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First, allow me to second the warm welcome, gdaddybill. I think you'll like it here.
As a working gun writer, here's my take:
I'm freelance, so I don't get "assignments" to review products. I have to find a subject that I think will interest an editor - that's the audience I sell to, and if I don't sell to him, I don't sell at all.
If I wrote a piece about Lapua bullets, Vectan powder and RWS primers, an editor would correctly say, "What interest would American reloaders have in this stuff? It's hardly available at all here." And he would reject it - again, quite correctly.
As to another point, that of coddling advertisers, that is partially true. But only partially. I've called some products junk, and had it printed without change. But more often, there simply isn't much "bad" to say about today's products. They're all pretty damned good. I'll grant you that not every product is Olympic-grade - but their prices reflect that.
Look at BSA scopes, for example. They're cheap. Really cheap. They also tend to break easily, go out of adjustment, have less than stellar optics and finish. On the other hand, how many guys would spend three grand to put a Schmidt and Bender highest grade scope on a Remington 710? Nor do many reloaders buy $3 each African-grade imported bullets for tin can plinking.
The truth is very simple: if you never see an ABC brand gizmo mentioned in a magazine article, there's a reason. It might be junk and the magazine sees no point in giving it placement (or find itself sued!), it might be simply unavailable to the majority of shooters, or there's simply so much new stuff out there that ABC's gizmo simply never gets written about.
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