In the past, Ruger has had a reputation for announcing new products, providing early prototypes to firearms publications for review, and then lagging in actually putting them on dealer shelves for sale. No longer. The new Ruger system, as exemplified by the introduction of the Ruger SR9, is to announce the new product, ship full-production quantities of the actual guns to dealers, and send review samples to the firearms press, all on the same day! Which means a Ruger customer can see the first news of a new Ruger product on the Ruger website or a firearms magazine website in the morning and go to his local dealer to handle and purchase the new gun in the afternoon--if he beats all his friends to the front of the line.

In practice, this process removes a lot of customer resentment at having premature enthusiasm whipped up for yet-unavailable products, and it also solidifies the bond between Ruger, its distributors, and the firearms press--who no longer have to bear the brunt of complaints about guns people have been reading about but can't get. And for a modest introductory product run (2,000 guns in the case of the SR9) ordered largely on faith by Ruger's distributor-partners, Ruger gets an immediate read on real customer demand and a flock of real orders for a product it is geared to immediately produce.

The element of the "New Ruger" of most interest to Ruger enthusiasts, of course, is neither manufacturing nor marketing/sales, but the catalog of Ruger products themselves and the list of new Ruger products yet-to-be. Here, too, today's Ruger is much different than it was under the founder. There is great demand in the present firearms marketplace for the type of firearms that simply didn't exist when Bill Ruger went into business, and throughout his life he evinced little interest in designing or refining any type of gun that he did not perceive as a "traditional" or "established" design. Polymer-frame, striker-fired auto pistols simply didn't interest Bill Ruger. So it is a telling indication of the new Ruger approach to product development that the first major new-platform firearm to be introduced by the company in the post-Bill Ruger era is the SR9.

At the same time, the Ruger company is continuing its strong tradition of improvements and upgrades to existing designs, such as the recent re-engineering of the Ruger Mini-14 and the development of a refined new trigger mechanism for the Model 77 bolt-action rifle line. Plus, Ruger has jumped with both feet into the growing firearms industry practice of forming "strategic partnerships" with ammunition manufacturers to introduced entirely new cartridges and build new guns around them, such as the .480 Ruger, .17 HMR, .204 Ruger, and .375 Ruger from Hornady and the new .327

Federal Magnum revolver cartridge.

Today's Ruger is still Ruger, but with an aggressive, innovative new lift in its step. What's next? These days Ruger doesn't tell anybody anything in advance, but once you understand how the company is now being steered, it doesn't take much prescience to make some informed guesses. For example, with 48 states of the Union allowing some form of civilian concealed carry, how much interest do you think there might be in a compact, concealable, lightweight Ruger auto pistol for personal defense? A compact polymer-frame "SR380" perhaps?