Speaker 1: And we continue here on our American stories. Ruger is
Speaker 1: the biggest gun manufacturer in the country, and it's not
Speaker 1: by accident. In the words of William Ruger, each firearm
Speaker 1: is built quote to a standard, so I would want
Speaker 1: one even if it was made by our competitors. Here
Speaker 1: to tell this American story is Logan Metish. Logan is
Speaker 1: a firearms historian, a museum professional who runs High Caliber
Speaker 1: History LLC. Here's Logan.
Speaker 2: The timing really couldn't have been better for William Ruger
Speaker 2: when he and Alexander Stern became business partners in January
Speaker 2: of nineteen forty nine. Ruger had been making hand tools
Speaker 2: for the previous few years, but unfortunately business was not
Speaker 2: going well for him. He found himself forty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in debt and he was pretty much ready to close
Speaker 2: up shop when he showed Storm a prototype of something
Speaker 2: that he was working on, which harkened back to his
Speaker 2: earlier days with military arms development. So Sterm liked what
Speaker 2: he saw and agreed to bankroll the project with fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in seed money, and just like that, those
Speaker 2: two men began laying the foundation for what would become
Speaker 2: one of the largest firearm companies in the United States.
Speaker 2: But in order to get there, you have to realize
Speaker 2: where they came from. So let's start with William Ruger.
Speaker 2: His dad was a lawyer and his mother was from
Speaker 2: a family that owned a successful chain of department stores.
Speaker 2: As an interesting aside, his great grandfather was actually a
Speaker 2: drummer boy at the Battle of Waterloo in eighteen fifteen. Anyway,
Speaker 2: so Bill Ruger had always been interested in firearms and
Speaker 2: tinkering with designs, and very mechanically inclined. In fact, he
Speaker 2: patented his first machine gun when he was just sixteen
Speaker 2: years old, with the help of his aunt, who had
Speaker 2: set him up with a college fund. He ended up
Speaker 2: going to the University of North Carolina, where he continued
Speaker 2: to work on arms designs, specifically a blow forward style
Speaker 2: machine gun. While he was in college, he met a
Speaker 2: girl named Mary Thompson. She was from a well healed
Speaker 2: family there in North Carolina, and they got married in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight. Bill was just finishing up his sophomore
Speaker 2: year of college, but when he got married, he quit
Speaker 2: and the two of them promptly took off for a
Speaker 2: three month long European honeymoon. Once back in the States,
Speaker 2: Bill continued to work on developing different firearms designs, and
Speaker 2: one of the things he started to do was tinker
Speaker 2: with an existing design. He took a Savage Model ninety
Speaker 2: nine lever action rifle and converted it into a gas operated,
Speaker 2: self loading repeating rifle, and rightly so, he was pretty
Speaker 2: darn proud of his work. So he took it to
Speaker 2: New York City and demonstrated it to the executives at
Speaker 2: Savage and found himself rather baffled when they weren't absolutely
Speaker 2: astounded with what he had done. You know, he was
Speaker 2: hoping they would buy the design and bring him on
Speaker 2: board as a designer and offer him a job, but
Speaker 2: that just wasn't the case. So Bill found himself with
Speaker 2: a young wife, a newborn son, Bill Junior, an empty
Speaker 2: inheritance coffer, and no job. So he went back down
Speaker 2: to North Carolina, and as luck would have it, he
Speaker 2: ended up getting a telegram that offered him a job
Speaker 2: at Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts for thirty two dollars
Speaker 2: and fifty cents a week. It was really not something
Speaker 2: he was in a position to pass up, so he
Speaker 2: took the job, but he didn't stay there for terribly long.
Speaker 2: He ended up quitting in the spring of nineteen forty.
Speaker 2: He quit because he didn't want to end up like
Speaker 2: John Garrand, who he felt was treated like a mechanical
Speaker 2: toy and was paid what he felt to be a
Speaker 2: mediocre salary for all of his contributions, which is really
Speaker 2: saying something, because John Garrand is, of course one of
Speaker 2: the greatest arms designers of the twentieth century, and you
Speaker 2: and I and anyone else in the gun world would
Speaker 2: consider it an honor to end up like John Garrand,
Speaker 2: but not Bill Ruger. That was not good enough for him.
Speaker 2: He aspired to hire things, so he went and continued
Speaker 2: refocusing his efforts on his machine gun designs, and he
Speaker 2: pitched the idea to Smith and Wesson. They turned him down,
Speaker 2: but they did offer him a job. They saw him
Speaker 2: his potential as a designer, and Smith and Wesson offered
Speaker 2: him a job for seventy five dollars a week, which
Speaker 2: was a nice pay bomp, obviously, but Bill's pride kind
Speaker 2: of got in the way and he rejected it, and
Speaker 2: on down the road he went to another gun company,
Speaker 2: this time High Standard. They weren't interested, but they told
Speaker 2: him again to head on down the road and try
Speaker 2: his luck with Auto Ordinance. So Bill went over to
Speaker 2: Auto Ordinance, and a little while later they ended up
Speaker 2: hiring him as an arms designer, and his pay was
Speaker 2: somewhere around one hundred dollars a week. So he took
Speaker 2: that job around the beginning of World War Two, and
Speaker 2: he stayed on as an arms designer for them until
Speaker 2: the end of the war in nineteen forty five. By
Speaker 2: nineteen forty six, Bill had gone into business for himself.
