Bill Ruger, at one point in his lifetime, said in some form that "no civilian should have any need for more then 10 rounds at a time!"
That, to me, seems to be where the magic limit of 10 comes from...the supposed "authority" on civilian firearm's jack-azz commentary. I find it mildly amusing that after Bill Ruger passed away in 02 and the 94 AWB died in 04 Sturm & Ruger, Co. immediately started selling "hi-cap" magazines to us irresponsible citizens...guess his company decided we might like to have more then 10 rounds at a time.
Perhaps.
However, it may also have merely been sales pitch talk for a company who, back then, was heavily vested in the six-round revolver market, and who'd only recently (at that time) begun expanding into the semi-auto pistol market. I don't care if they'd been manufacturing them since 1949. There's a huge difference between when a company starts manufacturing a line, and when they start marketing a line.
On the other hand,
according to one of our own, Ruger said:
"No honest man needs more than 10 rounds in any gun.”
"I never meant for simple civilians to have my 20 or 30 round magazines or my folding stock.” - Bill Ruger
The
PROBLEM with this is that I can't find Google hits substantiating either statement, except on OCDO or other gun sites. Meanwhile, when I type something off the top of my head, however, such as "Blue Whales are an endangered species" I get 4,550 hits.
That's telling. It's telling me the quotes attributed to Ruger may have been fabricated, or at the very least (and most likely) either incorrectly or abhorrently (out of context of understanding) attributed to him with the same fervor as KKK lynchings in far darker times in our nation's past.
If you have valid sources you'd like to share which prove otherwise, please do.
Don't get me wrong! I found
countless gun sites attributing this to Ruger, including
this one, which is perhaps the best at citing reputable sources. However, even they failed to cite the "10 rounds" comment, a YouTube search on "Ruger Brokaw Interview" turned up "No video results for “ruger brokaw interview” and I've yet to find anything
definitive, such as an interview with a well-known reporter, or a Ruger press release.
I have a WIDE open mind, and believe pretty much anything withing the laws of physics is possible. But I'm not a sap, either, nor do I take things on the word of another (or even 20,000 others) that things are one way when the facts indicate they're another.
Here's my take on Ruger's efforts: Even if he did actually make that statement, in the wake of rising antipathy towards "semi-autos" and "high capacity magazines," and in the face of a rising tide of anti-gunners who wanted to get rid of
ALL handguns (including Rugers), Ruger enacted breakwaters (a comment about 10 rounds) to appease the anti-gunners' immediate interests while given enough breathing room and response time for the handgun industry to grow and strengthen (as it did) into a huge voice which has reversed many of the insane anti-gun measures and gained new ground with respect to our Second Amendment rights. One only has to look at the number of OC and CC states between 1990 and 2010 to tell that we've been very successful.
So many of you are quick to hang 'em high, but so few of you recognize he used
the same genius he used to build the industry to help the industry weather the storm of the anti-gunners.
Even after 20 years, your 20/20 hindsight is looking more like 20/400. He handed us a wonderful gift-horse and all you can do is look it in the mouth. If our enemies had had their way, our horse would be DEAD. Ruger wasn't our enemy. He saw the handwriting on the wall very clearly, and acted accordingly.
As a result, our horse is not dead. It's thriving. Did Ruger save it single-handedly? Heck no! But he certainly saw the handwriting on the walls and had a hand in slowing it's demise until we could rise up against the anti-gunner machine.
Please shrug off your bigoted anti-Rugerisms, of which many may have been handed down to you as you weren't of age back in the 1980s, and open the other eye. Get glasses, if you must.
Regardless, the utter hate some of you lavish on Ruger throughout this thread is unimaginable. It looks like a soap-towel party reminicent of Full Metal Jacket i.e. a pretty damned sick and disgusting way to villify another human being. I sincerely would have thought OCDO folks were smarter than this!
Apparently not, at least for some of you. If you
must hate something,
hate this. It's least their actions are deserving of your vile. They're making Al Quaida look like
Hervé Villechaize.