The Gun you Want vs. The Gun you Get

Ever think why did a gun company make that?

Or why doesn’t a company make this?

Me, it is more of the first.  Why would a gun company make that?  I asked that over and over as I see new things entering the market.  It took me a long time to understand a gun company’s business.

Gun companies make what will sell at a profit.  They don’t always make what people need. Which can actually be a good thing at times.  If companies never made anything new, we wouldn’t have lots of innovations like the Car or iPhone.  Two of my favorite things after guns.

Henry Ford said people just kept asking for faster, easier to care for horses.  No one really wanted an automobile.  But when he made the Model T that everyone could afford, that you could have in any color (as long as it’s black), people bought them in droves.

No one really cared about a phone with a touch screen on it that could do lots of things besides talk and text.  All they wanted was a way to talk easier, and text faster with more people.  Steve Jobs spearheaded the iPhone and changed the world.

We as consumers don’t always know what we want.  We say one thing and then buy another.  Gun companies are interested in what you are buying not what you are saying.  They are a business and will listen when you spend money.

The world wanted smaller and smaller semi auto handguns when the Concealed Handgun Movement started.  You had Kel-Tec bring something out before anyone else.  And it worked, sort of.  They where a head of their times.  Look at the Ruger LCP which is probably the best selling small gun on the market right now.  The original is a copy of the Kel-Tec P32.  Once Ruger had something to compete, Taurus, Smith & Wesson, and even Colt (along with tons of others) jumped on the band wagon and made a small pocket auto.  Some successful and some not so much.  The Kimber Solo comes to mind on the “not so much.”

I want a lot of things in guns.  But since I have been buying one a year for the last couple years, I really can’t drive the market.  I don’t spend enough money.  And let’s face it, money is an innovation driver.

Don’t think so?  Can you say Glock?  Gaston wasn’t looking to build the world’s best handgun when he made it.  He was making a cheap gun so he could get the contract for the Austrian Military.  He already had lucrative military contracts with them and others building things like shovels and bayonets.  He knew what the military wanted, what their price points where, and what they where going to do to test it.  He built the gun around those test points and at a price he could make a huge profit.  Now we have Glocks everywhere.

In the end gun companies will build guns they think the market will buy.  If the market isn’t buying enough of them to be profitable, the company kills that line and goes to another.

Once a company has established success with something, they will build a version / generation two or more.  Glock is on the Gen 5 guns, Smith is on the M2.0, and even Ruger has the LCPII (which is a much better gun then the original).  Have a version 1 and love it, you are going to love the version 2 or 3.

Companies will innovate a little just to make you buy more guns.  Some of them are amazing at it, and some not so much.  Glock started making single-stack guns to compete with everyone else… finally.  But the first one they came out with was the .380 ACP.  Everyone was asking for a 9mm.  But everyone bought the .380.  A year later, Glock came out with the 9mm and everyone bought the 9mm even when they already had the .380.  Glock sold two guns instead of just one.

Smith & Wesson started jumping on the innovation wagon by first labelling everything the M&P serious when that name stuck.  There was the Body Guard, Shield, AR, and others on top of the service guns that started the name again (there was a revolver from way back that first had the name Military & Police).  I’m not sure that worked, but it stuck.  Now they have the M2.0 everything.  I’m sure another pocket gun is coming in the line next.  It may not be a Body Guard 2.0, but it will be something M&P. 

Innovation stagnates because of the language we use which reflects the way we think. 

We as shooters compare everything in size to a Glock 19.  I just heard a radio show talking about the Archon Type B gun and he read off the stats of the gun compared to the Glock 19!  We all look at things that way.  And if you don’t compare guns in size to a Glock you do triggers to a Glock or a 1911.  There just isn’t anything else to compare it to.

So everyone makes a gun the size of Glock 19 with a trigger that is better then a Glock, or is as good as a 1911 trigger.  At least according to the company making the gun and their advertising.

When things are truly innovative or are designed and built by shooters, we pooh on them.  I can think of three guns off the top of my head: Silencer Co. Maxim 9, Hudson H9, and Avidity Arms PD10.  All of them have their problems, but the biggest was everyone complained about them and no one really bought them.  Not in Glock type numbers (there we go again, comparing everything to a Glock).

The market will turn slowly.  Innovation will be done little steps at a time to churn out guns that will beat what ever gun was first.  Like the Springfield Hellcat against the Sig P365.  And we will continue to get more of what we buy.

I know this sounds down in the “Golden Age of Guns,” but I think we could innovate so much faster and be closer to guns that we can’t even envision yet if we would all change our thinking, embrace something new, and spend money on what you talk about and not just another Glock.

Stay Safe,

Ben

Source: http://modernselfprotection.com/2019/10/23/the-gun-you-want-vs-the-gun-you-get/