Originally Posted by
KestrelBike
I'm plagiarizing a post I made elsewhere last year (and I was right about the Bundeswehr smackdown!):
Whoever handled HK USA was a complete idiot, and incapable of running a modern business. Rather, they were like that wealthy trust-fund kid born in the 1950's that married rich and had all his own private Class III toys in his bonus room, and damn every other gun owner and furthering gun rights. Their marketing sucked, their long guns were slaps in the face, and their appeal to the current generation of gun owners (ie the people splurging their hard-earned cash on the gun market today) is/was abysmal.
Here's everything stupid that HK did:
HK SL8 rifle: Let's take the G36 that everyone wants and mangle the F out of it, *purposefully* F with the receiver to ensure that stocks, magazines, etc are incompatible with it, oh and then pull it from the market and replace it with.... nothing* Not only do this once (SL8-1 the grey version) but twice (SL8-6 the black version).
*HK MR556: Put a piston-AR on the market for $3,500, but first produce only a trickle so US buyers can deal with low-supply/high-demand shenanigans. After all, you're just a small mom & pop company able to produce at a low ra... oh wait you're Germany's largest arms manufacturer? Yeah no f'ing excuse.
HK USC: more BS with the stock/receiver that was unnecessary. There's a difference between shipping the weapon with a compliant stock and leaving it up to the US civilian buyer to buy a legal stock at a later time, and making it so the receiver will never accept said stocks in the future unless they're cut up or some ridiculous 2" block is added to allow for a folding mechanism. Ditto the second chance (between the original Grey USC's and the later Black versions) squandered. I also understand that this thing was created during the 1994 ban, so I can see the 10rd mags. Thanks for never updating those after 2004. Great product strategy, guys.
This isn't an HK Because.Y.S.A.W.H.Y. rant, this is just saying that HK pretty much did everything they could to s*** on US buyers repeatedly for no reason other than pompous country-club mentality (IMO). They're like Judge Smails from Caddyshack. They're like that fat guy in austria living on his little farm in Band of Brothers that was suspected of being a commandant, that Liebgott and Webster were sent to investigate. Hell, and I even own an HK USP .45 (my first pistol, a bday present to myself when I turned 21).
No excuses because they're Germany and doing stuff is hard. Steyr (austrian, I know), and Sig Sauer both got functional rifles out on the market, and they're much smaller companies than HK. This is my shocked face that the civilian G36 is reportedly cancelled, because I don't trust a damn thing coming from those HK jackwads. I wish the Bundeswehr would tell them to go pound sand.
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