Sheepdogged
Member
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2015
- Messages
- 290
- Reaction score
- 300
I'm a little peeved that I bought a Shield last year now that they have one that holds 3 more rounds without the hinged trigger, but then again, no one is going to convince me the technology wasn't available to squeeze a few more rounds in a similar size pistol many years ago. From that standpoint, I'm not going to play the game this time (I'm not going to upgrade to get three more rounds). If anyone doubts that SIG, Springfield Armory, S&W, etc. couldn't figure out the dimensions to make smaller magazines with higher capacity a long time ago, I have a bridge to sell you on eBay. There's a word for it: "oligopoly". If anyone thinks that's a conspiracy theory, they are naive, and anyone taking an business ethics class for an MBA knows this (my textbook mentioned S&W and Ruger specifically). Hundreds of mid-level executives have gone to prison for engaging in anti-competitive practices for everything from television manufacturing to banking services. CEOs keep their noses clean by sending mid-level executives to negotiate in hotel rooms during trade conventions to give "competitors" an excuse to be in the same hotel in the same city at the same time. The point system the ATF allegedly uses is a watered down version in my opinion. it's pretty easy to spot when you know firearms well enough to compare features and question manufacturing design choices. Eventually it's easy to see why manufactures appear to hold back by offering a higher-than-necessary bore axis, lower-than-typical round count, insufficient grip texturing, poor triggers, etc. Slow and steady upgrades across manufacturer lines are planed & agreed upon many years in advance, and product launches are executed in ways to disguise the group effort as much as possible. When Youtuber fanboys claim we're in the golden age of firearms, they fail to recognize what the market could have been like if these companies truly competed. Firearms are some of the oldest "modern" technologies, but look at much more quickly products that didn't exist before the 20th Century advanced in comparison (everything from planes to automobiles to computers). But firearms manufacturers are also likely among the oldest oligopolies.
