What makes a firearm company “good” according to reddit?
Posted by thatARMSguy@reddit | Firearms | View on Reddit | 19 comments
Not trying to start a shit slinging fest, but I’ve always been pretty confused on why certain companies are loved here and why others are hated. There’s a lot of guys in the industry who are pretty chill and a lot who are either completely insane or super aggressive when criticized, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to which ones people think are cool and which ones they hate to the point of attacking other people who own something that company makes regardless of how good it may be.
Biggest one is Q obviously, any time someone mentions they own something from them they immediately get swarmed with hate mail from people foaming at the mouth because Kevin Brittingham is a cranky old man and starts fights with people. Mark Larue also crashes out on social media a lot, especially when something he makes doesn’t get a military contract, and a lot of his stuff was blatant copies of things other companies were already making, yet Larue is universally loved online.
Rock River Arms makes great quality stuff for a good price, but people still freak out when they get brought up because the legal firm that represented them and Springfield made a sneaky deal with Illinois to exempt them from gun laws in exchange for allowing those laws to pass, and RRA and Springfield only found out when they started getting hate online because their legal firm never told them what they did.
So what is it? Is it the price of the stuff they make? The quality? Is it how active they are on social media? Or do people just like hating on things because it’s trendy to do so? Genuinely clueless here, it just seems like every time I go online people are screeching about something
Ok_Crab_3522@reddit
1) Intrinsic quality of the firearm in question. Companies aren't good, guns are good. Lots of companies put out good guns AND shit guns.
2) there ARE companies that almost exclusively hawk shit guns though... and they're pretty much the "bad" companies.... think... taurus... jimminez... bca... radical... ati... turkish shotguns... stuff like that
3) there are also companies that almost exclusively sell budget tier firearms and if you're not into compromises you probably think those companies are bad too even though their firearms for the most part work alright and/or they tend to fix them for you. think: psa... tisas... ria... even hi-point probably fits in here.
4) there are companies that have questionable customer service, product development, or warranty policies and they also get shit on. Recently, Sig comes to mind with how they handled the p320 issues. FN also has a long and storied history of sweeping issues under the rug and finding excuses to deny warranty. Q massively overprices and oversells what realistically are mid-tier mediocre products with borderline false advertising fluff and hype. Glock, back in the day, had a kaboom issue and currently are again in the hot seat for discontinuing all their products and coming out with the feature (and some say reliability) cut v models.
5) finally, some people care about a company's politics. Some companies have made anti-gun or gun control adjacent business decisions in the past and a portion of the community tends to do the never forgive/never forget thing. Personally, if the product is good I don't particularly care what a company's politics are. Thankfully, my tastes run a bit more expensive than most of the companies that have run afoul of this in the past so I wouldn't have bought their guns anyway.
PS: social media is just full or shills and shouldn't be trusted anyway. No one should be "influenced" into buying guns. Have more self respect than that.
DrZedex@reddit
Astroturfing
jk, but it's probably feasible
UserRemoved@reddit
Quality design and control. - I never want to contact your customer service, you’ve already failed me and I expect no compromises. Support for owners rights exclusively -S&W, Springfield etc are perma-banned since they broke with the owners rights. Keep your personal politic out of the brand.
BA5ED@reddit
Their marketing and resultant market presence.
singlemale4cats@reddit
The answer is not to give a fuck what people online think. Buy what you like and enjoy it.
Classical_Liberals@reddit
Quality and quality control.
Couldn’t give a shit if the customer service sucks if I never have to call.
Anyone bitching about the companies ethics or social media presence is just virtue signaling out their ass, I doubt this type of person even makes up 1% of how gun owners feel.
jjfII@reddit
When they do stupid things in their advertising, that’s surely a bad sign…
Naxster64@reddit
Lol. This is hilarious. Who's ad is this?
oh_three_dum_dum@reddit
You’re not going to get a sensible answer to any of those examples.
2006CrownVictoriaP71@reddit
Fuck what Reddit or social media thinks. If you like a certain firearm, then that’s all that matters.
The AR15 subreddit has got to be one of the most toxic gun forums I’ve ever seen. If you don’t have a $4000-6000 AR then it’s not fit to be to even be a doorstop. This is at a time when we should be encouraging people to buy a gun. ANY gun. And we should be praising them for doing it, not making fun of the gun they bought or could afford. The more we defend the 2nd amendment, the less likely it is that the rest of the country will turn into California or New York.
Happy_Blizzard@reddit
Things people actually care about:
Testing products through consumers
Poor customer service
Funding gun control/ supporting gun control
Blatant untruthful statements about serious issues involving safety
Any issue that causes a death of a user through normal use
Pretentious statements
National-Bench5602@reddit
All of the above plus manufacturer loyalty. Another example the Ford pickup vs. the Chevy pickup.
TarsoBackMarquez@reddit
ShooterReady603@reddit
Fuck reddit hive minds, get what you like. Research multiple sources, buy what you like, shoot often.
Used_Cry_1137@reddit
Just as soon as Sig fixes my M-18 (P320) to the point where my local range unbans it.
See, it’s not always about personal opinion.
Best-Examination-282@reddit
Things I care about in no particular order: - price to value ratio - good customer service - availability for aftermarket parts - no shady deals (looking at you Springfield) - reliability
AccursedDragon@reddit
People care more about price and design than they ever will about the company itself. Sig Sauer, regardless of whether the P320 gate was true or false, handled the situation as poor as you can. That being said, people are still buying and carrying Sig Sauers. Even the P320. Maybe not as much as they did, but it’s still on shelves for a reason.
I like Glocks. Just my thing. They work for what I want for the right price. I could honestly care less about Glock the company and what they’re doing. Unless it was just atrocious, I pay no attention to what they’re doing.
ecsnead75@reddit
Ridiculous prices
banned4evver@reddit
Name an industry that doesn’t do this.
BMW vs Audi vs Lexus vs whatever
makita vs Milwaukee vs Ryobi
Target Vs Walmart
Some people are just more passionate about brand loyalty than others.
Typically companies are rated on value via price, if they have any political leanings, customer service response…