Joe - no problem. The things that I 'collect' tend to be items that would get a lot more use than virtually any firearm so it's no surprise that how collectors treat them varies. I fall somewhere in between the pure collector and pure user sides of things.
For example, we live in a beautiful Victorian home. The purists would insist that any changes be made with period materials (and, in the most extreme cases, methods.) Pure users would reside it in vinyl the first time it needed painting and replace all of the windows with vinyl at the same time. We've opted to keep the windows original and have it repainted (at some point), but when we decided to finish the attic we didn't do lath and plaster but sheet rock. We tried to keep the woodwork stylistically in keeping with the original even when it's not an exact match. It's a working/living entity to us and while we're its caretakers it will continue to live and evolve. Same thing with the sewing machines in our care.