I belive that the AR 7 is a very usefull tool that has a place. However, marketing of everything else new and changes in the mindset of outdoorsmen have overshadowed a very practicle survival tool.
On the topic of the commercial that started this thread: Have you ever looked around your home, the items you purchase, or if you sell the items you sell for where they are from? I got frustrated with one of our major suppliers for one of the items we purchase from them that I learned comes from China. I'm waiting to see why they made the jump across the big pond. Everything else is from North America, with most out of the U.S. However, they have started a little crack with this one area, and I fear they could go more and more that way.
I am currently fighting the industry trend to purchase caskets from China. They are cheaper, but the key word is cheap. They are not inexpensive. There is a difference in cost vs. value, and I don't want to get into the situation of working harder to make a cheap product acceptable to people that expect a certain level of quality regardless of how much they want cheap ... Actually what they want is inexpensive, but the retail market is responding by providing cheap.