I don't think people are making all of this stuff up out there. Despite all that is said for or against Taurus I would think that the numbers say something from actual handgun users. If I was to buy a new gun, regardless of the company, if 51% of people said that they would not trust them I would probably make a logical assumption to stay away from them, but that's just me.
Problem is, you can't make a logical decision based on belief. How many of the 51% of these respondents who do not trust Taurus to be their only gun have actual experience with a Taurus failure? How many of the 49% have had actual experience with a Taurus that has really stood the test of time? How many on both sides are responding based on a feeling they get from reading stuff like this on the internet? Anecdotal evidence may provide a starting point for research, but this type of (some times multiple) reporting from an eager, self-identifying group is worse than useless, it is necessarily misleading. Perception of a brand's quality often does not reconcile with reality. And it goes both ways.
Your belief that Taurus quality is poor overall may be valid. But it would be so because it is so, not because most (at least by a slim margin) people believe it. Unfortunately, there is no access to the real data that would help us determine that validity, and word of mouth is not a substitute for data. Anecdotal transference of information is more likely to contain errors in logic than actual logic. For example, if you had two, or three, or even four Taurus guns that failed you, that is only four Taurus guns out of the many thousands that they produce each year. And yes, the chances of
you getting that many are small. However, statistically speaking, the chances of
someone eventually getting that many bad ones are actually pretty good. Of course you won't believe it if it happens to you. Personal incredulity is irrelevant to the facts, however.
Again, I'm not saying you are wrong about Taurus quality, just that what you have is a feeling about it based on your personal experience, and a subjective assessment of anecdotal reports that concur with your own beliefs. What none of us have is knowledge. We can't have that until we have real-live data.
You want to know how useful polls like this are at gathering useable data? As you stated at the top of your post, 51% of respondents as of this writing state they would not trust Taurus as their only gun. That is the same number of adults who, in a
2003 Harris poll, stated that they believe in ghosts. So, do you believe in ghosts now?
BOO!
) but I do own 4 Taurus semi-autos and have never had a problem with any of them. I think they're a great gun for the money. Not the nicest, but good enough for me. Lots of people love to hate on Taurus because they read on the net that they suck or they had one that malfunctioned. I had a Sig P226 that never worked right even after 3 trips to the shop. Does that mean all Sig's suck? No, but that one sure did. This is the same as all the people that say all AR's are junk or no AK could ever possibly be accurate.
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