Some time back, Reader Mike S. sent me this pic, with the comment: “Marketing trumps Good Taste every time.”
My initial reaction is to agree with him. Clearly, this rifle is not aimed at Grumpy Ole Pharrttes like him (or me, for that matter), but at some new genre of gun owner — my guess, a Gen Z person who wants to look cool and doesn’t want to look like his grandpappy (again, like Mike or me) with our old WinMar wooden-stocked “cowboy” rifles.
And yes, while I think that the tacti-cool thing in the snow pic looks like dog’s balls on a Noritake dinner plate, there’s no denying that it would work just as well as its predecessor — I mean, a lever gun is a lever gun is a lever gun, regardless of its cladding.
Also, in places that Must Not Be Named — places that ban “assault rifles” — there is no question but that Snow Gun would escape the baleful scrutiny of said gun-haters because it is, after all, just a lever rifle.
Finally, the marketing executive in me says that we Grumpy Ole Pharrttes are entering the Twilight Years — i.e. we’re not long for the gun world, or any world — so we are, to put it crudely, a shrinking market. In that spirit, therefore, manufacturers should extend their product line to accommodate the tastes of a New Generation…
…as long as they continue to make traditional lever rifles, and not make it an “either/or” situation, because that would make me fucking enraged very sad.
But hey, considering that I had to change my sixty-year deodorant choice because the manufacturer decided to do the above, what the hell. Let’s just join the in-crowd and get some ghastly new thing instead of a rifle that has served its users perfectly well for over a hundred and fifty years.
Update: Panzer Arms has decided to get in on the faerie “white gun” trend, with its semi-auto 12ga:
I’m kinda interested how that thing is going to look after a thousand rounds has been put through it. My guess is that it’s going to look as worn out as a Kardashian’s pleasure pit. But I could be wrong.
Street cost is around $500.