Sure, most of the old guns work, they've already been fixed
Exactly. They've always made junk, but most of the old junk has long since been scrapped, melted down, parted out or turned in to the police in exchange for $50 gift certificates. The old guns that remain tend to be the ones that still work.
Are guns as a whole better or worse now? This is a tough question to answer. After all:
1.) There is genuinely less handwork that goes into guns today.
2.) New guns compete with many more used guns on the market today and this, combined with modern consumer expectations (i.e. something for next to nothing) have forced manufacturers to keep prices down (witness the huge numbers of plastic framed guns).
However, there are several huge mitigating factors:
1.) As pointed out, old junk broke.
2.) Stuff that was worth fixing was fixed and is still for sale.
3.) People bought fewer new guns in the past because they were more expensive on a real dollar basis, so they sampled much less of what was available.
And most of all:
4.) The internet didn't really exist thirty (even fifteen) years ago in a way that would allow the slightest complaints to be broadcast to the universe. If the internet had existed, say, in 1948, you can bet someone would've been out there raising hell about the appalling from-the-factory condition of the forcing cone of the S&W Military & Police that would become mine nearly sixty years later.
