I tried the "keep the copper fouling out" routine on a couple of rifles to see if they really would shoot a lot better. Frankly after working on some of them for days, they still seemed to have copper in the bore, and I never saw any improvement in accuracy. I finally gave up reasoning that I may well damage the bores on these pretty good rifles doing this, for what gain. If I was a benchrester it may be different, but why endanger a 270 that shoots 1 MOA trying to get it to shoot 1/2 MOA.
I was on a National Guard Rifle team once, and the old Master Sarge who was our team leader was adament that he did not want me cleaning the accurized M14 that I was issued. Not even the action. The M14 never quit, and it was plenty accurate enough for the National Match course of fire.