non biased firearm reviews
- Thread starter jonc
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gunseller2
Member
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2007
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I've been subscribing to Gun Tests for years, enjoy the reviews, sometimes disagree when they tank a gun that I own and like. I get a bit baffled when the sometimes compare apples to oranges during their tests, but they are a refreshing change from most gun magazines that never met a gun that they didn't like. You know the ones that run a full page ad for a gun that was reviewed on the preceding pages.
Loosedhorse
member
The tendency to avoid data that tries our previous decisions, and to easily accept even suspect data that may confirm them, is a prime way that we reduce "cognitive dissonance," a term coined by Leon Festinger, not Freud. We should all be on guard for this natural tendency.
from the 1976 edition of The Fifty Minute Hour: A Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales (1955) by Robert Mitchell Lindner
Zundfolge
Member
Caliban said:gunblast causes my browser to freeze for ~15 seconds
too many banner ads
http://www.getfirefox.com + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 = Problem Solved!
Duke Junior
member
The very reason I've been a 14 year subscriber to Gun Tests.
Guns and Ammo,Handguns Mag,,Rifle Shooter,etc. never do meet a gun they don't like.
gidaeon
Member
I am fond of reputable forums including this one for such reviews. Typically with enough research one finds fairly consistent likes and dislikes (I.E., trigger, QC ect.,) I typically disregard\filter out the highest and lowest rating ("its worthless" ... "its the best EVER") Avoid extremes, and pay attention to the people in the middle about what they like and don't like. Anyone that is supported by advertisers gets a cautious raised eyebrow 
Also its possible to express dislikes & disappointments without gross generalization and slander. Folk\groups who grossly do that are filtered out.
Also its possible to express dislikes & disappointments without gross generalization and slander. Folk\groups who grossly do that are filtered out.
When I spoke of a Freudian identification, I was referring to an unconscious identification of our weapons with an organ not generally presumed to be involved in cognition - though according to my wife, it may be the seat of all male cognitive processes.
Mike
Loosedhorse
member
Understood, Mike, but as my second quote points out, this is not a "Freudian" association.
Sometimes a gun is just a gun.
Sometimes a gun is just a gun.
Justin
Moderator Emeritus
I don't think it's possible to get an unbiased firearm review from a commercial publication.
But not for the reason most people believe- that a given magazine will tend to publish glowing reviews of products made by the companies buying ad space in the publication.
That may be true to some extent, but isn't something I have a problem with.
I fundamentally don't think it's possible to test a given firearm properly simply because it would be a very resource intensive proposition.
Even firing 1,000 rounds through just about any decently-made modern firearm is hardly more than breaking it in. In order to really do a proper review of a firearm, you would have to fire literally tens of thousands of rounds through it. The monetary cost of doing this would very quickly come to outweigh the money being paid to the reviewer to write up his article.
On top of that, how many people shoot their guns that much? The average gun owner is going to shoot maybe a couple of times a year. Heck, even someone who likes guns and shoots regularly probably isn't going to burn through more than a case or two a year.
So there's no financial incentive to really put a given firearm through serious testing for people who aren't going to really shoot their guns that much.
The bottom line is that nearly any modern, properly-made gun is built so well that they're likely to outlive their owner. Most of them are built to tolerances that make the potential accuracy of the gun better than that of the person wielding it.
Basically, no matter what gun you buy, it'll probably work just fine, so the main reason to go with this-or-that model is going to have much more to do with personal preference than anything else.
As for how I evaluate a gun? I just look for the guys whose guns have the finish just about worn off, who shoot on a continual basis, and then I ask them what they think. That's the best review you could hope for.
But not for the reason most people believe- that a given magazine will tend to publish glowing reviews of products made by the companies buying ad space in the publication.
That may be true to some extent, but isn't something I have a problem with.
I fundamentally don't think it's possible to test a given firearm properly simply because it would be a very resource intensive proposition.
Even firing 1,000 rounds through just about any decently-made modern firearm is hardly more than breaking it in. In order to really do a proper review of a firearm, you would have to fire literally tens of thousands of rounds through it. The monetary cost of doing this would very quickly come to outweigh the money being paid to the reviewer to write up his article.
On top of that, how many people shoot their guns that much? The average gun owner is going to shoot maybe a couple of times a year. Heck, even someone who likes guns and shoots regularly probably isn't going to burn through more than a case or two a year.
So there's no financial incentive to really put a given firearm through serious testing for people who aren't going to really shoot their guns that much.
The bottom line is that nearly any modern, properly-made gun is built so well that they're likely to outlive their owner. Most of them are built to tolerances that make the potential accuracy of the gun better than that of the person wielding it.
Basically, no matter what gun you buy, it'll probably work just fine, so the main reason to go with this-or-that model is going to have much more to do with personal preference than anything else.
As for how I evaluate a gun? I just look for the guys whose guns have the finish just about worn off, who shoot on a continual basis, and then I ask them what they think. That's the best review you could hope for.
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