Pete M - thank you very much!
L. Brown. Webley & Scott is as British as Wm Evans, Churchill, Powell or anyone else who has their guns made outside the island. If a company has headquarters in Britain, British management and a Brit as gunmaker-in-chief, I can't see what makes it unBritish.
Humpty, I think most people who purchase a shotgun want to know where it's actually MADE. Webley & Scott, for a very long time, produced all their guns in the UK. (And, for that matter, a great number of guns sold under the names of other British "makers".) I go to the Webley website, look at the Webley catalog, and it doesn't tell me anywhere that those guns are made in Turkey. As for the location of the company, I come up with an address in Nevada--which is in the USA, not the UK.
A number of American gunmakers, after nearly all sxs production had ceased in this country, imported doubles from abroad: Ithaca from SKB, Browning from Miroku, Winchester from its joint Olin-Kodensha operation. All made in Japan. But those companies never attempted to disguise the origin of their guns. Webley & Scott, for example, shows a photo of the old Premier Works--where shotguns haven't been made in quite some time.
As a gun writer, what I don't want to do is confuse the buying public. Yes indeed, Webley & Scott is now back . . . with guns being made in Turkey. Ditto SKB. If I'm writing an article about Webley & Scott, I would feel obliged to point out that today's guns have little in common with the guns formerly produced under that name in the UK. Not the post-war Model 700 series; much less pre-WWII Model 400 series. If I show someone my Webley & Scott Model 400, with full coverage of well-executed (by hand) small scroll and deeply chiseled fences, and if they compare to a current Webley & Scott, they won't have much trouble telling the difference.
The issue, to me, is gunmakers still making guns in the UK vs those that have ALL their guns made elsewhere. If they also import guns (likely less expensive models) and market those, all well and good. But in some cases, the current Webley & Scotts even carry the same model numbers (720, for example) as the ones that were really made in Birmingham.
Perhaps to keep it simple, the point is this: Webley & Scott is not like David McKay Brown or Purdey. Whether you order a gun "bespoke" or not, if it's a Webley & Scott, it will not be made in the UK.
