To avoid scratches you either have to be careful of your surroundings or re-paint periodically.
Just to give you an idea, real world class snipers have plenty of scratches and peeling paint on their rifles caused by the rough environments/scenarios that they experience. From my understanding, they do touch-ups on their snipers, but when and how often, I don't know. In other words, depending on how rough you skirmish, the paint will eventually chip/scratch/peel unless you play on your tippy toes the whole time :yup:
If you don't plan on skirmishing and just want to keep the paint job pristine for as long as possible, letting the paint dry longer will help reduce scratches and chips SIGNIFICANTLY. Most spray paints usually recommend letting your object dry for 1 week if you want the best resistance to outside factors (i.e. scratches.)
