Honest Gun Reviews

J

Joe Chicago

New member
Do any members know of an honest gun reviewer, or review site, that will post both favorable and unfavorable reviews of rifles and shotguns? It seems like all the reviews I see online - from Field and Stream to Gunblast - are puff pieces where all the rifles shoot one MOA and are 'the best the reviewer ever fired'. It reminds me of Lake Wobegon on the radio, 'where all the kids are above average'.
 
If you hang around internet gun forums long enough and read enough threads, you'll encounter the full spectrum of opinion. If you mentally average it out, perhaps excluding some of the extremes, I believe you can get a pretty good idea of people's experiences. Not all of us, certainly, but more of us than you'd probably suppose, are every bit as well qualified as the most famous gun writers.

What could be better? Hang out at ranges and talk to people who own guns you're interested in, ask questions, see what else they've got to say. Rent guns. That may look like an expensive proposition, but all you need to do is rent one gun and realize it's not for you to pay for renting dozens of guns.

On my own, I bought a Thompson-Center Contender with a .22 caliber barrel for target shooting in 1977 or 1978. I joined a club, took it to a range, and liked the gun enormously—only to discover bullseye target shooting. I in no way regretted buying the Contender, but wished in retrospect I'd started hanging out at a range before I started taking accuracy seriously: I'd have started with a High Standard and bought the Contender later.

One of the old bullseye shooters told me something that's stuck with me all these years: "The only dumb question is the one you don't ask."
 
Wolf, thanks for the good advice.

Your bullseye shooters' advice reminds me of something a friend told me years ago, "There are no stupid questions, only stupid people".
 
Maybe I'm being too charitable to the reviewers, but I always figured that it boiled down to the fact that magazines have a limited amount of space, so why publish a review of a "bad" gun when you can publish a review of a "good" gun instead? I think that's why you don't see many printed pages devoted to the "Bryco/Jennings" type of guns. Same with books and movies - with an essentially limitless number of both out there, I'd rather read a review about a movie that the reviewer thinks I'd like, rather than reading a review that's essentially "don't see/read it".

Also, there are a LOT of good guns out there, including many where the "cons" simply boil down to the reviewer's personal preferences and bias, so I'm not spring-loaded to be suspect of a glowing review.
 
To me, it's a huge red flag when I can't find reviews on a widely sold gun that's been on the market for any decent amount of time. What that says to me is two things:

1. Professional reviewers have either looked at it and decided it's not even worth "eating the egg to prove it's rotten" or they reviewed it and the results were so bad they weren't worth publishing.

2. Amateur reviewers are either afraid to waste their money by purchasing one or are ashamed to admit that they bought a lemon.

The point is that you don't have to actually find negative reviews to draw some conclusions about a firearm.

Speaking for myself, I don't have the money to go out and buy bad guns to review. I usually do a good bit of research before I make a personal purchase and the result is that when I do reviews, they're much more likely to be positive than negative.
 
I think it would be fun to read a review of "bad guns". Maybe I'm just weird, but from a technical perspective, I find this kind of reading entertaining and informative. You can learn quite a bit about what works and doesn't work with gun designs, metallurgy, crazy gun doo-dads, etc. Torture testing a Glock - ehhh, not much fun. Torture testing a Lorcin .380 - bring it on! Also, how about details on efforts to make a bad gun work - replacing weak sears and/or extractors with home-made designs. Much more interesting than watching a Glock go bang..bang..bang...
 
I suppose I'm what you'd call a serious student of the 1911, having carried and worked on them for over 35 years. Some of that was sorting out problem guns for the cops I FTO'ed for. To that end, I have read, accumulated and proven in practice the basics of making them run and shoot well. Now I don't claim to be a custom gunsmith or anything of the sort. Those guys are artisans and I'm just an armorer-level mechanic. The Blueprint and Kuhnhausen's manuals are my old and new testament- at least at the bench.

That said, I've reviewed several entry-level 1911s since 2005. Nobody's paying me and nobody's gotten a hall pass.

http://www.thesixgunjournal.net/home/sarges-1911-articles/
 
Do any members know of an honest gun reviewer, or review site, that will post both favorable and unfavorable reviews
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you are joking..., RIGHT ??

