I think we're at the point where no one can absolutely identify exactly what an American gun company is anymore. Is it by where the company was originally started? Is it by percentage of parts? Where the final assembly takes place, irregardless of where the parts come from? Is it by where the physical corporate headquarters is located? Is it how the accounting is structured? Or, more likely, what the company's marketing department tells us it is?
There is something about being an American gun owner that brings out the patriotic nature in all of us gun owners. As a group, we seem to express our patriotism quite a bit more than many other groups (the automotive group is another one). Maybe it's the 2nd Amendment connection, or maybe it's our country's history of attaining and maintaining our sense of freedom, thanks to the gun. Like most of you, I consider myself to be extremely patriotic. Heck, I've been known to tear up at the Pledge of Allegiance at the local high school football game.
As American gun owners, we all want to feel proud of the quality of product of our, so-called, American gun companies. Unfortunately, you have to admit that a quick read of many firearms forums will reveal more than a few moanings about the level of product quality coming out of the big (traditionally) American brands. Not to say there isn't quite a bit of good product out there (I do own my share of Smith and Wesson and Remington products), but the quality just isn't the absolute reason to buy from them.
That leaves us with pushing the Buy American gun movement, not for the quality of it, but just to help the American gun company economy and as a result, by extension, to help the American economy.
While I applaud the motive behind it, the 'Buy American' movement thing just doesn't address the cause of any of the problems: the fact that the gun companies aren't providing the products the public wants. You can, by pushing the Buy American movement, guilt the public into purchasing American for a short while, but not forever.
This country was built on the entrepreneurial spirit and the fact that economic pressures of the marketplace promotes an evolution of better and better products. Somewhere along the line, the rest of the world's companies (not just the gun companies, but other industries as well) have learned those lessons and implemented them, while the American gun companies have gotten complacent about that. They've gotten to the point where shortcuts in the process have become more important than making the shopping public's interests come first.
The fact is, the American economic model is based on the fact that when you build a product that is better than its competition and offer it at a better price and distribute it with a more efficient process, and market it in such a way that makes it convenient to the buying public, the dollars will flow. That's economics 101, folks; capitalism at its finest.
To me, that means choosing your guns from companies that build them the best...no matter the country of origin. If that sounds unpatriotic to you, it shouldn't. It is the American way of doing things. Too many (traditionally) American gun companies have ridden the marketing bandwaggon of appealing to our patriotism to buy from them. Appealing to my sacred patriotism as a way to get me to shop their products is dirty, in my oppinion.
Time to drop that mindset, folks. Time to help America stay great by forcing the gun companies to create great products we actually want, rather than products we're being patriotically guilted into buying.