it just hit me that guns are one of the last product that is designed and marketed to a western market to be durable, modular, easy to maintain by oneself, and not depreciate
\n\n\nYeah actually a lot of stuff in the firearms space \u2013 “tacticool” style, the industry group NRA’s financial straits, colored (esp pink!) guns, the drive to appeal to women and black shooters, the need for constant innovation \u2013 envelope-pushing short-barrel not-legally-a-rifle pistol carbines and not-legally-a-shotgun “Firearms”, novelties like the KSG or Judge, “buy before it’s banned!” hype \u2013 comes down to that.
Firearms are very durable and hold value well so for the industry to maintain they need a constant churn of new product (and newly manufactured needs); if you just wanted a decent hunting rifle you could just use a still-good hand-me-down from either grandfather of which you’re the only descendant to still hunt
in any other industry I would expect them to try and push for ongoing subscription fees instead of one off purchases, and wouldn\u2019t that make perfect sense for ammo?
Gun manufacturer =/= ammunition manufacturer, as far as I know. Plus the largest consumers of ammunition are militaries, and western (read: NATO and other US allies) militaries all agreed to use standardised ammunition after seeing the logistical mess created by having multiple exclusive supply chains in the Second World War. This means the biggest market for ammo (and the biggest civilian market, because of course consumers will want the easy standardised option) is also the one where you\u2019re competing with the most people and can\u2019t innovate much.
right, I\u2019d assume they\u2019d come up with a flimsy justification to introduce a new ammo type “optimised for hunting\u201d or home defence or whatever that just happens to be incompatible with the existing standards, then keep blathering on about how much better it is than legacy milcuck caliber until you feel like an idiot for not paying the extra premium, I mean that\u2019s what everyone else does.
Gunmakers release stuff chambered in obscure new calibers all the time (that’s part of the churn!). Proprietary ammunition is in fact a thing. At the turn of the 90s, the FBI tried to make 10mm happen as optimized-for-gunfighting. (They settled for inventing .40 S&W, but you can still get 10mm)
Buyers consider price of ammunition, though. You can’t make them switch to new calibers, if it’s too expensive they’ll just keep shooting what they’ve got.
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