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Do Certain Members of the Shooting Industry Owe Fiduciary Duty?

You must not know many people or be from Californy. ...... If they stopped to make loads for all the powder and cartridges they wouldn't have any time to make bullets. Matt
Nope. Mississip. And that list included .224 Wby, 6.5 Creedmore and .30-40 Krag but I just noticed that 6.5 Manlicher was included on the same line as Arisaka. So, make it four. Most people I know reload the military calibers, .308, .223, .30 carb, .30-'06, 7.62 Rus (long and short), maybe .300 Blackout, .30 Win Mag, .30-30, 6.5x47 Lapua and one who reloads 22 Hornet. This includes only rifle calibers. I know folks who reload many different pistol calibers but pistols have not been discussed. I think the issue is that around here only collectors and target shooters seem to reload. My neighbor hunts but doesn't reload. 'Round here, stores that sell reloading supplies are thin on the ground and thinly stocked. I have to drive 80 miles to find a well-stocked store.

IMHO, some requirement that bullet vendors provide data for loading whatever your favorite cartridge might be is similar to requiring that the butcher provide recipes for whatever dish you want to cook using his meat. He may want to provide some common recipes to help sell his product but forcing him to provide a recipe for behi-hizkuntza erregosia, just because you like the sound of Basque style beef-tongue stew, goes well beyond a reasonable request.
 
It is very revealing to see the comments here. Many show their lack of reading comprehension and proclivity to jump to false conclusions spawned by their ignorance.

Yeah, I'm seeking to "bring down the industry", LOL... Maybe a notch, if you think it is detrimental to raise the bar back to what it was in years past in terms of bulletmaker and powder seller delivery of data and technical information for users.

Just really a tell when some guy with all sorts of credentials (he's listed them to prove he's an expert!) shows failure to comprehend the subject matter.


Much of the pricing models for bullets and powders was developed at a time when these firms DID a great deal on ongoing technical research for product applications and DID make much of that available to their customers. IF they are no longer following that model for research and advancing their product and customers ability to use their product, then they are cheating their customers...

Of course, those who compete or put their lives at risk by using these products don't want to understand the variables. Isolation of variables, especially having any psychological issues like doubt or need for further evaluation might weigh on their competitive psyche and abilities. Does this translate to willful ignorance?

No matter how many variables a competitor or match shooter isolates, there is always The Wind.... How real is it to expect that no matter how careful and expert the rifleman with best tools and methods; all variables except externals are controlled? To what degree do you have to "believe" to shoot your best?

Then again, what is a "belief" if you can't challenge it or develop it into Knowing?

Yawn....
o_O
 
Before I report you to the admin for the last few posts where you insult the intelligence of everyone on this forum except yourself, I would like to ask if a benchrest shooter should require Bib, JLK, Clinch River, and all the other boutique bullet makers that I am not talented enough to shoot yet, to provide comprehensive load data for the bullets they manufacture. Hornady, Sierra, Berger, Nosler, etc., are in the business to sell bullets and sometimes ammo. As a handloader, you buy the bullets and it is your responsibility to use them safely. Same with Powders. They provide the materials the handloader needs to make shells, The loading information may help sell their product, but in the end it is only provided as a convenience, and again, the handloader is ultimately responsible for their own safety in this endeavor. The mommy state cannot hold your hand forever.
 
As mentioned you can purchase Quick Load and evaluate as many options as you like. Couple with Optimal Barrel Time and you can reliably identify nodes at safe pressures without firing a shot; reduces the actual loading to fine tuning.
 
you seem to have a very high opinion of yourself; without any justification in the shooting sports.

IMHO, you fail to understand that shooting, be it for hunting, competition, or just the pleasure of developing accurate loads for a firearm requires a certain degree of intelligence and common sense. Experimentation is the backbone of the sport.
 
Or maybe just looking for input from people in the sport who would not ever give an interview otherwise, except here he gets opinion and thoughts that are in written form to support his conjectures and bolster a lawsuit? Some conversations are best done in silence.
 