Speaker 2: He always wanted to be self employed and have the
Speaker 2: freedom to do his own thing and design his own stuff,
Speaker 2: and so that's exactly what he did with the Ruger Corporation.
Speaker 2: They were making hand tools and small industrial parts, and
Speaker 2: also he was working on his design for a twenty
Speaker 2: two caliber pistol. But unfortunately, like I'd mentioned earlier on,
Speaker 2: business wasn't doing so well. The whole hand tool concept
Speaker 2: was a good idea, but it was proving too pricey
Speaker 2: for the market. So by nineteen forty nine Bill was
Speaker 2: basically flat broke when he met Alexander Stern. Now Storm
Speaker 2: was an interesting guy. He was a legacy Yale graduate
Speaker 2: and like Bill was from a well to do family
Speaker 2: and was always sporting custom tailored clothes and taking weekend
Speaker 2: trips to New York City, and while the rest of
Speaker 2: his Yale classmates ate at the cafeteria on campus, he
Speaker 2: dined at the finest restaurants in the hotels in the
Speaker 2: local area. He was kind of a renaissance man. He
Speaker 2: dabbled in a little bit of everything, including writing, acting, painting, filmmaking,
Speaker 2: and he was also a big time collector of all
Speaker 2: sorts of different things which just happened to be firearms.
Speaker 2: Adding to the oddity that is the life of Alexander Stern.
Speaker 2: This well bred young man served during World War Two
Speaker 2: with the Office of Strategic Services, which was the forerunner
Speaker 2: of sorts for today's CIA. So with that fifty thousand
Speaker 2: dollars worth of seed money, they started their company, and
Speaker 2: their first factory, and I used that term loosely, was
Speaker 2: in a small, unassuming building that they affectionately dubbed the
Speaker 2: Red Barn, across the street from a railroad depot in Southport, Connecticut.
Speaker 2: It was essentially just Bill and alex and a couple
Speaker 2: of tool makers, all working long, long hours into the night,
Speaker 2: and Bill actually mentioned at one point he was writing
Speaker 2: the final payroll check from the initial fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 2: and they were out of cash, and he told Alex,
Speaker 2: he said, this is the last bit of money for
Speaker 2: the original fifty thousand dollars investment. But that was okay
Speaker 2: because they had designed this pistol together, and Alex Stern
Speaker 2: had checks for one hundred guns that were ready to
Speaker 2: be sent out into the mail, and so just like that,
Speaker 2: they were in business. The seed money paid off. Now,
Speaker 2: this gun that they designed together was inspired by World
Speaker 2: War Two handguns from the Axis Powers. It had a
Speaker 2: similar silhouette appearance of both the Japanese Namboo and the
Speaker 2: German Luger. In certain ways, the ergonomics of those guns
Speaker 2: were tweaked a little bit to create what would become
Speaker 2: known as the Ruger standard, and the gun would go
Speaker 2: on to be lauded by shooters for generations as being
Speaker 2: well balanced, easy to hold, and easy to shoot. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: the gun is a bit of a Rubik's cube in
Speaker 2: design when it comes to putting the gun back together.
Speaker 1: And when we come back, we'll continue with the story
Speaker 1: of Ruger, the great American company, and my goodness, how
Speaker 1: it got started. It is like how so many companies
Speaker 1: got started. I'm the cheap and almost out of business
Speaker 1: from the beginning. More of the story of Ruger the
Speaker 1: Great American gun company. After these messages, this is our
Speaker 1: American stories, and we continue with our American stories and
Speaker 1: the story of Ruger the great American arms manufacturer right
Speaker 1: here in the United States. Let's continue with this great
Speaker 1: business story.
Speaker 2: There's a joke in the gun community that God came
Speaker 2: to Bill Ruger in a dream and showed him the
Speaker 2: design for the Ruger Standard Piss, but unfortunately Bill woke
Speaker 2: up before God could tell him how to put it
Speaker 2: back together. Anyway, when the gun was first put into
Speaker 2: production and they were working on things, they had a
Speaker 2: total of eight barreled pistol receivers that they had made
Speaker 2: as test guns for this new design, and serial number
Speaker 2: three of these guns was actually the first one to
Speaker 2: leave the factory. Serial numbers one and two were retained
Speaker 2: internally for further study. A February of nineteen fifty, Stern,
Speaker 2: Ruger and Company had a back order of an astounding
Speaker 2: five thousand units and a production capacity of just nine
Speaker 2: hundred guns a month. By summer of the same year,
Speaker 2: the backlog had grown to nine thousand units, and their
Speaker 2: production capacity had picked up a little bit, but they
Speaker 2: were still only able to make one thousand guns a month.
