People often allege malfunction and sue gun manufacturers for accidental discharges resulting in death or injury, when in reality they mishandled a loaded gun and pulled the trigger.
People who care about good tech and value are buying things like CZs, aero precision and Anderson AR10/15 lowers and uppers, etc. Even the canik pistol from turkey is remarkably good quality. Savage offers good value for traditional bolt action rifles that can be used for many purposes.
A lot of the CZ stuff is made in Turkey, such as their over-under shotguns. I own a couple CZ rifles and they're decent.
Never fired any Savage products but heard good things.
Anecdotal, but we needed several workhorse .308 rifles and even considering the previous issues with the Rem 700 triggers, etc., I still chose that model.
In addition to being a simple mechanism and easy to clean and maintain, it has a very high adoption rate which means parts and chassis replacements are readily available.
Those attributes, combined with a very reasonable price, made it easy to select.
If it were a single rifle, just for myself, I may have chosen a Savage model instead. On the other hand, my personal rifle now matches, and parts shares, and has identical maintenance, with all of the rest of them. I find that valuable.
In general, I've almost always found outdoor equipment from European companies to be superior to American (regardless of where it's actually manufactured). I've always got the impression from their marketing material that the Europeans are selling a product, whereas the Americans are always selling a lifestyle.
A lot of people say the same thing about Harley-Davidson motorcycles. FortNine had a video made the rounds a little while ago:
The big old school companies like Remington or Marlin have become lifestyle brands, for sure, but there are still some US companies making quality products. This is particularly true for more traditional American guns: you'd have a hard time beating a S&W or Ruger revolver, or a Henry lever action, with a foreign brand.
Reminds me of “We Don’t Sell Saddles Here” by Stewart Butterfield around the time Slack launched.
https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c5952...
History repeats itself. As if these companies care about the brand reputation over decades, they just want to milk it and then sell it to idiots (public) that recognize the name. People are buying more guns than ever, so it was probably a planned bankruptcy
That goes together like peanut butter and jelly.
Point taken with the downvotes.
This feels very similar to the Intel story, except it seems that Intel is aware and will rectify the problem.
But less gun companies overall is a Good Thing in my opinion.
I suspect you're being downvoted from the "less gun companies is a good thing" comment.
You would be surprised how popular shooting has become in the US, especially, over the last decade or so, and how diverse the gun community has become.
Not to mention how many new brands there are.
Twenty years ago, you'd walk into a gun shop, and it'd be... well, let's be kind and say "massively sketchy", with a lot of graying beards and a not-insignificant inventory of items with confederate branding.
Nowadays, that's not really the case in most places (which is good!). My favorite range has an espresso bar, and reminds me more of an early-stage WeWork than a gun range.
The median age has trended sharply downwards, and although this data isn't tracked, I strongly suspect that there are a lot of first-time gun owners as well.
Anecdotally, I'm sort of the "liberal gun guy" amongst my circle of friends, and people that I never thought would want to purchase a firearm have been reaching out to me for advice. Which usually starts with "don't buy a gun unless you plan to train with it"
Concerns over civil unrest have significantly factored into this, but there's also things like 3Gun[1][2] (think Ninja Warrior plus firearms) and cowboy action[3] (the same, but with old-timey firearms), which are massively popular.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPPIhfD5DF0 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRBcQSLgl20 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPMH5RnTqBg
I need to know where this is, please
Planned? You realize Cerberus would have made a lot more money if it had been a successful turnaround.
They're not "investors", they're predatory vultures. However, given that, their model does work, even if it is immoral and short-sighted.
People describe companies like Cerberus sort of like the undertaker of companies in a capitalist society, but I don't entirely agree with that metaphor.
To be fair it's not just corporate raiders who do this to companies. IBM and HP quite happily did it to themselves.
1. More information. The iconning brands like Harley or Marlboro are from pre-internet era and heavily relied on freedom image. It was just accepted as an expression of culture. This doesn't really work when wages are not rising with GDP. In other words, people care less about brand and more about utility and price.
2. Better and more accessible competition from around the world.
3. Influencers. I know it is cool to hate them, but there are many building a brand around "one of us". As an example, one of the most popular female youtubers is doing shopping "hauls" in regular shops. You probably don't know that, why would HN watch beauty youtubers. But consider this. Linus Tech Tips is also influence marketing and you can see him talking about Linux, cheap peripherals, bashing Intel. Every category has its Linus. These people have tremendous pull, especially since younger people don't watch TV at all.
4. COVID-19. I speculate that the pandemic exposed how many companies have no reserves (either to low profits or simple because the executives are draining profits).
5. ...and many more, feel free to add.
I only buy major brand-named items on Amazon, and only with Amazon as the seller. The one indispensable characteristic of branding, reputation, is more important than ever even though most brands' reputations are in the dumpster. Knock-offs of unknown or unreliable provenance just happen to be even worse. And even when you find a good non-branded item, reputation is still worse as non-branded items seem to change suppliers more regularly than the branded versions, and supply chain integrity is less trustworthy.
In brick & mortar stores I always reach for the generic, in-house brand (assuming the price is lower) knowing that invariably they're made by the same manufacturer as one of the major brands. But contrast that with Amazon's in-house brands, where it's unlikely they source from the same manufacturer as the major brands, and also seem to change suppliers more regularly.
American gun manufacturers have been outsourcing production for years. But that doesn't mean people no longer care about brands. Rather, many of those suppliers have made a name for themselves outright, or improved upon their previously lackluster reputation; those are the brands you often hear about today when people give recommendations.
It's also a factor that so many companies nowadays see their brand built over decades by previous generations of workers and management as just another resource to suck dry. Shareholders are blinded to this but they ought to be angry, that is the long-term value of their investment being burnt to paper over management's lack of strategic vision.