You should adopt this as a rule of thumb: If you understand what someone is trying to tell you, no matter the wording or spelling used, refrain from criticizing them. You won't change them anyway and you'll free yourself to worry about more important things.

I hesitated to type that, because I don't think it will change you.

THIS from 2012, Author BEAU, to Hogan.

Some things don't change
 
When I started handloading, the main powders used in the UK were made by the long defunct ICI Nobel company in Scotland (which also made several rifle powder grades for Hodgdon back then). If you wanted loads data, you bought a soft-back booklet for (I think) £2, not pennies back in the early 80s. For the company's range of four rifle powders and a similar number of pistol grades, not a single make of case, primer, or bullet was mentioned - it was weight only and whether lead, semi-jacketed, or full jacketed. Nobody blew themselves up - unless of course they did the usual careless things like double-charging revolver cartridges, or mixing powder grades up.

When Vihtavuori hit our shores, years before it went to the USA, you got a little more data for the initially small range of propellants, but all in a pamphlet that folded up into A5 size.

Most other powder companies produced similar free 'loading guides', very limited in both the cartridges covered and the bullets used. Hodgdon was one of the few which produced a paid for manual, still continued today with the 'Annual Manual'. The reason Hodgdon dropped the full-size manual around 10 years ago wasn't simply cost, but that by the time it was in print and on the shelves, half a dozen new cartridges had been launched and it was already out of date. Even with vast number of loadings Hodgdon provides in the paid-for Annual Manual, and free through its interactive online Reloading Center, there are vast numbers of cartridge / powder / bullet model combinations that aren't covered - it's simply not feasible to do everything especially with around 20 IMR / Hodgdon / Winchester rifle powders.

Going back a generation, if you wanted more data, and very few actually did IME, you bought the Speer, Hornady, Sierra, and Lyman printed manuals. I have a couple of shelves full of such going back years in some cases, but haven't bought one for a long time now thanks to online data plus QuickLOAD. At least one though, is still an essential I reckon for the tyro handloader as they contain much more than loads data.

Probably the big difference today, apart from the vast increase in both cartridges and components, is that when I started you went for a safe, lowish pressure load that did the job. The lower the load and pressure that worked in the intended role the better. It was called 'common sense'! We didn't have QuickLOAD, we didn't have chronographs, we hardly ever shot beyond 600 yards - and those that did such as our 'Target Rifle' sling shooters used 7.62 military ammo that we now know is ballistically abysmal at 1,000 yards with bullets going subsonic long before this distance.

Nowadays, everybody wants 0.1-MOA groups, obtain absolute maximum MVs way above factory ammo levels, and wants to shoot at 1,000 yards - what am I saying they want to shoot at a mile now or more?! And why not, as long as they continue to apply common sense, use the tools available, and work loads up carefully? It is and always has been the jump-into-the maximum-load-and add- another-grain-or-two merchants mostly who get into trouble.

If every manufacturer had by law to provide data for every possible combination for its products, well forget handloading and forget target shooting as we know it. It's not going to happen!

There is another rule often forgotten these days, or one feels deliberately ignored by those with certain environmental, anti-shooting, or health & safety axes to grind. Don't try and find solutions to non-problems! The starting point for this debate should be, just how many people injure themselves or damage / destroy firearms each year? Whilst I have no idea how it works out in the USA, the number in the UK is tiny, and the reasons that our NRA comes up with in the literally one or two cases per year that cause injury haven't changed from those that applied when I started in this game nearly 40 years ago - defective firearms, wrong powder selected in error when loading various different cartridges in a session and more than one tin of powder on the bench, very occasionally deliberate use of a completely inappropriate powder or reckless negligent over-charges. I've never seen no or inadequate data quoted as a reason. One cause that has arisen much more recently is people not ensuring their powder measures are emptied completely and half a charge worth of one cartridge's powder is dispensed to the first charge of the next. Since we lost pistols here and such cartridges are limited primarily to leverguns, the number of handloading caused incidents has dropped substantially as few rifle cartridges physically allow double-charging. Also as a result of this change, far fewer handloaders here use progressive presses these days. The amount and quality and coverage of manufacturer's data doesn't affect the 38 Special or 357 Magnum that gets a double or triple charge of Bullseye one iota!

