How did you get to be so cynical and angry? Are you completely unable to have a disagreement without getting nasty?
You have some weird ideas about these things and an obvious vendetta against Colt, over a gun you do not even own. There was a time that I would've dissected your entire post and deconstructed it down to its smallest component but life is too short for crap. You'll probably soon be deemed a troll and banned anyway. I will say that I have met quite a few career gun writers and find your comments to be baseless, insulting and factually incorrect. I will leave you with a quote from the late Denis Prisbrey but I doubt you'll bother to read it.
"There are ALWAYS those fail to understand what a gunmag does.
They expect us to spend hundreds of dollars in repetitive lab environments & several weeks in the field, on any gun, and then to tell the reader whether they should buy the gun or not.
Not what we're here for.
My job is to get a gun sample in, shoot it under controlled conditions at generally consistent realistic distances, and then tell the reader:
What the gun is.
What features it has.
How it works (if applicable).
How WELL it works.
How accurate it was, in MY hands, on THAT day, in THAT environment, with THAT ammunition.
And maybe to render some commentary on features I liked or did not like.
In other words, I am:
A competent shooter.
Somebody who knows how various guns are used.
Somebody who knows how well a gun should function.
Somebody who knows how to consistently test for, and evaluate, accuracy.
Somebody who can analyze construction features in terms of mechanical quality, functional reliability, and the user interface.
Somebody who can produce clear, focused, and decently lit illustrative photos to show or explain features.
And finally- somebody who can organize all that into words that make sense, are informative, and sufficiently interesting to keep the reader's attention.
I am not:
Corrupt.
In any manufacturer's pocket.
Anybody's shill.
Making loads of money at this biz.
Getting tons of free guns in trade for sterling reviews.
Gold-plating ANY POS product.
Told by ANY maker how to write up their product. (With the three noted exceptions, resulting in permanently canceled coverage.)
Able to spend thousands of dollars in producing any article I'm going to sell for less than $700.
Here to do YOUR job in researching & deciding whether or not YOU should buy anything.
What I do is:
Borrow a gun from its maker, because I'd go broke if I had to buy every test gun I write up.
Shoot a gun & tell you about what it has, what it does, how it did for me, and toss in a couple of impressions (good AND bad) along the way.
Get a sample of ONE gun, which may or may not be representative, simply because production varies.
Put enough time & effort into evaluating a gun to produce useful basic reporting on it, while making a profit on the article sale.
Shoot a handful of representative load types through a test sample, as very basic performance parameters.
Get "free" ammunition as test samples, for use IN tests (not for personal stashes), necessary to make a profit on any article.
Tell the reader the truth.
Buy the test sample if I want to keep it, or return it if I don't.
What I do not do is:
Make a gun look good to please a maker/advertiser.
Pointless accuracy testing at silly distances (either too close or varying widely from article to article).
Gloss over or ignore deficiencies.
Obtain multiple samples to do multiple-sample testing.
Get "special hand-built writer's test guns".
Spend months in the snow, the mud, the rain, the jungle, and the desert with any gun, to give it a "real" test.
Shoot multiple 10-shot groups with each load tested to create a more "valid" accuracy test.
Run dozens & dozens of different loads through every test sample, so every reader's personal pet favorite is sure to get covered.
Get paid thousands of dollars per article.
Get to keep every sample gun for free (see above).
All your research work for you.
Tell you whether to buy the gun in question or not.
Do your thinking for you.
What you do (or should) is:
Use your own damn brain.
Use multiple sources when looking for info on a particular gun you might be interested in.
Use any mag article as ONE info source.
View any gunmag as a source of general info in expanding your own knowledge base, even on guns you're not planning to buy.
LEARN from gunmags (good ones).
EVALUATE for yourself whether the writer of any particular article seems to know what he's talking about, and/or if that article truly offers you any useful info.
Pay attention to that info, or ignore his byline in future if you decide he never provides anything useful.
Understand it's one guy, one gun.
Realize a second sample off the shelf at your local dealer can easily be better or worse.
Understand that advertising is a necessary evil, and the large-circulation mags CAN'T exist without it.
Comprehend that the gunmags are a for-profit business.
Realize that gunwriters expect a profit on our time & production efforts, like anybody else who's self-employed.
What you should not do is:
Make unfounded assumptions about the character of ALL gunwriters.
Assume ("know") the system is totally rigged & corrupt.
Continue to spout Internet BS about all gunwriters being totally in the pockets of the gunmakers.
Totally dismiss all gunwriters as dishonest shills, and all gunmags as useless.
Expect US to make YOUR decisions for you.
Expect completely unreasonable extended testing from us.
Expect the gun you buy to BE exactly the same and PERFORM exactly the same as the one we wrote up.
Fail to comprehend that a sample of one is a sample of one.
Revere the Internet as God Above All, in the field of providing actual truthful gun info.
Be indignant if a gunmag prints something you already know.
Gunwriting can be a fairly lucrative job, IF you manage to plug yourself into one of the huge publishing conglomerates as a salaried staff writer, used in multiple positions, and backed by their resources.
The rest of us (the majority) are freelancers, NOT on salary, and not even full-time writers.
As a freelancer, you'd have to put out an astonishing volume of material to actually LIVE off article sales, and very few of us are able or willing to do that.
I spent the first ten years establishing myself as a writer while still a career cop.
The last 20 after retiring the writing only made up half of my income.
I know other writers who have or had other income to supplement what they make or made from the gunmags.
It IS something of a labor of love.
We don't get rich, we don't get free guns, we don't get free beer, and we don't even get groupies.
Time after time, year after year, I see this almost regularly spaced gunmag bashing.
They're all shills.
I already know everything they print.
Nothing they print is any good.
I can get everything I need from the Internet.
OK. Fine.
Nobody anywhere is forcing you buy a gunmag, or any other product you don't want, if you feel it doesn't give you anything for your money.
DON'T BUY THE THINGS!
If you already know it all, just don't buy a gunmag.
By all means- Trust every anonymous body on the Internet, get all your detailed info on new models from those faceless people, and enjoy the clear, well-focused & comprehensive photos of new guns & features there.
Just knock off propagating the age-old tiresome myths & lies about the gunmags that seem to have have a life of their own.
If ya gotta spout, at least spout the truth, huh?
Denis"