$8k will buy you a used one (not new), but there is a damn good reason there are used Harleys with essentially zero miles avaliable everywhere. I have fun riding my antique crap, but the new ones are such crappy bikes for the money. A new BMW is the same money, for a more comfortable bike that is less maintenance cost. However, I used to live on the route to Sturgis for most of Colorado, Arizona, and western Texas, and I saw probably 80% trailers vs bikes. People don't buy them to ride them, they buy them to fulfill their midlife crisis.
To further derail, I would argue Jack Daniel's, Levis, and REI are in the same boat- they are grossly overpriced compared to superior competitors and mostly trade on name brand and perception of past quality.
Genuinely curious, since I still shop there. Prices aren't the best but I like the selection and the return policy. Plus the salesdroids actually seem familiar with the gear.
My last REI hiking frame was a huge disappointment, it started to have welds cracking after 40 fairly easy miles. They do still have a decent warranty policy, but if I'm up in the wilderness that doesn't do me any good, I just want the same quality as they used to have (I.E. I have inherited gear that is still good after years of abuse, but have bought gear that has worn out in 3 years).
As far as superior competitors, unfortunately they are hard to find. I've had the best luck just searching for army-surplus equipment on ebay, as all the army surplus stores seem to have disappeared. But for apparel, definitely look for vintage Woolrich or wool milsurp. It's scratchy, but that's what undergarments are for, and when you accidentally slide down 200' of snow and get covered it's absolutely the best, none of the more modern gear I've tried even compares.
I also grew up backpacking with external frame packs, PMS boots, and scratchy wool shirts. My current outfit is nowhere near as durable, but it's 5-10 lbs lighter. Thinner nylons, smaller zippers, internal frames, synthetic boot materials, lightweight fabrics, etc... the weight has to come from somewhere.
I still have my old Kelty external frame pack. I haven't used it in 20 years and I probably never will again. It's just more fun traveling with less weight. If that means I have to replace gear more often... it's worth it.
I remember balking at the $110 price tag on a Craft long sleeve running shirt about three years ago. I bought it anyway. I wear it 4x a week from October through March, and it goes through the washer after every use. It's as good as the day I bought it. Best $110 I ever spent.
If you must buy American, everything Indian makes except the FTR1200 has a great classic look. (The FTR is cool too but very modernized).
First, they fought to protect their market with tariffs on imported bikes -- okay, fair enough -- but then did absolutely nothing to either grow that market, or innovate on their products at all.
They just kept making the same bike, the same way, for a looooooooong time.
Harley's branding was 100% focused on the "60's Rebel". The Hells Angel, or the dentist that wanted to pretend he was.
The plethora of Japanese manufacturers, instead, worked to bring bikes to the masses. They made more reliable bikes, which were cheaper and easier to own, and marketed them to everybody. Dads. Moms. University students. Normal people, the kind that aren't keen on a Friday-night bar fight.
If Harley had been run by forward-thinking management, they would have worked to create affiliate brands aimed at a variety of different demographics, and really worked to innovate on their reliability and quality. Buell was an attempt at this, but it was too little, too late.
Even the Hell's Angels regret choosing Harley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Barger#2000s
However, it was a trashcan of a bike. I was always fixing weird issues, the HD dealership absolutely sucked in every facet from timeliness of service, to prices, to the guy at the service desk just not being a cunt. I upgraded many parts just to get the damn thing to perform at a reasonable level.
Thankfully, I was hit by a car and my bike was totalled. This freed me to purchase a KTM 790 duke which is 160lbs lighter, with double the horsepower, 20% more torque, 80% longer service intervals, all for significantly less than the Iron 883.
Harley-Davidson is literally hemmorhaging cash. Their main demo is aging out of the market and they haven't been able to sell to millenials because millenials aren't stupid and go buy a Yamaha MT-09 or Suzuki, etc for waaay less. And I'm hearing whispers that H-D willl be axing their new forays into ADV, standard, and E-bikes.
At that point they might as well start winding down the company. I read reviews of the Livewire (their e-bike) and most people seemed to like it despite the very high price.
Not young americans, that's for sure. Personally, I can't wait until H-D bites the dust. Hopefully once and for all. They're incredibly overpriced, underpowered, overweight, technologically obsolete bikes (aside from their 1 electric model that sold terribly) with dealerships that suck at customer service (and also charge way too much per hour)
Even if you stay in cruisers- Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and Indian quality compared to Harley is insane. It's as if the bikes were made in a different century.
My buddy has a 1290 SADV S and i've got the 790 and neither of us have had a single issue. We'll see how its long-term reliability pans out, but it's honestly the best naked bike on the market, unless you count the supernakeds like the MT-10 or 1290SDR. Or it was until the 890 R came out.
Maybe I'm biased because everything I know about guns comes from Forgotten Weapons [1], but my impression is the opposite: Very few guns are ever a commercial success, and absolutely loads of gun makers go out of business.
For what it's worth, I bought a remington-branded bone saw ~3 years back, and it was absolute garbage. It failed to even finish field dressing an elk, and all that was required was one cut of a few inches. It's a shame, their older products were right up there with the likes of Starrett as the pinnacle of precision manufacturing in the US, but poor management can kill any company regardless of the quality of their products.
It is sort of ironic that, even given the US's crazy gun culture, most of the iconic American brands have been acquired (Winchester->FN) by other firms or been diluted to irrelevance (Marlin->Remington).
FN still makes good stuff, though.
They're also solvent -- no pump-and-dump investing games here -- and supply lots of gear to global militarizes, including the US military, e.g. the SAW is the FN Minimi, which is made under license in South Carolina.