Posts Tagged → profit
Ruger is about to be eaten alive
While the American gun world is presently enthralled by the ATF’s latest effort to deep-six the NFA and emasculate the GCA, and make SBRs and sawed-offs and suppressors available for all, we have something much more prosaic to discuss here. And it sucks.
Bill Ruger, Sr., was a famously driven man, a true American, who from his earliest adult years made unique, high quality guns that he wanted to make. These were firearms not yet on the market by any other manufacturer, and with no indications that there ever would be a market for them. They were often modeled after guns that had at one time been centerpieces of the foreign sporting world, like elegant, accurate British and Scottish-made Farquarson action single shots. And yet the markets followed him. In fact, Bill Ruger created markets not just for his own guns, but for whole categories of guns that Americans had not shown interest in for a hundred years, if ever.
Like the Ruger #1, a single shot, based on the Henry/ Farquarson action. Simple, rugged, exceptionally accurate, capable of all kinds of Africa-scale rounds. He also made side-by-side shotguns, and over-under shotguns, when both were falling out of favor to blastemall semi-autos. In fact, many younger Americans had never actually seen a double barreled shotgun in person, when Ruger brought his Red Label onto the market. Like the Bearcat and subsequent revolvers, introduced at a time when cowboy-style guns were long out of style.
Bill Ruger adapted investment casting for many of his firearms, which saved a lot of money in laborious machining and turning raw stock. He revolutionized modern gun manufacturing so well that competing companies, like Colt, began chasing the new markets that Bill Ruger had opened, often adopting his manufacturing methods in part or in full.
One of my favorite rifles is a 1980s Ruger M77 RSI International .308, that is as light and as pointable as a stalk of goldenrod, as accurate as a laser, and easy to carry all day long. Because it is so exceptionally light, short, and handy, and has a thumb safety on the tang, it is exceptionally fast on snap shots while stalking deer and bear in the mountains. My M77 RSI has killed countless deer and one bear. But the challenge with the M77 RSI is that Ruger had the short, thin, finely tapered barrels milled with the scope mounts integral to the barrel. Like the Germans used to do (and occasionally still do) on their finest sporting rifles. While a fabulous little work of art, the manufacturing costs for this gun were too high, and it was discontinued in the early 1990s. Tang-safety M77s were made a few years more, and then the ridiculous wing safety was used on all subsequent M77s. No still hunting for you!
Recently, Ruger bought out the old Marlin machinery from the old Remington plant in Ilion, New York. I toured that factory about fifteen years ago, and what a loss that it is now gone, that the workers there are gone, that the Remington name is now gone from the town of its founding after more than two hundred years. Crappy or shady business practices caused the new-new-new Remington to fail, even though it produced many good products. Though the old Marlin 1895 was not well made in the Remington plant, with “Remlin” rifles pretty low on the totem pole.
Well, Ruger took the lever action world by storm when it resuscitated the Marlin 1895 a few years ago, in its state-of-the-art Mayodan, North Carolina plant. Flawless, incredibly accurate, reliable, rugged, this stainless lever gun in its original 45-70 became the go-to for Alaskan big game guides in grizzly country. It is the gun I take hunting in Alaska. I have killed several deer and a bear with mine. One shot kills, one at 160 yards with open sights (my eyes are aging and that kind of shooting just ain’t happening any more, sadly).
And Ruger has also continued to make all the oldies-but-goodies that are cornerstones of the gun owning world: The GP100 .357, .44 Mag Redhawk, .44 Mag Blackhawk, .45 Colt Vaquero, and Bearcat revolvers, the Ruger Number 1 single shot, and the M77 series of rifles, among others.
Ruger can continue to run a perfectly successful business making these “legacy” models, because while their markets are not on fire, like the 1895 is, they are steady. Their customers want them. Not by the truckload, but enough to keep several highly trained workers busy full-time, and money coming in steadily.
But Ruger is about to be eaten alive in a foreign corporate takeover, and the company has already notified its customers that it is dropping an awful lot of the oldies-but-goodies, including most of the revolvers. Whether this decision is a tactical retreat under the turtle shell by current ownership, in order to shed less-productive or under-performing, or expensive to make products, balance the books, and shield against the coming hostile takeover attempt, or is a giant flash increase in short-term profitability so that the takeover costs as much as it possibly can, who can say. The fact is, Beretta is gunning for Ruger, and it appears that they are likely to take over.
