Yeah, everybody INCLUDING Winchester that introduced it(!) passed on the "Burned Out barrels" myth to push either their (Remington) "new" .22-250 and/or then (concurrent with the first rumors of "Swift barrel Burning" in the late 50s, coincidence?) the "new" Winchester .225...which ironically now is HARDER to find than a Swift...
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There is just AS much "documented" evidence of other varmint guns wearing out their barrels in as many rounds.
There were and still are just more shooters BADMOUTHING the Swift (jumping on the bandwagon?) who have never shot much less owned one than any other cartridge...
The problem was the loudmouths in the 40s who claimed the Swift was THE ultimate centerfire round that could do ANYTHING...when it was lalter found out that it COULDN'T do everything, it was just the fastest VARMINT round ever made that was also highly accurate...then it just became vogue for "knowing" shooters" to badmouth it to offset the annoying Swifties...(GLOCKIES anyone?
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"Burning Barrels" was just another knock against it, justified or not. (How many STILL cite the GLOCK "KaBooms" that seemed to happen with regularity to still dump on Glocks? Been a while since I saw a "documented" Glock catastrophic failure though....)
I will stand by it, the Swiftbarrel will last as long as any, UNLESS granted you feed it a steady and heavy diet of reloads "off the charts."
But then again, the "Standard Load" many Swift guys works up to just to check for accuracy, 40 gr 4064 with a 52 gr Sierra match King is off ANY chart printed in any manual...
But it not only is AMAZINGLY accurate at that speed, but impressive as hell too..and no other .22 Centerfire can do that!
Plus they seem to handle it just fine...which makes me think the OTHER "conspiracy" is newer reloading manuals showing lower "max" loads than they used to for the Swift, to make it look closer to the -250, just my opinion, from mine, not a claim so don't hold me to it...
I know guys who shoot that load all the time through theirs, I load mine down a little bit to 38.5 though...
But you are right in one regard, maybe 500 rds total a year through the rifle, a couple of range sessions and a week on Pdogs, is a lot less wear on the barrel than if I was maybe shooting 500 rounds/month...