I am of the firm belief that the shooting industry is not a very innovative place. Gimmicks aside, in the last ten years what developments have we seen in the shooting industry that have changed how or what we shoot?
Lets go back 100 years and look at rifles then:
One hundred years ago we had the Mauser 98, SMLE and the Springfield as the leading Millitary rifles. These rifles are really no different to what we use today. Sure we use different materials and there is a whole lot of different sporting cartridges but the principles of shooting have not changed in 100 years. Yes these principles have been refined for accuracy and maybe the methods as to which rifles are manufactured is different but this is more a sign of industry in general then innovation in the sport shooting industry.
Any innovation that has been seen in firearm technology for sport has not done well look at Remington’s Etronix rifle. This revolutionised the way in which our cartridges were ignited. This system used special primers and when you pulled the trigger a hammer didn’t strike the primer but an electrical charge which provided ignition of the gunpowder at the speed of light eliminating the time between trigger being pulled and the gunpowder being ignited. Surely this would be a huge boon for the benchresters looking to eliminate every tiny factor from effecting accuracy? Why did the Etronix fail? Was it too ahead of its time? Were people afraid of having essentially a battery operated rifle or was it just poor marketing on Remington’s part?
What about Carbon Fibre barrels? What happened to them? Were they not effective at doing what they claimed? Imagine a heavy barrelled rifle that is as light as a sporter but has all the advantages of a 10kg varmint rifle? It’s only expensive now because no one is backing it. Why aren’t we backing these above technologies?
Is the way we shoot, the way we load always going to stay the same? Surely there are many ways to innovate in the firearm industry? I know aas a lover of technology and a lover of shooting that I would love to see more tech in the shooting world!
I think the biggest game changers for us shooters in recent times have been Laser range finders and improvements in optics (way better now then even 20 years ago). These two things have probably been the most widely adopted innovations in shooting today.
Being varminters and lovers of precision shooting and most of us carrying our mobiles in the field. Why don’t we use range finders and our mobiles together? Most mobile phones can run third party software so why aren’t either optical or cartridge companies developing applications for us to use on our phones to improve our accuracy in the field? I know there are programs like this out there but these company’s can apply these basic programs to platforms like Java, Flash and the iphone so we have these with us which make us more accurate and more effective whilst varminting increasing our effective ranges and adding a whole new dimension to shooting in the field. Even the most basic of mobile phones are more then capable of running the sort of software needed to calculate these sorts of things.
Having a finger adjustable scope, a range finder and a ballistics program on those handheld computers called mobile phones would make us become more effective and ultimately more fun. I think with these above things and of course practice in our technique we could extend our ranges of our varminting ranges significantly.
The question I ask you the readers and especially the manufacturers of firearms is why has there not been serious innovation in firearms and components?
Surely there are new technologies by the military that can be adapted to sporting rifles and new materials for cases and projectiles.
I don’t believe that we need more velocity but why are we still using copper and lead in projectiles when there are so many different polymers and alloys out there that could be affordable and perform better then traditional materials?
At the end of the day I believe the reason why the sporting firearms industry has not innovated is because shooters think if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. This attitude has really stifled innovation in our field because we have said to manufacturers: “It’s ok to keep doing the same thing we will buy it anyways” and I feel that we need to change our attitude and embrace the small innovations that are effective to lead to even more.
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