And Ruger is showing the signs of a prey animal. Tossing stuff overboard in an attempt to pick up speed as it flees its pursuer.
Forgive my national pride and my national interest bit, but I am not happy about losing another indigenous firearm manufacturing company to a foreign country. Yeah yeah yeah, Beretta is 500 and some years old. Whateva. Great. I like that. Good for Italy. But that means nothing of consequence to any of us Americans, when what we need are Ruger replacement parts easily obtainable here in America, sold to us by Americans on the phone.
Remington 3.0 went to the Great Gun Maker in the sky a few years ago. Winchester bounced back and forth between the Japanese and the Belgians, and now exists in some purgatorial form that occasionally shows up like a ghost, and then disappears back into the shadows, again. Colt has barely hung on, same for Smith & Wesson. America’s native gun makers are Henry, Taylor’s (which also imports quality Italian firearms), Barrett, a few other small shops specializing in hyper accurate sporting rifles. America needs all the gun makers it can get, making not just sporting weapons but military weapons, too. We cannot survive if we outsource our weapons acquisitions to foreign makers.
America needs Ruger. But it appears we are getting Beretta, and there is no way that firm is going to run the company the Bill Ruger way. Here comes the corporate slashing and bleeding, the loss of fabulous guns, and the loss of American jobs, in the name of maximum profit. Maybe Beretta wants a lever action shotgun, and is acquiring Ruger just for that. I guess that might be in the spirit of ol’ Bill.
Ruger’s M77 RSI International in .308, that has killed over a hundred deer in my hands, a bear, some other critters. Just recently topped with a now discontinued Leupold 1×5, perfect for the slow mountain still hunting I enjoy
Ruger Marlin 1895 in 45-70 with shed buck I shot in Dauphin County a few years ago. Laser accurate gun
Abandoned mine site in remote Alaska, five mile walk in from dead-end dirt road. Over a week of hunting this area, I saw moose and griz aplenty, heard a wolf pack howling, passed up on a smaller black bear I literally walked right up to and looked over. Having my own handloaded brass solids in the Ruger Marlin 1895 was the most reassuring feeling
Hunting in Alaska requires all kinds of layers, and waterproofs, rubber boots, and stainless rifles. The Ruger Marlin 1895 is my go-to gun for these trips
Ivermectin vs. political, cultural establishment
Among the many political battles now being waged for control of America and the soul of Western Civilization, there is one quiet fight that is beginning to break out into the sunshine. And it is the outcome of this little fight that is beginning to pack a really big punch in the much larger battle between the political and cultural establishment and The People.
The fight, or dispute, or whatever you want to call it, has to do with the use of the long-used anti-parasite drug Ivermectin. It is a real example of politicized/political science vs. science science. Ivermectin has been used for a long time to treat both humans and animals that are infected with parasites. Ivermectin as a treatment for covid1984 in humans has been derided by the Democrat Party’s legacy media (NYT, CNNLOL, CBS, NBC, ABC, NPR aka Demedia) as a “horse de-wormer,” and the Demedia has mocked people who have wanted to use it, or who have espoused its use, to treat covid1984.
This mocking of Ivermectin and its medical proponents, even long time medical researchers who are the leading experts in their medical field, is based only on a political narrative. That political narrative is that a) All Americans/ Canadians/ Australians/ Europeans/ Britons must receive an injection purported to be a vaccine against covid1984, but which we now know is not a vaccine at all, and b) any person’s hesitancy about receiving this unproven, unapproved, untested injection must result in social and professional blacklisting, firing from their job, home confinement, de-licensing, de-platforming from social media, etc.
This political narrative is not just being aggressively pushed by Demedia, but by political, corporate and social elites, who while only a tiny portion of the overall population are nonetheless fully in lockstep with just one political party, its political and social messages, and its anti-democracy centralizing statist goals.
So we have the popularized but false narrative that only the government and its non-vaccines can save us from covid1984, and anything else is a threat to that narrative. This makes Ivermectin a huge threat to the entire house of cards built by Dr. Mengele Fauci and all the other Big-Government-Control-Over-Little-Citizens advocates.
