I’m with
@taliv, the ranges are coming to meet the new market demand. The SAD part, I believe, is gonna be when all of that infrastructure investment gets abandoned when the popular trend is over. It’s easy for pop culture to abandon long range shooting, because it’s harder than many other forms, so I think it won’t last as long - but the ranges are getting built, and when they become available, guys will go shoot there until they realize long range isn’t for them...
The AR boom was a perfect footstone for the long range boom. Guys bought AR’s as their first and only gun, many of them with cheap mil-spec barrels, then they quickly realized the limitations of the platform. So they went looking for something else... The market tried to push AR-10’s for a while, but guys realized the weight, recoil, cost, and relative imprecision of the AR-10 vs. precision bolt rifles didn’t make sense - buy a precision bolt gun... so here we are with the milk jug challenge, hundreds of guys online pretending they hit a jug on their first shot at 600-1000yrds, and thousands of guys wanting to follow in those footsteps... American Sniper certainly influenced it too, perfect timing... but too long ago now to be the only market motivation...
When those guys realize the limitations of their skills, they’ll be selling the rifle. With an AR, anyone can go out and shoot fast and have fun. Not everybody can go bang 1-2moa steel at 1,000, and nobody wants to have their buddy ask about that slick looking rifle in the corner, that expensive looking rifle, and then have to admit they can’t hit jack squat with it.
The only things I think are really over are the “blued and walnut thing,” and the “levergun thing.” Maybe the “expensive single shot thing” too...