Article: 94674 of rec.guns
From: "David A. Honig" <honig@buckaroo.ICS.UCI.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.guns
Subject: Re: What's the deal with Bill Ruger?
Followup-To: talk.politics.guns
Date: 20 Sep 1994 17:00:31 -0400
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 "Tom Clark (319)395-5045, COMNET 435-5045" <TCLAR@hobbes.cca.rockwell.com> writes: 
#
#	Back when I was doing alot of shooting, Bill Ruger was revered with
#an almost God-like status!  What happened to change everyones mind!
#
#Tom
#

I asked a similar question and got the following privately.  Senders'
names deleted, with thanks again.

The short answer is that he started supporting self-serving anti-gun
legislation.





..............................cut here..............................


The following is from an article which appeared in the
December 1, 1989 issue of Gun Week.

[Stephen Sanetti is Ruger's general counsel and frequent spokesperson]

------------------------------------------------------------------

[The following is from Neal Knox]

"Steve Sanetti says 'I know better' than to ascribe Bill Ruger's
magazine ban proposal to business considerations.  Maybe so; I don't
think Bill is by any means 'anti-gun,' nor do I think he really
_wants_ a ban on either guns or magazines (after all, he got his
start as a machine gun designer).  But I do think Bill Ruger is pushing
a plan that would protect his business while affecting only his
competitors, and I think he's damaging the efforts of those of us
attempting to stop all proposed bans.  Further, I don't think his actions
on this issue, and other issues in the past, allows him to be described
as 'the strongest supporter of our Constitutional right to keep and
bear arms.'

"What I _know_ is that about 9 p.m. the night before Bill sent a
letter to certain members of Congress calling for a ban on high-capacity
magazines he called me, wanting me to push such a ban.  His opening
words, after citing the many federal, state and local bills to ban
detachable magazine semi-autos, were 'I want to save our little gun' --
which he later defined as the Mini-14 and the Mini-30.  I'm not ascribing
Bill's motives as 'expedient from a business standpoint;' Bill did.

"While I agree that a ban on over-15 magazines would be 'indefinitely
preferable' to a ban on the guns that use them, that's not the question.
Neither I, nor the other gun groups have ever believed that we were
faced with such an either/or choice.  Early last year the NRA legislative
Policy committee discussed various alternatives to the proposed 'assault
weapons' ban, and wisely decided that magazine restrictions wouldn't
satisfy our foes, but would make it more difficult to stop a gun ban.

"I was particularly shocked when I realized Bill was talking about a
ban on possession of over-15-round magazines, rather than a ban on
sales (which is bad enough).  I told him that such a law would make
me a felon, for not only did I have standard over-15 magazines for
my Glock pistol (a high-capacity which has sharply cut into Ruger's
police business), I have many high-cap mags for guns I don't even own,
and don't even know where they all are.  As I told Bill, after a
lifetime of accumulating miscellaneous gun parts and accessories,
there's no way I could clean out all my old parts drawers and boxes,
then swear -- subject to a five or ten-year Federal prison term --
that I absolutely didn't have an M3 grease gun mag or 30-round M-2
magazine lying in some forgotten drawer.

"Bill said (and all these direct quotes are approximate). 'No,
there'd be amnesty for people like you.  We have to propose a ban on
possession before they could take us seriously.'  He contended that
the public's problem was with 'firepower,' which could be resolved
by eliminating high capacity mags.

"I told him Metzenbaum and Co. would gladly use whatever he offered,
but they weren't about to willingly agree to eliminate high-cap
magazines as a substitute for banning guns; that their intention isn't
to eliminate 'firepower' but 'firearms.'

"Bill finally said, 'Neal, you're being very negative about it.'  He
got angry, then said 'Well somebody's got to do it; by God I will.'
And the next day he sent his letter to the Hill; the evidence
indicates a few weeks later he talked SAAMI into supporting undefined
'regulation' of magazines over-15-rounds -- a vote that might have gone
a little differently if any produced high-capacity magazines as
standard for either rifles or pistols.

"I suspect that Ruger and SAAMI's actions are responsible, directly
or indirectly, for the Bush administration's proposal to ban high-cap
mags, but that proposal has been ignored -- except as evidence that
'the Bush administration and the American firearms industry recognize
there's a problem -- that Americans shouldn't be allowed to have such
guns.'

"Of course, that isn't what Bill Ruger and SAAMI are saying, but that's
the message they're sending.  Perhaps it isn't business expediency to
propose banning only that which they don't make, in an effort to protect
what they do make; but it sure can't be claimed to be in defense of the
Second Amendment."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Note that recent events suggest that the second-to-last paragraph
was wrong; the proposals weren't ignored, they were just stashed
away until they were deemed to be useful.


Gentlemen:

I read all of your postings to rec.guns concerning Bill Ruger and I
thought you might like to read the article below...however our system
allows us to "read only" and not post....I've misplaced our moderators
E-Mail address or I would have sent this to him for posting. 

