Ruger Firearms: The Story of a Great American Company

And we continue with our American stories, and the story of Ruger, the great American arms manufacturer right here in the United States. Let’s continue with this great business story.

There’s a joke in the gun community that God came to Bill Ruger in a dream and showed him the design for the Ruger Standard Pistol, but unfortunately, Bill woke up before God could tell him how to put it back together. Anyway, when the gun was first put into production and they were working on things, they had a total of eight-barreled pistol receivers that they had made as test guns for this new design, and serial number three of these guns was actually the first one to leave the factory. Serial numbers one and two were retained internally for further study. By February of nineteen fifty, Stern Ruger and Company had a back order of an astounding five thousand units and a production capacity of just nine hundred guns a month. By summer of the same year, the backlog had grown to nine thousand units, and their production capacity had picked up a little bit, but they were still only able to make one thousand guns a month. That backlog is a testament to that little gun’s rugged design, its ease of use, and its affordability. Finally, finally, there was a .22-caliber pistol on the market that anyone could afford to own, and that was easy enough for anyone to learn how to shoot with this gun. Within a year, that little startup company from Connecticut had gained traction and continued to advance at a rapid pace. But Alex Stern contracted viral hepatitis and died very unexpectedly in November of nineteen fifty-one. He was just twenty-eight years old. The company’s heraldic eagle logo that today is instantly recognizable as Ruger—that eagle was actually designed by Alex Stern. And so, paying homage to his fallen business partner, Bill Ruger changed the color of the eagle in the logo from red to black, and with the exception of the one-millionth Ruger Standard Pistol that they produced in nineteen seventy-nine, it wasn’t until nineteen ninety-nine, with the celebration of their fiftieth anniversary, that the logo would return to red on all of their guns. So, even though they had the tremendous setback of Alex Stern passing away unexpectedly at a very young age, Bill Ruger was a shrewd businessman, and he didn’t want to rest on their laurels and be seen as a one-trick pony, so he knew that they were going to have to diversify their offerings beyond that .22-caliber pistol. Given the popularity of Westerns and cowboy six-guns in the nineteen fifties, the Ruger Company introduced their first single-action revolver in nineteen fifty-three. The revolver was an instant success, and the company introduced the Single-Six, the Blackhawk, and the Bearcat, all of which were single-action revolvers all by the end of that decade, and each one of them was a hit. Next up, rifles: The Deer Stalker, the 10/22, the Number One, the Model 77, and so on, were all added to the lineup in the nineteen sixties, and due to the brand’s success and popularity, the company became publicly traded for the first time in nineteen sixty-nine. It would go on to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in nineteen ninety, but today it remains the only American arms manufacturer that is publicly traded as a standalone entity and not grouped into a larger parent organization. So, they’re flying high. By the end of nineteen sixty-nine, they’ve been in business twenty years, and now it’s time for a flop. But it wasn’t a gun. Bill Ruger collected high-end antique automobiles, and so in that vein, he designed what was known as the Ruger Sports Tourer, which was a car based on the Bentley, and it had an estimated retail price of twelve to thirteen thousand dollars. Bill read the market wrong with the car, and that was kind of a rare occurrence for him. He usually was a keen eye and knew what people wanted. But they did not want this car, so they’d only made two of them when they turned their focus back to making guns. Unfortunately, they’d already spent eight years and four hundred thousand dollars developing a car that never made it to production. Nonetheless, when they turned their attention back to guns, they did well in the seventies. By nineteen seventy-nine, which was the company’s thirtieth anniversary, four of the models they offered had already sold a million units each, and they finished up their thirtieth anniversary with sales totaling sixty-eight point eight million dollars and a profit of seven point nine million, which was up like fourteen percent over the previous year alone. So by nineteen eighty-nine, and at this point in American history, the idea of a so-called ‘assault weapons’ ban was really picking up steam, and so Bill Ruger wrote a letter to every member of Congress and he told them that they should limit magazine capacity instead of trying to ban these so-called ‘assault weapons’. Taking it a step further, in a couple more years, he would sit down with NBC in nineteen ninety-two, and in that interview he was quoted as saying that ‘no honest man needs more than ten rounds in any gun,’ and backlash against Bill and the company was swift. Gun owners as a whole have very long memories, and there are still some people to this day that will not own a Ruger firearm because of what Bill said. Fortunately for them, you know, they make a good product, and there were enough people who still rallied around the brand, and they found themselves in nineteen ninety-nine celebrating their fiftieth anniversary, and by that point in time, they had really cemented their place both in firearms history and in American history. You know, quite literally, tens of millions of gun owners had Ruger firearms in the field, hunting, sitting in their home gun safes, out on the range with their kids, sitting in the gun rack in their trucks. You know, Ruger firearms were everywhere. And over the years, Bill Ruger had the opportunity to buy a whole bunch of other companies. Even if you don’t know firearms, you still know names like Colt, Smith & Wesson, Remington, and Winchester. He had the opportunity to buy all of those companies and didn’t. And it wasn’t just gun companies. Beyond that, he had the opportunity to buy both Maserati, the sports car company, and Harley-Davidson, the iconic motorcycle company. Instead, he chose to focus on his guns. By two thousand, Bill was eighty-four years old, and he decided it was finally time to retire. Now, retirement was kind of an odd thing for Bill. In nineteen ninety-two, he did an interview with Forbes magazine when he told them that he could never retire because he’d never done a good day’s work in his life. So how can you retire if you’ve never worked? Nonetheless, he did retire, and his son took over as chairman and CEO of the company. Bill had also said around that same time that ‘if you rest, you rust,’ and so that’s why he tried to keep so active, and unfortunately, retirement meant rest, and it meant rust. So Bill Ruger died in two thousand and two, having spent fifty-three years involved in the operations of the company that he helped found, and his son, Bill Ruger, Junior, passed away in twenty eighteen. After working for his father’s company for forty-two years, he retired in two thousand and six, and so even though there’s been no direct Ruger descendant running the company in more than a decade, they are definitely one of the big players on the block in terms of American firearms. The Ruger Standard Pistol that they initially created back in nineteen forty-nine lives on today in a variant known as the Mark IV, and like the previous three versions, it maintains all of the classic appeal and lines of the Standard, but it just kind of updates the platform for today’s market. Most importantly, however, it solves the difficulty of takedown and reassembly. So now that Bill is spending all of his time up above with God, he was finally able to have God show him how to put the pistol back together. And so now that the Mark IV has ironed out all the kinks in the design, the gun can remain at the forefront as an incredibly popular gun for people to learn how to shoot on, both young and old, beginner and seasoned pros alike. The humble startup that consisted of just a few guys in a red barn now has more than eighteen hundred employees. They’re still headquartered in Connecticut, but now they’ve got five factories throughout the country. Alexander Sturm’s fifty thousand dollars’ investment really paid off. The company today is worth nine hundred and forty million dollars. And given their success, I think it’s safe to say that Mr. Sturm and Mr. Ruger would have big smiles on their faces if they could see where their company is at today.

And a very special thanks to Logan Metish. Logan is a firearms historian and museum professional who runs High Caliber History LLC. And my goodness, what a story! Eighteen hundred employees off a fifty thousand dollars’ loan. Two guys, just, well, never working a minute in their lives, they probably felt. And so many people who work for themselves, that’s why they do it, because they have something special they want to do. And my goodness, anyone who owns weapons, who loves firearms and responsible firearm ownership, is a big deal. That he testified and went public on magazine capacity – my goodness, that took a lot of courage to do, and he did it. Ruger, the great American gun manufacturer. Their story here on now, ‘American Stories’.