Are Rugers German?

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357-8-times

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I know some of them are stamped Made in America, but they look awfully like the old Nazi guns of WW2- or am I mixing it up with Luger?
 
You talking about the 22? Made in America. I believe they use the same grip angle as the German Luger in the Mark II series.
 
There's Rugers and Lugers. Two completely different models.

Luger:
Luger_P-08.jpg


Ruger:
hmk2full.jpg
 
The Ruger is a German gun. The Luger is a cheap Japanese copy (the translator was fired soon afterward for telling an American gun writer that he had lice when they were at dinner.)

Wilhelm B Ruger, famous Nazi gun designer from Brooklyn, New York:
300px-Bill_ruger.jpg
 
What I've found is that, when I have a crappy old Luger, I can toss it in this stuff for a half hour on the stove, and I'll have a decent Browning. I do have to thoroughly degrease it first.

LA1301.jpg
 
What's worst, really, is the wiki-washing.

Wikipedia tells this bogus story about how Alex Sturm and Bill Ruger founded Sturm, Ruger & Co. here in the US, when everyone knows they were both just a couple of Nazis like Albert Einstein, or maybe Soviet plants like Ayn Rand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_B._Ruger
 
Go easy. Before I knew better I thought exactly the same thing. The names are similar, and the plinker kind of looks like a Luger. So I thought maybe Ruger was some knockoff of Luger with one letter difference to avoid the TM problems. If you consider Ruger's rather Germanic looking emblem it gets more confusing.

And some people might say Billy boy was a nazi, but that's an entirely different thread ;-)
 
True, but I was looking through Gun Digest at the time so I don't have any real excuse. Firearms are confusing, there's no two ways about it. For a long time I couldn't figure out if single action revolvers were firearms or some sort of farm equipment. I just couldn't figure out how someone would shoot one. Then I got an Italian clone and it all made sense after the first few rounds.
 
Uhhh What? I have had a Mark II confused with a Luger by non gunners before so I can see where this is coming from and they do have a similar look. Really want to confuse non gunners show the a c96 mauser heh-heh!
 
I remember in 1959, while in High School, I got a Ruger .22 Auto. I can remember having to explain that it was not a Luger, but a Ruger. Then. all most people knew was the German Lugers.
 
I believe the Ruger plinkers were designed to resemble their more expensive competition--the Colt Woodsman. So I think the resemblance is accidental. Certainly the Luger is no blowback.
 
Actually the Luger was on their minds. While you are right about the Colt and High Standard guns being the preferred .22 plinkers and target .22s pistols of the time, Bill Ruger patterned the new gun to look like a Luger. The Luger had a mystique to it so they picked up on a little of that. The original Ruger had a similiar tapered barrel, round trigger guard, and general shape to the grip frame that is remiscent of the Luger and of no other gun. That the names were similiar didn't hurt either. Ruger and Sturm were both smart fellas. No, of course the pistol didn't need a toggle link, etc. The Ruger was made of stamped sheet metal and a .22. All it had to do was to shoot as well as it's costlier competition and pick up on the fame of the Luger a bit. For their first gun it was a big hit. R.L. Wilson's book on Ruger and John Dougans works make the point on this.

Just as folks today still mistake a Ruger SA for the Colts they were modeled on so some look at a Ruger .22 and think "Luger".

tipoc
 
I heard that the Ruger .22s were modeled after the Type 14 Nambu (not the suicide special Type 94).
 
There is an amusing sidelight to the Ruger/Luger confusion. Just before the Ruger .22 auto came out, there was a pistol on the market called the Kruger. It was a scaled down model of the Luger, made of plastic and firing a shot pellet propelled by a toy cap. The advertising was highly deceptive and some folks thought they were buying a genuine Luger (for $2.49!). When the Ruger appeared, many people thought the gun was either a renamed Kruger or yet another plastic fake, and refused to buy it. In spite of that, the Ruger sold and Sturm Ruger was in business to stay.

Here is the Kruger, with a real, genuine Luger for comparison:

http://www.thehighroad.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=44374&d=1157409509

(Incidentally, Stoeger owns the "Luger" trademark in the U.S. and has since at least the 1920's. That is why they were able to call that .22 pistol they sold a "Luger" and bill it as the only "genuine" .22 Luger.)

Jim
 
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