ok, if youv seen the comments i typed from this thread, http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1176436-do-followers-get-the-benifit-of-mods/ then youll know what happened. boone had my fully moded sniper rifle & broke it. i thought he basically chucked it away, but i went back to the location not knowing it was were i lost my rifle to get some junk metal & i saw something on the ground. i went up 2it & saw it was my broken sniper rifle! that proves that companions can wear down a weapons CND! im really just happy 2get my rifle back. Was this FATE or not?? you tell me!!

No, followers do not wear out weapons from normal use like the player. What you are seeing is the enemies hitting the weapon itself. A sniper rifle has a HUGE model making it easy to for an enemy to hit. With 80 item hit points it takes very few of these hits to break the weapon.

Give Boone the All-American and some 5.56mm surplus ammo. Better yet a Brush Gun with some SWC ammo. It'll be very obvious very quickly there is no weapon degradation from use in this case.