Hope all that wants one gets one. I’ll keep my Garands, 03s, various revolvers and pistols and “America’s REAL Gun”…lever actions from ‘73 winchester to Marlin 95.
I’ve got some of what you mentioned and some you didn’t. Ultimately the AR15 is a blast to shoot. Cleaning it is another story all together.
Speaking of “real” guns, I was interested to learn about Savage. Turns out the founder was an interesting character who owned the biggest ranch in Australia back in the Nineteenth Century. After that he got a job with a gun maker - and, with his son, developed the 1895 Savage lever action rifle, the first few thousand of which were produced by Marlin while Savage got his production act together. Savage invented the removable magazine in universal use in military rifles.But the funny thing was that I learned this in the context of radial tires. Back before the Energy Crisis hit, Americans didn’t use radial ply tires in a big way; they were invented - actually reinvented - by Michelin in the postwar 1940s. And they were always popular in Europe because of their lower rolling resistance than the old bias-ply design which was the prior standard. After all gasoline had always been ridiculously expensive in Europe as compared to America.
After the Oil Embargo hit, Consumer Reports magazine extolled radial tires for fuel economy - and that precipitated a switchover in America to the radial tire, which now is standard with 100% of the market. Goodyear’s CEO was criticized when he bet the company on the radial tire at that time. But other US tire manufacturers didn’t, and are no longer independent. Even Goodyear sold a tire plant in NYS to a Japanese company, Sumitomo, recently.
But the reason that relates to Savage is that Mr. Savage patented the radial ply tire in 1915! Michelin apparently didn’t realize that, and reinvented the radial tire just as Savage’s patent on it was running out.