Notionally. In practice, you could skip it, or put on your own tag, or change power or BB weight after chrono, or any one of the kajillion other wheezes that make pre-game chrono nothing more than theatre from a prevention point of view.
I see its purpose as to help me not get kicked off site if I'm caught with a hot gun in game.
But if Anzio are using different standards for in-game and pre-game, it doesn't even achieve that purpose.
So, really, what's the point of it? Most of the time, at most sites, it just feels like a ritual performed by rote, without any critical thinking put in to what it's intended to do, or how it actually achieves that.