Here's Tam's take on it.
http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/2009/05/late-to-dance.htmlDid you hear? Ruger's gone carbon-neutral. Yup, they've wrapped ol' Bill “No Honest Man Needs A Handgun Smaller Than A Canned Ham” Ruger Sr.'s corpse in copper wire and lined the coffin with magnets, and now the whole plant is off the grid. They've broken with Bill's mandates by offering us Simple Civilians a whole slew of new guns.
In the wake of their little Kel-Tec ripoff .380 and a polymer skinned revolver named the “L.C.R.” (after “W.T.F.” and “W.H.Y.” were discarded), Ruger has finally showed up fashionably late at the AR-15 party, about the time that most of the other attendees were already dancing in togas or vomiting in flowerpots with lampshades on their heads. Heck, even Remington and S&W had been there long enough to get wasted and go wading in the “Make A Wish” fountain with their ball gowns hiked up around their knees.
Ruger vowed to “redefine the platform”, and attempted to do this with a piston system, never mind that HK, POF, LWRC, Para, Bushhamster, and Greasy Joe's Dixie Bar & Grill had already done so.
On the plus side, the Ruger offering ships with quality third-party small bits from Troy, Magpul, and Hogue, as well as acknowledging the fact that most EBR shooters would like more than one magazine by throwing three P-Mags in the box. The downside is that all of that name-brand bling costs money and most AR buyers simply DX half the factory parts on the gun in favor of the contents of pages 63 through 101, inclusive, of the Brownell's catalog. An AR with a street price north of one-and-a-half long is nice, but only when you've picked out the toppings yourself.
I wish Ruger luck and all, but it wouldn't shock me if this all ends in tears...
