Cars and guns are not analogous.
In some ways, they are. In specific detail, not so much.
it’s cheaper to let the customers be your QC dept. ...
I hear this a lot, but I wonder if it is actually
true.
I don't have the beancounter's data or their ways of looking at it, so I can't say with certainty, but I wonder if it might be something that isn't a universal truism.
The story about the "evil" car maker who didn't fix a known defect because their beancounters determined the cost of pay settlements to the families of those injured or killed was less than the cost of changing the production line to do the fix is known and has been made into at least one movie.
But I wonder if that principle is something done by gunmakers, or if it is a common myth because, well, they're big companies, and all big companies all do business exactly the same...etc.. (intentional sarcasm)
Ok, maybe it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and swims like a duck but maybe, its a goose. Or maybe its a witch, made of wood, like a duck, because both ducks and wood floats... ???
I don't think the gunmakers have done away with their QC people, because tis cheaper to just fix the bad ones. I'm not convinced that it IS cheaper to fix the bad ones. Consider receiving, inspecting, repairing then shipping back costs money that PROPER QC minimizes.
Now, I'm not saying there are no lapses or failure with QC, they are, after all people. However they are people who's jobs depend on their doing their work correctly. And those that screw up DO get fired. I've seen it happen.
So, I think that promoting the idea, either directly or by inference, that the factories don't care, and don't do QC and rely on their repair dept, "because its cheaper" is more BS than truth.
I also don't automatically buy in to the "they're producing more bad ones today than the used to..." It MAY be true, I don't know with certainty, but MAYBE it only SEEMS true because today, the entire world can hear of every bad gun with a few keystrokes. Are there really more examples of poor work, or are we just hearing about them when in the past we didn't??
I freely admit to not buying any new guns for some time, so maybe that's why I'm not seeing all the bad stuff reported out there. The reason I'm not buying new guns isn't because of their quality (or reported lack of same) but simply because there is damn little new that I am interested in.