Speaker 2: That backlog is a testament to that little gun's rugged
Speaker 2: design and its ease of use and its affordability. Finally, fine,
Speaker 2: only there was a twenty two caliber pistol on the
Speaker 2: market that anyone could afford to own, and that was
Speaker 2: easy enough for anyone to learn how to shoot with
Speaker 2: this gun. Within a year, that little startup company from
Speaker 2: Connecticut had gained traction and continued to advance at a
Speaker 2: rapid pace. But Alex Stern contracted viral hepatitis and died
Speaker 2: very unexpectedly in November of nineteen fifty one. He was
Speaker 2: just twenty eight years old. The company's heraldic eagle logo
Speaker 2: that today is instantly recognizable as Ruger. That eagle was
Speaker 2: actually designed by Alex Stern, and so paying homage to
Speaker 2: his fallen business partner, Bill Ruger, changed the color of
Speaker 2: the eagle in the logo from red to black, and
Speaker 2: with the exception of the one million Ruger standard pistol
Speaker 2: that they produced in nineteen seventy nine, it wasn't until
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine with the celebration of their fiftieth anniversary,
Speaker 2: that the logo would return to red on all of
Speaker 2: their guns. So even though they had the tremendous setback
Speaker 2: of Alex Stern passing away unexpectedly at a very young age,
Speaker 2: Bill Ruger was a shrewd businessman and he didn't want
Speaker 2: to rest on their laurels and be seen as one
Speaker 2: trick pony, So he knew that they were going to
Speaker 2: have to diversify their offerings beyond that twenty two caliber pistol.
Speaker 2: Given the popularity of westerns and cowboys six guns in
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, the Ruger Company introduced their first single
Speaker 2: action revolver in nineteen fifty three. The revolver was a
Speaker 2: instant success, and the company introduced the single six, the Blackhawk,
Speaker 2: and the Bearcat, all of which were single action revolvers
Speaker 2: all by the end of that decade, and each one
Speaker 2: of them was a hit. Next up rifles, so the
Speaker 2: deer Stalker, the ten twenty two, the number one on
Speaker 2: the Model seventy seven, and so on. We're all added
Speaker 2: to the lineup in the nineteen sixties, and due to
Speaker 2: the brand's success and popularity. The company became publicly traded
Speaker 2: for the first time in nineteen sixty nine. It would
Speaker 2: go on to be listed on the New York Stock
Speaker 2: Exchange in nineteen ninety. But today it remains the only
Speaker 2: American arms manufacturer that is publicly traded as a standalone
Speaker 2: entity and not grouped into a larger parent organization. So
Speaker 2: they're flying high. By the end of nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: they've been in business twenty years, and now it's time
Speaker 2: for a flop. But it wasn't a gun. Bill Ruger
Speaker 2: collected high end antique automobiles, and so in that vein
Speaker 2: he designed what was known as the Ruger Sports Tourer,
Speaker 2: which was a car based on the Bentley and it
Speaker 2: had an estimated retail price of twelve to thirteen thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Bill read the market wrong with the car, and that
Speaker 2: was kind of a rare occurrence for him. He usually
Speaker 2: was a keen eye and knew what people wanted. But
Speaker 2: they did not want this car, so they'd only made
Speaker 2: two of them when they turned their focus back to
Speaker 2: making guns. Unfortunately, they'd already spent eight years and four
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars developing a car that never made it
Speaker 2: to production. Nonetheless, when they turned their attention back to guns,
Speaker 2: they did well in the seventies. By nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: which was the company's thirtieth anniversary, for the models they
Speaker 2: offered had already sold a million units each, and they
Speaker 2: finished up their thirtieth anniversary with sales totaling sixty eight
Speaker 2: point eight million dollars and a profit of seven point
Speaker 2: nine million, which was up like fourteen percent over the
Speaker 2: previous year alone. So by nineteen eighty nine, and at
Speaker 2: this point in American history, the idea of a so
Speaker 2: called assault weapons ban was really picking up steam, and
Speaker 2: so Bill ru wrote a letter to every member of
Speaker 2: Congress and he told them that they should limit magazine
Speaker 2: capacity instead of trying to ban these so called assault weapons.