More and more reports are seeping out around the Demedia information blockade about Ivermectin being an immediate and conclusive treatment for covid1984. I myself know several people who contracted covid1984 in the past month, got sick from it, and who either had Ivermectin on hand as an ace up their sleeve, or who were able to order Ivermectin in time to treat their covid1984 symptoms. Using Ivermectin, all these friends of mine recovered very quickly from their covid1984 infection, and are now fully and naturally immunized against covid1984. They had it, and survived.
When people say that America or any other nation is suffering from a health emergency or crisis, they are lying. We are not in a health crisis, we are in a political crisis, whose beneficiaries are using the subject of public health and covid1984 to artificially advance their political goals, at the expense of democratic processes designed to place checks against government overreach.
When people say the covid1984 pandemic is a crisis of the unvaccinated lepers hurting the vaccinated, you have to laugh at them. Why? Because if someone took a vaccine, or two or three, heck it might end up being ten or twenty, then they should be fully protected against whatever the unvaccinated people are carrying. That is how a vaccine works. But we have the most coercive of vaccine advocates admitting openly that the vaccines don’t actually work to protect the recipients.
In other words, you must take your vaccine “because we told you to,” in the tyrannical words of Biden Regime spokesthing Jen Psaki. There are no real, demonstrable benefits from these so-called “vaccines,” other than probably blunting the effects of covid1984 on about 50% of vaccinated individuals. But the public health and societal costs of the vaccines are enormous!
So powerful is this political narrative, and so attractive is the potential to make $30,000 per ventilated patient, that even hospital administrators have taken on the role of God in this situation, condemning patients dying of covid1984 to almost certain death, because they won’t allow the last-ditch use of Ivermectin. As if a dying patient has anything left to lose! Well, apparently the hospitals prefer that you die and they not lose their profits, or demonstrate that a simple, cheap Ivermectin pill could have easily saved the patient without all of the other fu$$.
Even state medical boards are on board with the political narrative, to the point where they are aggressively de-licensing and firing medical doctors and researchers who have a second opinion about treating covid1984 that runs counter to the political narrative. Many medical doctors have been cowed into silence or acquiescence from these threats.
Political control of people, the destruction of democratic processes that protect individual liberties, in favor of granting a small group of government employees absolute control over formerly free citizens (you!), is behind covid1984. It trumps everything else. The false political narrative must be protected at all costs, even if thousands of innocent Americans die, because they are used as political pawns to advance Big Government control. The leftist politicos prefer that thousands of Americans die, rather than get good treatment.
But Ivermectin’s success in treating covid1984 is beginning to punch holes through the Demedia’s suffocating political narrative and the unconstitutional government overreach that has accompanied it. Ivermectin’s success is calling into question the entire propaganda narrative about vaccines and Big Government. On the one hand, the initially unproven and now dis-proven non-vaccine “vaccines” are clearly a strike-out, while on the other hand a very cheap and easily obtainable treatment (Ivermectin) works quickly.
Did the Demedia, its one political party, Big Pharma, Big Medicine, Big Tech, and Wall Street just place huge profits from requiring fake vaccines over the actual benefit of Americans? Was covid1984 really about giving a political establishment full political control, and not about public health? It sure looks like it.
These people nearly wrecked America. They have nearly stolen our liberty, our freedom, and our right to choose so many aspects of our lives, in the name of “protecting” us. Don’t you wonder what the political and social fallout from this outrage is going to be?
p.s. if you are curious about whether or not Ivermectin works to defeat covid1984, you can see right here that the US Food and Drug Administration approved it back in July of this year. This highlights just how attractive the grotesque financial profits are from requiring false vaccines, as well as the political profits from unwarranted fearmongering and stealing freedom from We, The People.
Risk & Sacrifice separate grass roots activists from insulated party professionals
In 2009, like many other citizens shocked at the sudden, dramatic changes and corruption re-shaping America, I greatly increased my political activity.
Part of a grass-roots wave of citizen activists that year, I ran in a four-way US Congressional primary. It’s a long story, and in short I ended up liking one of my opponents so much I hoped he would win. Along the way, several people closely affiliated with the Republican Party tried to dissuade me from running, assuring me that a certain sitting state senator would beat the incumbent Democrat, congressman Tim Holden.
Our campaign still netted about 25% of the vote in a four-way race, which is solid performance, especially considering that one of the candidates had run before, one was a sitting state senator, one was a well-known political activist, and we had gotten a late start and spent little money.
In the general election, Holden crushed the Republican state senator who won that primary race by 400 votes.
