What he said!
Do you take the grips off when cleaning?
When I got to my unit I was assigned to be the Company XO of, part of my duties was a monthly sensitive items inspection. This included the pistols. On my first inspection I noted that 5 or 6 of our M9s had been deadlined due to dead triggers. When I asked the supply NCO about it he said something about the M9 being a POS and that he needed to send them up to Division to be fixed. Knowing something about the M9 I told him it was a simple spring and that I could fix them myself. He protested that they "had to be fixed by qualified armorers" but I ordered new springs from Brownells with my own money and the next month fixed all the broken guns. Later after weapons qual I noticed a bunch of soldiers taking the grip panels off during cleaning and then running a rag through the mag well (Got to make those pistols squeaky clean you know). Well one of them managed to loose a trigger bar spring in the process and the reason for all those dead M9s was quickly deduced. I asked one of the Sergeants to show me where in the -10 manual (owners manual for soldier) it said to remove the grip panels and of course it wasn't there. These were the older pistols with the slotted screws and if you give a soldier a screw driver (which they all have on their geek tools), they will unscrew something. My hunch is that that is why the later M9s came with Allen headed grip screws.