LOL! yeah, a lemon does turn up, but not NEARLY as much as you might think (or TTAG may claim).
In general, I'm never just sent guns randomly. It's usually something I've picked out and am interested in for one reason or the other. If it's not a mainstream manufacturer, I'll talk to people I respect about the gun, but I may or may not "bite" on it. Example, the Caracal...I shot it and thought it was a cool gun. Two of my friends, both top-tier competition shooters, were blown away by the gun, and I was offered a T&E. I made the decision to wait a year until the gun was in full production, and you know the rest.
I don't tend to be as much of a fanboi as I was when I was younger...for example, I will grant you that Kel-Tec is an innovative design house, but they can't seem to manufacture the guns they design. The PMR-30, for example, was a screaming home run in design and the ones I shot were just plain fun to shoot (I never asked for a T&E). However, the gun has been a bundle of problems...a .32 I got early on may well be indestructible...me and some cop friends put hundreds of rounds of blazing hot 1930s-vintage Spanish ball through one, and while it loosened up, it never failed to run. OTOH, their sized-up .380s had issues.
I prefer to deal with major manufacturers. A lot of time you'll see one of the Internet guys go ga-ga over some obscure gun (TTAG with the Caracal), and part of that is because the blogger might not have access to the bigger guys, so Joe Bob's Blaster is the bestest in the whole world and totally ignored by the mainstream gun press because they're all bought off whores under the thumb Ruger or Remington or somebody Real Big!!!...or the like.
The major manufacturers tend to deal with us on a more professional basis, e.g. we see guns earlier in the production cycle because manufacturers genuinely do not want to put out a product that is not pretty close to 100%. A prototype or a production prototype (a gun run on the "test" manufacturing line before full production) might very well have problems, and part of the "deal" to early access is being willing to talk to the manufacturer honestly. At some of these events its not unusual to have both the manufacturing engineer in charge and the primary designer present, and we'll hash through the problems.
Sometimes guns just don't work. I mentioned in writing that I had a ton of problems with the STI single stack .40 1911...the net was that STI at the time (don't know for certain now) warranted those guns will run ONLY with STI magazines. Period. Exclamation mark. Another time I got a Kimber 9mm 1911 for an IDPA championship...the gun went back to Kimber 3 times. I told them that I wasn't going to test shoot the gun after the 3rd time it came back, but we would film with it. It jammed on film, which we showed. I actually bought that gun, paid Brucie Gray to "blueprint" it and ended up writing/talking about "tolerance stacking" in sub-caliber 1911s and I think we all learned something.
Sometime I just get curious. I got a production line Taurus 1911 and sent it to Cylinder & Slide to be blueprinted and have the hardness tested on every single part. It was 100% in spec. Before Rock Island came on board as a major advertiser, I bought one of their $329 1911s at MSRP and shot the snot out of it. Was it as good as my Wilson Master Grade? Nope, but it shot fine, zero malfunctions and a great base for a custom gun.
Most of the time what passes for "critiques" are just opinions. The whole trigger rest thing, for example. Para LDAs were the worst guns in the world because they have 2 clicks to reset...I tend to agree with Bill Rogers and the Navy SEALS...so what? It's a "wetware" issue. Or the near hysterical reviews on the Ruger SR-9s because they have manual safeties. Again, so what?
So the answer is...maybe! LOL!
mb
PS: For once I'm glad I took my own advice and stocked up Big Time on .22s when they were available!
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