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By
OD
Dead Rebel Of The Week
~ Bill Ruger ~
I can hear some of you now, "Who in the fuck is Bill Ruger?" Shut up, sit down, and grab a beer. Good ol' Uncle OD will fill you in. William Batterman Ruger was the brains behind Sturm, Ruger and Co. Happy now? No? All right, all right. Fuckers.
It's no secret that I love hunting and that I love guns. Hell, my first article ever for DRS was a recap of the last time I went deer hunting. So who would make a better Dead Rebel for me than the most famous gun builder of our times? Nobody, that’s who. We all have our heroes, and Ruger is definitely one of mine. I have also had the pleasure of owning several examples of Bill's craftsmanship. Stellar firearms, every single one of them.
Bill Ruger didn't do much really, other than dropping out of college and designing his first gun in his in-laws kitchen in 1938, and then starting up a gun company in 1949 that is now one of the largest in America. He had a dream. Not some faggy dream about social reforms and justice for all, no, he had a dream about the perfect gun.
He also had the brains, but not enough money, so he made friends with money man Alexander McCormick Sturm - “Sandy” – and they were on their way. But the gun industry was a jungle with already established gun makers. Consider that Remington had been around since the Stone Age, and Winchester almost as long. Both Colt and Smith & Wesson were already known around the world for their handguns. So, how exactly did Bill do it? Easy, he thought outside the box, and instead of using expensive forged steel he pioneered investment casting for firearms use. His designs were also top notch.
His first gun was an auto loading .22 pistol that was cheaper than the popular Colt Woodsman and better than the High Standard. It sold for only $37.50 and was an instant hit with picky shooters. The Ruger MkI, and now the MkII, have both become the most favored .22 pistols for target shooting in the world, and are both based on similar thinking. Ruger also introduced the first ever heavy frame, fully functioning, .44 Magnum revolver to the world. Yes, I know Smith & Wesson built the first .44 Magnum. Too bad the Model 29 Smith & Wesson was built on their existing .357 Magnum frame and kicked like a fucking mule. It was a flawed design. The Ruger Super Blackhawk did not have that problem.
Bill was a perfectionist and never built a gun that had a perceived flaw. In the event that he discovered a flaw later on, or maybe discovered a way to make a gun safer, he would retrofit all existing guns for free if the owner wished to have it done. Tender, love and care, for both his products and for his buyers… Customer Service, another dying art form in today’s world.
Guns were not the only thing Bill loved… he also loved cars and 19th century Western art. He went on to design and commission a classically styled Sports Tourer, the Ruger Special, in 1973. Its design drew heavily on the 1929 Bentley 4.5 liter. Very few were built and they were produced for only one year. It is thought that only two still exist. He also commissioned a 92 foot yacht. Must be nice. He had visions that he wanted to realize, and he did.
On March 30th, 1989, Bill Ruger expressed a very unpopular opinion regarding high capacity magazines for guns, by submitting what came to be called “The Ruger Letter” to the House of Senate. He actually supported banning high capacity magazines. This was heresy in the gun world, but it was a brilliant move. So called “assault weapons” were facing a ban, and that would have severe impact on his production. By laying the blame on high capacity magazines, rather than on the firearm itself, he drew the heat away from one of his own designs. The Mini-14 had gathered a rather large following with militias and extremists, and Bill wasn't too keen on those fruit loops having high capacity magazines anyway. Crazy people are generally bad for business. So, he used a diversionary tactic and shifted the focus off his gun and on to the magazines, succeeding in getting the ban on those through, before they banned his gun instead. It pissed some people off, needless to say, and a boycott was staged. Didn’t matter. Ruger still sold all the guns he could make. To this day you can't buy a Mini-14 with a magazine larger than a 5 round capacity, unless you are a government agency. Although, IMO, it's not how many bullets you can hold, it's whether you can hit whatever the fuck you are shooting at. Anyway, The Ruger Letter is often considered the basis of our modern strict assault weapon laws.
Bill stayed officially active with design and development until his "retirement" in 2000, although he still helped out behind the scenes with things all the way until his death in 2002.
Today, Bills' company makes precision investment castings for aerospace, automotives, general manufacturing, golf, and many other markets, and on top of that it has sold more than 20,000,000 guns. Not too shabby for a dreamer from Brooklyn who said “fuck college”.