S.W.A.T. magazine is as close as you can get to good/bad reviews.

there are NO gun writers like we had 40 - 50 years ago. Elmer Keith was harsh on gun reviews when he found something he did not like.
 
Scott, the cynic in me thinks that magazines like Field and Stream or Shooting Times that depend on firearm manufacturers for ad revenues are loath to write anything bad about their products, even if it is warranted.
 
If you read the reviews enough, you can pick out the "code" for what is an excellent gun, and what is not in the eyes of the reviewer.

Go read some reviews again, pay close attention, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

It's like when you ask a boss about another boss you know is a POS, but they won't directly slam them...nor will the glowingly endorse them; know what I mean? Combine that with the hard numbers published (groupings, failures, etc...) and the story unfolds.....
 
Anytime I want to know something bad about something, . . . I just do the Bing and Google hit list for it:

"Review: Winchest Model 12 Shotgun"

I figure that if anyone really does love it and is computer savvy, . . . there is a good chance he will do a favorable review on some gun forum.

Likewise, . . . if anyone really does have a gripe with it, . . . it'll show up in either a "how do I fix this........." or "this is a piece of trash.........." forum post.

So far, . . . it has worked fairly good for me.

Not meaning to disparage the hunting and gun mags, . . . but writing a bad piece about an advertiser's product kind of amounts to biting the hand that feeds you, . . . and of course the other end, . . . are glowing worshipful praises warranted to an advertiser's product?

Just an old codger's thoughts, . . . worth only what you paid for em :D

May God bless,
Dwight
 
Right regular, three times a year, we get the "Ain't NO Good Gunmags Today" threads.

It's more than high time people realize that the eras the great writers wrote in are as dead as the great writers themselves, and just get on with life.

There are many "honest" reviewers, just as there are many knowledgeable gun forum members.
There are also less-than-useful writers in print, just as there are less-than-useful posters on the Internet.

And, some of those greats were also not without their own flaws & foibles.
One accidentally killed a fellow officer.
One was a sociopathic killer who'd be in prison today, if not in the chair.
One had something of a credibility problem among those who knew him personally.
Another had an over-fondness for alcohol.

I won't give names, but they're four of the top writers of their day & at the top of the list among people who constantly moan about the sad decline of today's gunmags.

Many things have changed since their day, some good, some bad.
That's life & the world in general.
Denis
 
Instead of focusing on what we've lost of the past (which is usually overly idealized), we should all appreciate the vast amount of resources we have now.

Problem is, before where you could pick someone you trusted and be loyal to their advice...now you have way more advice to sort through, both good and bad.
 
There used to be a writer named Woods whom I had a great deal of respect for. Every review he wrote that I had a chance to test his conclusion I found him to be spot on.

I worked for a fromer VP of S&W who stated that one of the ledgends of gun writers routinely faked his data. He would get the manufacture to provide ammo for a "5,000" round test. He would shoot enough to get some pictures and then sell the rest.

List, One of the best barrell makers in the 70s failed because he could not get a review of his work. He approached several of the prominent writers of the time and requested a review. Their response was, "give me a rifle and I will write a review". He could not afford to donate a rifle to their personal collection. So he did not get the publicity necessary to build his business.

Most of the time a review is accompanied by a major add buy by the manufacture. This has allways led me to believe that the advertising department had a major influence on the review.

It is like a study on the benefits of pork is conducted by the University of Iowa or a study on the benefits of tobaco is done by the University of a tobacco producing state.

The best place for information is in this forum (or others like it) the range and other shooters whom you know and respect.
 
It seems like all the reviews I see online - from Field and Stream to Gunblast - are puff pieces where all the rifles shoot one MOA and are 'the best the reviewer ever fired'. It reminds me of Lake Wobegon on the radio, 'where all the kids are above average'.
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You nailed it.
 
There are some magazines that do halfway decent reviews. It just takes a great deal of reading between the lines to find what faults were present in the test firearm.
 
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