Quote:
|
The best evaluation for me, is my own. I don't care what a gun rag says.
|
Yes, while it may bother some people to have a gun slammed by a gun rag, wanting to know what the gun rag people think about a gun after you own one isn't why most folks want reviews. They are looking for information to help them in making (potential) purchases. They haven't done their own reviews because gunmakers don't send them guns for free in advance to road test. The idea is that gun rags have some professional gun people put a gun through its paces, evaluate it on various levels, and deliver an assessment BEFORE Joe Consumer buys one and so Joe Consumer will buy their rag to learn more about the gun.
There are problems with the process in most cases other than Gun Tests, however. Gun rags can't come up with negative reviews if they take advertising from gunmakers. If they get a gun that doesn't work right, you might hear about it in print, or not. They may send it back to the manufacturer and have them resubmit. They might report there was a small problem and praise the customer service of the manufacturer for taking care of it so quickly (which of course will be the case when a gun is being reviewed for publication. CS isn'g going to jerk around the reviewers). Or, the gun never performs well and the gun rag simply does not publish the review. The manufacturer does not lose face and doesn't cut off advertising.
The other problem is that reviews in most gun rags are not blind. The manufacturer sends a gun in that is supposedly (usually) pulled from the line randomly, but I highly doubt they do this. They are going to check over the gun from top to bottom before sending it for review. Gun Tests, however buys (or used to) guns blind, through a vendor, such that the manufacturer isn't giving a gun special treatment before a review. The gun Gun Tests purchased would have been a gun any of us could have purchased.
For all of us, the best evaluation is our own. Either the products we have work properly or they do not. Either they meet our expectations or they do not. AFter all, reviews don't determine function and all we really care about is that our hard earned money isn't wasted.