Speaker 2: Taking it a step further in a couple more years,
Speaker 2: he would sit down with NBC in nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: and in that interview he was quoted as saying that
Speaker 2: no honest man needs more than ten rounds in any gun,
Speaker 2: and backlash against Bill and the company was swift. Gun
Speaker 2: owners as a whole have very long memories, and there
Speaker 2: are still some people to this day that will not
Speaker 2: own a Ruger firearm because of what Bill said. Fortunately
Speaker 2: for them, you know, they make a good product, and
Speaker 2: there were enough people who still rallied around the brand,
Speaker 2: and they found themselves in nineteen ninety nine celebrating their
Speaker 2: fiftieth anniversary, and by that point in time they had
Speaker 2: really cemented their place both in firearms history and in
Speaker 2: American history. You know, quite literally, tens of millions of
Speaker 2: gun owners had Ruger firearms in the field, hunting, sitting
Speaker 2: in their home gun safes, out on the range with
Speaker 2: their kids, sitting in the gun rack in their trucks.
Speaker 2: You know, Ruger firearms were everywhere. And over the years,
Speaker 2: Bill Ruger had the opportunity to buy a whole bunch
Speaker 2: of other companies. Even if you don't know firearms, you
Speaker 2: still know names like Colt Smith and Wesson, Remington, and Winchester.
Speaker 2: He had the opportunity to buy all of those companies
Speaker 2: and didn't. And it wasn't just gun companies. Beyond that,
Speaker 2: he had the opportunity to buy both Maserati, the sports
Speaker 2: car company, and Harley Davidson, the iconic motorcycle company. Instead,
Speaker 2: he chose to focus on his guns. By two thousand,
Speaker 2: Bill was eighty four years old, and he decided it
Speaker 2: was finally time to retire. Now, retirement was kind of
Speaker 2: an odd thing for Bill. In nineteen ninety two, he
Speaker 2: did an interview with Forbes magazine when he told him
Speaker 2: that he could never retire because he'd never done a
Speaker 2: god day's work in his life, So how can you
Speaker 2: retire if you've never worked. Nonetheless, he did retire and
Speaker 2: his son took over as chairman and CEO of the company.
Speaker 2: Bill had also said around that same time that if
Speaker 2: you rest, you rust, and so that's why he tried
Speaker 2: to keep so active, and unfortunately retirement meant rest, and
Speaker 2: it meant rust. So Bill Ruger died in two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, having spent fifty three years involved in the
Speaker 2: operations of the company that he helped found, and his son,
Speaker 2: Bill Ruger Junior, passed away in twenty eighteen after working
Speaker 2: for his father's company for forty two years. He retired
Speaker 2: in two thousand and six, and so even though there's
Speaker 2: been no direct Ruger descendant running the company in more
Speaker 2: than a decade, they are definitely one of the big
Speaker 2: players on the block in turn of American firearms. The
Speaker 2: Ruger standard pistol that they initially created back in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine, lives on today in a variant known as
Speaker 2: the Mark four, and like the previous three versions, it
Speaker 2: maintains all the classic appeal and lines of the standard,
Speaker 2: but it just kind of updates the platform for today's market.
Speaker 2: Most importantly, however, it solves the difficulty of takedown and reassembly.
Speaker 2: So now that Bill Ruger is spending all of his
Speaker 2: time up above with God, he was finally able to
Speaker 2: have God show him how to put the pistol back together.
Speaker 2: And so now that the Mark four has ironed out
Speaker 2: all the kinks in the design, the gun can remain
Speaker 2: at the forefront as an incredibly popular gun for people
Speaker 2: to learn how to shoot on both young and old,
Speaker 2: beginner and seasoned pros alike. The humble startup that consisted
Speaker 2: of just a few guys in a red barn now
Speaker 2: has more than eighteen hundred employees. Are still headquartered in Connecticut,
Speaker 2: but now they've got five factories throughout the country. Alexander
Speaker 2: Sturm's fifty thousand dollars investment really paid off. The company
Speaker 2: today is worth nine hundred and forty million dollars, and
Speaker 2: given their success, I think It's safe to say that
Speaker 2: mister Sturm and mister Ruger would have big smiles on
Speaker 2: their faces if they could see where their company is
Speaker 2: at today.
Speaker 1: And a very special thanks to Logan Metish. Logan is
Speaker 1: a firearms historian, a museum professional who runs High Caliber
Speaker 1: History LLC. And my goodness, what a story. Eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: employees off a fifty thousand dollars loan. Two guys just well,
Speaker 1: never working a minute in their lives, they probably felt.
Speaker 1: And so many people who work for themselves that's why
Speaker 1: they do it because they have something special they want
Speaker 1: to do. And my goodness, anyone who owns weapons, who
Speaker 1: loves firearms and responsible firearm ownership is a big deal.
Speaker 1: That he testified and went public on magazine capacity, My goodness,
Speaker 1: I took a lot of courage to do and he
Speaker 1: did it. Ruger, the great American gun manufacturer. Their story
Speaker 1: here on our American Stories