Just to clarify, I was not saying that you can't get a good Ruger now. 99%+ are going to work just fine. It's just that, once upon a time, that number was 99.999999999% or thereabouts.
Early on, they were a big offender on the thin dust cover thing---when you can pinch the sides of it and make them move with your fingers, that's too thin. The newest examples seem to be better.
My major disappointments from Ruger are their plastic guns--the LCR is one of the least durable/reliable revolver actions ever conceived, which I've personally seen broken twice, once at my local range (guy pulling the trigger, cylinder not turning) and once at the store when an irate customer pulled in a couple of counters down from me, telling the guys there that Ruger had already fixed his gun once, now the piece of ___ was dead again and he wanted his money back. A REVOLVER. If I don't own one, and yet have been privy to two major failures without looking for them, AND the guys behind the counter there seeming as unsurprised as they did, there's a problem.
The LCP and LC9 pistols with lasers have issues with oil seeping down through the gun and jacking the lasers up.
The SR9/40 slide lock lever spring is just BARELY long enough to be supported in its little pocket on the lever and is prone to falling out, making the gun lock back after every round. Again, this won't happen on the majority of guns, but is an issue which could have been entirely avoided by making the damned spring 1mm longer, which would have no affect on function as it still would be inside the protected notch.
The Ruger American rifle has a weak/cheesy safety assembly, and the synthetic stock is so flimsy the you can twist the forearm into contact with the barrel with your weak-arm wrist; if you think that you won't have the stock bending upward changing the harmonics of that "free floating" barrel when you're shooting on a hot day, think again.
It's stuff like that which just aggravates me. GP-100s, Redhawks, Blackhawks, 77 and #1 series rifles, NON-takedown 10/22 rifles, Mark IIIs, and yes, probably the 1911 from what I've seen, are still guns which they seem to know how to make well. As time goes along, though, and the variations (calibers, finishes, barrel lengths) of the older platforms get thinner and thinner in the Ruger catalogue, I fear they're more and more interested in producing guns that are "good enough" in their eyes, and leaving the work-intensive models behind.