There are still more people in the UK hurt each year with shotguns and factory ammo than rifle shooters with handloads - the classic danger of keeping loose cartridges of mixed calibres in a jacket pocket and inadvertently slipping a 16 or 20B cartridge into a 12B gun seeing it slip down the barrel and block it.
 
I see this like the "person" that can't understand why their high dollar tacticool or other rifle doesn't shoot as advertised... There are so many variables and the shooter/reloader being the largest.. I would hate to be the guy answering the phones...


Ray
 
To follow up on some of the things that Laurie said, there are a hell of a lot fewer gun accidents caused by bad reloading practices than there are accidents caused by bad driving practices in an automobile.
 
Free market. It means something.

"Fiduciary duty" means something different.

If you think you need custom load data, then don't buy the powder until the manufacturer provides it. Vote with your wallet. That is how one exercises power in the free market.

Arguments regarding fiduciary duty are more a move toward less free markets.
 
It's interesting to see the Madness of Crowds effect at work.

Most repliers here have worked themselves into a level of irate anxiety. I have been accused of attempting to "bring down" an industry. Really pathetic, as were the efforts to paint me as a "millennial" and suggest other personally distasteful attributes to my character. Sticks and stones, boys; I would say "gentlemen" but gentlemen don't behave in such fashion. And what the hell is the motivation to bring politics into this?

So, to continue; yeah, it's a Free Country. Sierra can include data for as many obsolete cartridges as they choose. While one guy remarks about 3 or 4 guns from the obsolete list that he knows are loaded for, he sidesteps the question I posed of "Know anyone who has had a rifle chambered for one of those cartridges in the past 50yrs?"

So.... Why does Sierra include all the obsolete data and disregard those ctgs which have been introduced and greeted with acceptance and excitement by many thousands of shooters? Sierra has never published much on wildcat ctgs, aside from the mainstream AI numbers it lists which I do applaud. But.... are there any, other than Nosler Rifles, factory chambered for Ackley Improved ctgs? Nosler does the .280rem AI; that is all I'm aware of. Point is: Most anyone owning an Ackley Improved rifle is gonna be an experienced handloader and they Don't Need Sierra's data...

I dunno... maybe i've got this backwards and the Redding, RCBS, and other loading die makers are the ones ought be held to the fire. Perhaps they should only offer die sets which have no data or sketchy data released from powder sellers and bulletmakers only as Wildcat custom order products?


It''s funny. You might think that this forum, especially related to handloading matters, was a place for discussion of advanced ideas and concepts. That is simply not true.

It doesn't much matter if you buy or make your own custom bullets. More often than not, I prefer to shoot cast than jacketed. And I solved my problem with a Lyman 335gr heavy cast mold that will arrive on monday. Yet this still doesn't address the powder seller issues. Those issues are real and affect all of us, even if some of you guys are too wildly reactionary and knee jerk to contemplate the matter.

I find it ludicrous that Sierra is unable or unwilling to provide data for a hugely popular new cartridges, while they think shooters continue to pursue with excitement cartridges that were sundowning in the 1950s.
 
First off, if you are still talking the 375 Ruger, I would think it is Ruger that should give some info. I also know of nobody that owns one. Second if the paragraph of you purchase so called obsolete carriages was aimed at me. So be it. I know around here they still are being shot and there are lots more of them then a 375 Ruger.

Then there is the point of you coming on here and blowing off. Maybe you ought of read your posts before putting them on the forum. This is not the only time your posts have slammed people or companies. I remember other posts where you rant. Laurie gave you an excellant answer. Matt
 
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