Regrettably, in this day and age, I don’t think any firearm is “Democrat-proof.” One need only look at what has gone on in England and Australia, and is underway now in Canada. We are subject to the same lunacy if the majority favors it, and our courts don’t take action to forbid it.
One might sympathize with the “Jeff Cooper has become a hack” notion IF thinking in terms of the Steyr Scout. Generally, it’s a nicely made weapon. Mine is certainly very accurate and has a superb trigger action, but it really fails to meet the most basic Scout requirement - handiness. The Steyr does incorporate a few of Mr. Cooper’s less important but “desirable” features that one might describe as gadgets, such as the folding, VERY rudimentary iron sights, the integral folding bipod, and the separate box magazine stored in the stock. (Mercifully, they did not see fit to incorporate a huge, ridiculous box magazine - as in the Ruger.
)
Mr. Cooper might have avoided this “hack” perception, to a certain extent, if he had not associated himself so directly with the Steyr product, but I suppose by the time it went into production, it was too late for that. In any case, it remains that once the innumerable “desirable” gadgets had begun to clutter up the Scout concept, it’s imperative criteria (handiness) was set aside, at least in the Steyr, and the Scout concept had begun to drift away.
All taken into account, my little Model 7, which has no features that might influence a gadgeteer, certainly out-handies the Steyr, and powerful, light, short, and handy are, or should be, the essential requirements of a Scout. Those unduly frightened by the Remington extractor might recall that Mr. Cooper himself wrote that he had never experienced a failure, and perhaps his most successful Scout, on the Sako action, was not a CRF-action, yet he consistently wrote that it was better than it needed to be.
All this JMHO.
