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As a fan of Ruger rifles, the thing that concerns me is that they appear to be marching down the same trail as Win/USRAC with the spinning out of proprietary and redundant calibers that have little hope of ever becoming truly popular. This hints and smacks of trouble with the bottom line in the gun division as they grasp at straws, trying to create a market among folks who already own many guns.
I totally agree. Ruger is grasping at straws with this one. S&W has pretty much destroyed Ruger's .357 magnum business. Years after S&W and Taurus went to 7 shot .357's Ruger still hasn't responded. Ruger is taking a beating from imports on it's Vaquero line, mainly because it shot itself in the foot when it decided to go PC on it's Vaqueros (and make them blow up with high power .45 Colt). Ruger's auto handguns are pretty much deemed 3d tier, behind even imports like CZ. The Mini 14 needs no discusssion. The Mini could have been a way to attract young new customers, but Ruger doesn't want to so sell to "those kind of people" who might want to shoot more than 5 rounds in a semi-auto. And so it has hunting rifles...... which are good and solid, but unless it tries to bring in new customers, which it's doing a bad job attracting, then it's got to make money by selling the same crap with a new name to it's same customers. Most new customers don't want a new proprietary cartridge because you either have to reload or you have to pay a lot for bullets. Neither of those options is appealing to first time buyers.
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