Fast forward to January 2012, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejects a new, heavily gerrymandered Republican redistricting plan. At the heart of the court’s decision was the “egregious” and grossly unnatural shape of the 15th state senate district, where I happened to then reside, and still do now, too.
The PA Supreme Court called the new district “the iron cross,” and indeed it looked like a cross shape and was iron clad against upstart citizens asserting themselves in political races reserved for establishment members only.
(My current congressional district is the same, with only about ten blocks of Harrisburg City included in what is otherwise a large, rural district reaching the Maryland state line. Guess who lives in that ten-block area. Yes. Me. )
Given my previous public interest in running for the 15th senate seat, it was obvious that excluding our family’s home from that district was purposeful: It was an attempt by political bosses to artificially silence and thwart an otherwise good candidate who does not see his job as serving political bosses.
The court’s ruling allowed a handful of us to wage a tremendous grass roots 11th hour campaign for that senate seat, getting our start two days into the three-week ballot petition process.
Although we did not win, we did give the political bosses a hell of a challenge by winning a huge number of votes with only pennies spent.
A year later, York businessman Scott Wagner beat those same political bosses for his state senate seat, in a historic write-in campaign against a million dollars of party money. The race, and its remarkable result, drew national attention. Clearly the voters responded to Wagner’s grass roots campaign in the face of a party juggernaut.
This evening I spent some time speaking with an NRA staffer. We met at the Great American Outdoor Show, which is the former Eastern Outdoors Show and now NRA-run at the PA Farm Show complex, and he gave me an opportunity to vent a bit and explain my frustration with the NRA.
To wit: An increasing number of grass roots activists now perceive the NRA as merely an arm of the Republican Party establishment political bosses. The same bosses who oppose conservative/ independent candidates like me and Wagner.
See, back in 2012, I was the only NRA member in that three-way primary race (to be fair, one candidate had been an NRA member for several months, which could never, ever be construed as a political move, even though he was the candidate selected by the same political bosses who created a safe district for him to run in), but the NRA refused to get involved.
If there was any endorsement that was deserved in that race, it would have been the NRA endorsing their one and only member, and a decades-long member at that – Me. (Firearm Owners Against Crime did endorse the one pro-Second Amendment candidate, thank you very much, Kim Stolfer)
And then tonight it dawned on me on the way home from the Farm Show complex…two basic but defining experiences separate grass roots activists and candidates from the party establishment: Risk taking and making sacrifices.
By definition, grass roots candidates take many risks and make many sacrifices, both of which are seen as signs of weakness by the establishment.
Self-starters motivated by principle and passion for good government, the grass roots candidates and activists have to reach into their own pockets to get any traction, and they often risk their jobs and businesses in challenging the establishment power structure. To get invitations to events, they have to reach out and ask, knock on doors, make phone calls. They have to cobble together campaigns made of volunteers and pennies, and they usually are grossly under-funded now matter how successful they are.
On the other hand, party establishment candidates have the ready-made party machine in their sails from the get-go. Money, experienced volunteers, paid staffers, refined walking lists, the establishment can muster a tremendous force in a relatively short time. Establishment candidates also enjoy artificial party endorsements (formal or informal) that give them access to huge pots of party campaign funds or a leg-up in other ways.
Establishment groups like NRA view grass roots candidates the same way as the party establishment views them- trouble makers.
In short, few if any establishment candidates put in their own money to drive their campaigns, take risks, or make sacrifices in their pursuit of elected office. Everything is done for them by other people.
So long as party establishment staff and officials and groups like NRA maintain this artificial lifestyle and view, this alternate reality, this disconnect between the grass roots voters and the party that needs their votes will continue and deepen.
So long as the voters see grass roots activists and candidates struggling against an unfair arrangement that is created solely for the preservation of political power and profit, they will continue to migrate away from the party and support people they can relate to the most.
An elder in my family once told me that taking risks and making sacrifices build character and lead to success, and although a 26-year career full of both risks and sacrifices has often left me wondering at the truth of that claim, I increasingly see it bearing out in electoral politics.
The voters are not dumb; they can see the pure American earnestness in their fellow citizen fighting City Hall. They respect risk-taking and sacrifices made in the pursuit of saving America. That is a strong character which no establishment candidate can or ever will have.
Those political parties and groups that ignore that strong American character do so at their own risk, because they will lose the supporters they need to be successful.