The title of the video and this Thread amount to rash generalizations that are meaningless apples to oranges comparisons. The very best hand made custom rifles and shotguns produced by Americans compare favorably with guns made anywhere. And our mass produced machine made guns stack up quite nicely too, when compared to mass produced guns built elsewhere. Comparing a hand made Boss or Purdey to an Ithaca or Stevens is just as ridiculous as comparing a Chevy Cobalt to a Formula 1 car. And it wouldn't be fair to compare a cheap Birmingham working man's gun to a Lefever Optimus or John Nichols shotgun either. But there is no question that the gun making trade in Great Britain reached an overall higher level of refinement, while ours was generally geared toward mass production and mass marketing. You could say our talent for mass production saved the British trade from being conquered by Adolph Hitler & Co. And you could also say that we have now outsourced and off-shored that capability today, and morphed into a nation where too many people would rather stay home and collect Government money hot off the printing press. I'm blown away by the number of businesses I see that are closed or have reduced operations because they don't have enough employees, while millions are collecting unemployment checks. This must certainly be a factor in recent ammunition shortages.
And once upon a time, there was active and frequent international competition to determine which nation had the best shooters in all of the various disciplines. Now international shooting competition has dwindled, and it is hard to find, even when there is an Olympics, because the shooting sports have been demonized. So we are largely left with opinions. We have some guys right here who could outshoot George Digweed, to hear them talk. I'm mainly concerned with how well I can shoot. And gun reviews are largely a matter of personal taste. I read a lot of good things about Turkish shotguns, but haven't been moved to buy any yet.
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