Thought you might like to have a read however.
**************************************************************************
	"Forgive your enemies but always remember their names."          *
		-----John F. Kennedy  (1917-1963)                        *
**************************************************************************


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Subject: Gun Maker Put On The Defensive
Keywords: U.S. news and features
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 94 22:30:08 PDT
Expires: Mon, 19 Sep 94 22:30:08 PDT
ACategory: usa
Slugword: The-Gun-Man
Priority: regular

	NEWPORT, N.H. (AP) -- He insists it's not his fault.
	Yes, William B. Ruger designed the P-89 semiautomatic pistol.
And yes, when Colin Ferguson strafed a Long Island commuter train
last December, killing six and wounding 17, his weapon was a P-89
semiautomatic pistol.
	But no, Ruger maintains, he's not to blame.
	``The world knows it's not our fault,'' says the 78-year-old
founder of Sturm, Ruger & Co., one of the country's largest
firearms makers.
	``People use all sorts of tools to display antisocial or
criminal behavior and it doesn't necessarily say anything about the
morality of the manufacturer -- despite the misrepresentation of
some false-thinking people.''
	These ``false-thinking people'' -- people who press for gun
control, who blame the gun industry for the carnage on American
streets -- vilify him. These days, it is not easy to be a gun
magnate or a tobacco executive.
	But for William Ruger, guns have been a lifelong passion. And
he's not going to let that passion die.
	He has spent most of his life designing, refining and
manufacturing firearms. His handguns, shotguns and rifles are known
for their clean, efficient design and precise workmanship.
	His first gun, a Remington .22 pump-action rifle, was a gift
from his grandfather. Ruger was 12, and was recovering from scarlet
fever.
	``It was the mechanism that intrigued me,'' he says. ``A
beautiful, coordinated piece of machinery.''
	Ruger first designed and built a gun in a neighborhood machine
shop when he was still in high school. He dropped out of the
University of North Carolina after two years to work on a design
for a light machine gun; he went on to design light weapons for the
Army during World War II.
	After the war, Ruger met fellow gun enthusiast Alexander Sturm
and, with $50,000 of Sturm's money, opened Sturm, Ruger & Co. in a
rented barn in Southport, Conn. Their first product was a
.22-caliber automatic pistol that looks much like the famous German
Luger -- an instant and continuing success.
	His partner died in 1951, but Ruger pressed on, building a
business that now sells more than $150 million worth of guns
annually, producing them in Newport, Southport and Prescott, Ariz.
	``We've never really been completely absorbed with any technical
progress just for the sake of change,'' Ruger says. ``We like to
build a handsome, accurate, practical firearm for the man who likes
to shoot.''
	The man like ... Ruger.
	Ruger sits comfortably behind a long table he uses for a desk at
the Newport plant, where he spends most of his time. His large
hands, crippled with arthritis, still deftly handle the early model
Remington, Winchester, Savage and Stevens rifles he pulls from a
collection lining the wall behind him.
	A gleaming ``Single-Six'' revolver -- a gun similar to the famous
Colt ``Peacemaker'' of 1873 -- sits on the table among a loose
assortment of drawings, gun parts and .22-caliber cartridges.
	To Ruger, it seems, guns are a benevolent force.
	``The deterrent effect of an armed household in this country has
got to be a hell of an important beneficial effect. The fact that
half the households have means to protect themselves has got to
turn off a lot of would-be burglars and rapist and robbers.''
	Ruger blames Hollywood violence for twisting America's
conception of firearms. ``Movies and TV these days have sold the
idea of the shootout as though that were the purpose of firearms,''
he says.
	``TV is an enemy of civilization. You take the program violence
away and all these immature, slightly crazy mentalities watching
that would no longer be stimulated by what they see on
television.''
	He believes the problem of guns in school has been ``greatly
exaggerated.''
	``I just have to wonder how many schoolchildren go to school and
worry about getting shot. If there are some rotten kids who are
carrying a gun, that can't happen very often. But it gets a lot of
play with the press,'' he says.
	The real danger to American society, he says, is not firearms
makers but gun control advocates.
	``If Americans were deprived of firearms or if they were somehow
made inaccessible, you would be downgrading the whole concept of
American citizenship,'' he says, his swollen hands clutching the
arms of his chair.
	He scorns the ``group of people out there who just don't like
guns and ... don't want anybody to have them. It's a characteristic
of the times and it's a very adversarial mentality.''
	Not that he is worried. He is certain that those people are not
in the majority; he is certain that fewer guns would not mean less
violence. He is certain that he is not to blame.
	``It isn't the existence of guns that causes crime,'' he says,
``and there is no way of preventing crime by eliminating guns.''


In article <33u26d$196@xring.cs.umd.edu> you write:
# Brian Lau <brian_lau@mailserver.mli.mot.com> writes: 
##I recently purchased a Rugar Mark II Government Competition. (please
##don't flame me for Bill's poor politics)  My questions to the net are: 
#
#Assuming Bill is Ruger not Klinton: what are the "dubious" politics 
#I've seen mentioned twice now?  In 25 words or less.

A few years back, Bill Ruger proposed to Sarah Brady and the HCI clan
that semiautomatics wouldn't have to be banned if the government simply
banned high capacity rifle magazines.  Bill suggested a 5 round limit
on rifles, and started including one five round magazine with his mini-14
and like weapons.  He got a few reloader companies behind him, and tried
to appeal to the gun owning public to accept this as a reasonable compromise.
(The Dillon company refused to buy into this, which is why you should
buy Dillon reloading equipment instead of their competitors.)

However, as we all know, he made a deal with the devil and paid for it.
What we got was a magazine limit *and* the weapons ban he was trying to
avoid.  A lot of gun owners saw that coming a bazillion miles away and tried
to let Bill Ruger know that he was just making matters worse.  He refused
to listen, and did irreparable damage to our position.  He didn't get any
slack from HCI for his obsequiousness.  The Mini-14 and the P85 remain
favorite targets of HCI and the media.

I own several Ruger weapons, (mostly single action revolvers) but I won't buy
anything else from him.


-- 
	      David A. Honig, informivore, AAAS, EFF, IEEE, LP
	  In a world of compromise, some don't. ---Heckler & Koch
   "Leftist politics is a way to assuage the guilt that grows from pity."
"Nobody gets to this place by ignoring reality in any way whatsoever" 	-Rand



