What's your beef with Colt and H&K? If you don't mind my asking. Pure curiosity.
Not to go off on a rant......
Colt, they suck for quality control and customer service. case in point. We received our brand new M4 rifles. After taking them out to zero them, the guys came back saying the bbls were loose. And they were. There was left to right play in the bbl. Long story short, we found the entire run of new M4's we received were over torqued to hide the fact that they were out of spec. we ran it up the line and Colt told big Army "Sorry, they are out of warranty" (because they sat in the warehouse too long). They could care less about the civilian market and are a PITA to deal with for anything. I will never carry a Colt product as I feel that the company is a bunch of spineless turds who only care about getting your money and then the rest is your problem. Like Special Weapons.....
H&K, they suck and are over rated. While the MP-5 is a nice weapon, and lead the pack of subguns for many years, they are worth about half what the Nazi's charge for them (the Nazi thing being a reference to the fact that they fled Germany to Spain until it was safe to come back, they did produce weapons for the Nazis, and if you have ever been to one of their schools you probably know what I mean as well). It is a stamped sheet metal receiver meant for wartime production. There are much more labor intensive designs out there that cost less. So why are H&K guns so much? They should cost agencies no more than $600 for what they are.
Now lets talk egronomics. They suck. Almost as bad as the AK (please keep in mind I do own a few MP-5s and nearly 20 AK's, I love them for what they are, but they aint all that). They are not all that they are made out to be. The American market had to fight tooth and nail to get the puch button mag release, ambi-safety multi-possition collapseable stock. It goes against everything they think should be in a weapon. The first time one of our guys showed them the modified multi possition stock at a school they about lost their minds. The whole mag clamp holding 2 mags was another heart stopper. Even though they made the thing they think it is the spawn of the devil and should never be used. We used them anyway.
Either way, all other issues aside the bottom line for me is I personally (and so have many other people we know) have had extremely bad experiences with them from and end user/ customer service stand point. They make guns that people trust their lives on. When they make them out of spec or bend you over on the price and then wont stand behind it is where I get off the boat with them. The military has done the same thing with Colt, and it looks like H&K is on its way out as well. The XM-8 is dead after the Rangers destroyed them in testing, the MK-23 is nearly universally hated by those issued them, the only thing people want from H&K is the MP-5, which I can understand. As a retailer, we wont stand behind or promote a company that wont stand behind their customers when there are problems with the product. For us the customer is the most important person out there. Anyone can make a gunt o fill a mission. If you ignore the customer's, their concerns or issues long enough they will go away. Just ask Colt and H&K