Wow there are some seriously good posts in this forum. I particularly like this quote:
I learned this lesson back in the 1970's when Japanese cars were selling for half the price of American cars and they were built better too. That's no longer the case but at the time you could buy a Toyota that would go double the average mileage of an American car and it cost far less. So I learned then that quality is not a function of price. Price is determined by what the market will bear. If a company convinces people that their equipment is far better so it rates a higher price they better be prepared to prove that to me or not only will I not buy their product at that point but I will be suspicious about their integrity from that point on. All it took was driving a Ford product from the early 70's to convince anyone that the quality just wasn't there but they were still charging much higher prices than the imports. It took a long time before Ford earned my trust again but it did happen. Hype can drive the price of a piece of equipment. Don't fall for that age old scam. The idea that "you have to pay for quality" has made a lot of people very rich at the expense of their customers.
Another point I liked was that true knowledge is only truly gathered through personal experience. For the most part that's true but there are some shortcuts I take when it comes to guns. If it's a popular gun I'll go the range and watch the people shooting them. I learned a lot about various AR makers doing that. I shot a bunch of different brands that other people owned too. But when I saw certain brands being worked on more than they were being shot I knew I didn't want anything to do with those rifles. Some of them were made by popular companies in the entry level market but the guns were just not high quality. I will admit I learned much about the M&P Sport 15 on internet forums. I never saw a single person bash them. I'm talking people that actually owned them. You can always find some joker that thinks every rifle except the one he bought is a piece of garbage. i ignore those people.
One more point. I have a 1:9 twist bolt action .223 rifle. It will shoot anything from 50 gr. to 75 gr. bullets and do it well. I have always felt it was a better choice over the 1:7 twist models of the same rifle. Some of my best groups at 500 yards have been shot with very light bullets. That surprised me because of the wind factory but I shot a 1" group at 500 yards using 50 gr. ammo. Of course that rifle was built for accuracy instead of volume shooting but the principle is the same. 1:9 is a good choice for a twist rate. It has been for me anyway. I could have been burned on that because I didn't really know what rifles were what twist when I was trying out all those AR's at the range. I jumped in with both feet and it paid off. It might have gone the other way but I got lucky.
I think it's possible to get good data from the gun forums if the volume of posts are available about a weapon. I don't trust 10 people as much as I trust 10,000 people when it comes to gun reviews.
I learned this lesson back in the 1970's when Japanese cars were selling for half the price of American cars and they were built better too. That's no longer the case but at the time you could buy a Toyota that would go double the average mileage of an American car and it cost far less. So I learned then that quality is not a function of price. Price is determined by what the market will bear. If a company convinces people that their equipment is far better so it rates a higher price they better be prepared to prove that to me or not only will I not buy their product at that point but I will be suspicious about their integrity from that point on. All it took was driving a Ford product from the early 70's to convince anyone that the quality just wasn't there but they were still charging much higher prices than the imports. It took a long time before Ford earned my trust again but it did happen. Hype can drive the price of a piece of equipment. Don't fall for that age old scam. The idea that "you have to pay for quality" has made a lot of people very rich at the expense of their customers.
Another point I liked was that true knowledge is only truly gathered through personal experience. For the most part that's true but there are some shortcuts I take when it comes to guns. If it's a popular gun I'll go the range and watch the people shooting them. I learned a lot about various AR makers doing that. I shot a bunch of different brands that other people owned too. But when I saw certain brands being worked on more than they were being shot I knew I didn't want anything to do with those rifles. Some of them were made by popular companies in the entry level market but the guns were just not high quality. I will admit I learned much about the M&P Sport 15 on internet forums. I never saw a single person bash them. I'm talking people that actually owned them. You can always find some joker that thinks every rifle except the one he bought is a piece of garbage. i ignore those people.
One more point. I have a 1:9 twist bolt action .223 rifle. It will shoot anything from 50 gr. to 75 gr. bullets and do it well. I have always felt it was a better choice over the 1:7 twist models of the same rifle. Some of my best groups at 500 yards have been shot with very light bullets. That surprised me because of the wind factory but I shot a 1" group at 500 yards using 50 gr. ammo. Of course that rifle was built for accuracy instead of volume shooting but the principle is the same. 1:9 is a good choice for a twist rate. It has been for me anyway. I could have been burned on that because I didn't really know what rifles were what twist when I was trying out all those AR's at the range. I jumped in with both feet and it paid off. It might have gone the other way but I got lucky.
I think it's possible to get good data from the gun forums if the volume of posts are available about a weapon. I don't trust 10 people as much as I trust 10,000 people when it comes to gun reviews.
