It seems from your conversation with Mr Ruger a SxS was in the works well back in the 70's but I still believe that fine tuning the Red Label was the way to go. And the Red Label needs some fine tuning. That is improving its pattern throwing by tinkering with the forcing cones or development of choke radius, slicing some pounds off of it, many ways to tinker with the basic O/U. Develop a custom shop where you could order a Red Label that is built to your specs then call it a Black Label. How about a 2 3/4" chambered 20 or 12 gauge, that is light say about 5 3/4lbs or 6 1/3 lbs for some upland game hunting. All the money Ruger throw away tooling up and developing this SxS they could have easily done this and had plenty of sales from Americans that want to buy American. And alot of people love their Red Labels and probably wouldn't mind if a high grade Label would come out.
Stupid just plain stupid!!!
All the best
