The gun business is good. Healthy. Vibrant, with gunmakers both large and small selling their wares in record numbers. With Hillary Clinton looming on the electoral horizon, there’s every reason to believe that there will be another sales surge. If she’s elected . . . Some of us are lucky enough to be in the biz. Most of you have elected to do something else with your life — while doing your part to keep the firearms industry healthy. (Like reading this website. Thank you.) If you were to take a job in the gun business — local and well-paying — what would it be? Manufacturing, marketing, customer relations, testing (no brainer there) or sales? What would be your dream firearms-related job?
Playing M&A? Lol
R&D and manufacturing.
Same. I’m an engineer by trade, but I’ve always had an interest in weapons design.
Firearms engineer. I have sent in my resume to Ruger multiple times but no dice. Maybe after I finish my masters… although I am not holding my breath.
You design em’ and I’ll sell ’em. I’d love to rep for Sturm, Ruger and Company. Already have the logo tattooed on me already. Might make repping a different company a little awkward…
Spokesman!
Owner of a design and manufacture company.
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Manufacturing, marketing, customer relations, testing (no brainer there) or sales?
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Yes! 😉
CEO. Preferably with Sturm, Ruger & Co.
Bring back the rotary mag semi auto, and make it in .357 Magnum and you got my vote for the position.
Soon as I’m done with the new and improved P95 I’ll get on that.
That one garners my vote!
One point of order, the stupid little clip that retains the return springs.
That needs to go…
😉
I vote for the 10/22 in 22mag. That needs to be made again.
How about the customer, I wish I had more disposable income to be a better customer. Honestly being a nurse for as long as I have been, customer service is a given.
PR/exhibition shooter.
“Nothing. I would do nothing. I would sit on my ass, all day long. I would do nothing.”
What?!!!! And not turn in your TPS reports?
Sounds good to me. I’d like to go to the range every once in a while, though.
Recruiting….I would recruit liberals for ballistics test and target holding.
That would further your agenda Jethro
Not exactly gun industry, but I would like to own an arcade with the latest and greatest rail shooters (properly calibrated), racing, and fighting games . It can also host FPS and fighting game tournaments. Not a gun free zone and gang activity will not be tolerated. Also, good hand tossed pizza and smoothies.
Any career that isn’t customer or ATF facing.
Government purchaser/recipient.
Gun reviewer.
Hint.
I never thought about being in the gun industry.
My dream job was always to be a test pilot for a condom factory.
But I guess if I were in the gun industry, I’d like to be a tester also. Whatever job allowed me to shoot the most.
“My dream job was always to be a test pilot for a condom factory.”
I hate to break it to you, but you don’t get to be the one choosing your test ‘partner’… 🙁
In my fantasy, I do!
Instructor. I’m a natural educator and love doing it. I just can’t seem to find any place around to get the training.
Firearms testing – I would specialize in the Ma Deuce .50 BMG and any cannon produced by South Bend Replicas.
Suppressor design and evaluation. Bring a new standard to evaluating loudness based on time and frequency, not just broadband peak level.
i imagine some of you are tired of my silencer diatribe, but I’m gonna do it again anyway…
Today’s cans are primitive, for the most part, minor improvements to 100 year-old tech. Disks and holes? Ugh. They are a classic straight-pipe Thrush muffler, unimpressive.
I think it’s Beretta (someone correct me if I’m wrong) has a new can out that is much more like a jet turbine inside – finally, some progress.
Self-attenuating a sound wave is a complex process that needs to be modeled in a computer, and figured out with Computational Fluid Dynamics. Today’s empirical (being very generous) approach is junior varsity.
Every different projectile of the same caliber makes a different sound wave. Every load with the same projectile makes a different sound wave, every caliber, every load, all different. A truly effective silencer will be tailored to a caliber, projectile, and load. It won’t be a beer-can sized appendage.
That there are currently manufacturers of cans that cover multiple calibers? More compromises than a Chevy Chevette. Would you put mufflers from a 2L flat 4 on a 3.5L V8?
To make silencers worthy of their promise (and name) – a Matt Damon character says it best…
Tough to sell in a $200/pop tax stamp NFA world. Unless you could “tune” it to that barrel/load combo using non-serialized parts
I think you’re thinking of OSS suppressors. But Russ Oliver just stepped down, so we’ll see what he comes up with next. Usually the first iteration that makes it to market isn’t the best there will be, so I’m excited to figure out what the next generation will be.
I’ve not studied the demographics for silencer purchasers writ large (so I could be very wrong), just observation and anecdotal. The guys I see buying cans have a safe full of expensive guns, a dozen cans mounted to various guns, and $200 is not even a nice dinner. Although it should be, it’s not a mass-market product, so I guess I’m saying price is rather irrelevant – doesn’t cost much more (once you get past initial R&D) to do it right.
OSS? Yes, he’s going in the right direction, but his stuff is still designed by guesswork, and trial and error, so it has room for improvement. I guess I saw it on that H&K release.
Guns. Always 20 years behind state-of-the-shelf design and manufacture. Usually further. Oh well.
Instructor, I’ve already registered for the Pistol Instructor course.
But it doesn’t pay well enough so it will likely be a weekend only gig.
sales rep
I’m working on finishing my Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering. I would love nothing more than to design and R&D firearms and accessories of all types. It’s already a hobby of mine, I just want to turn it into a career.
Testing sounds fun to me.
Anything that doesn’t make me deal with the public. I did my stint on retail. Never again.
Giggle switch operator
Lawyer, suing the crap out of MDA, VPC and the rest of those slimebuckets, draining their bankrolls — and they have no immunity under PLCAA. Beautiful!
It’s usually a lot cheaper to be a plaintiff than a defendant. As a plaintiff. I draft up a subpoena and if I do it right, the defense may need ten full-time people working for two months just to provide the responsive documents. I can do that more than once. Then I depose their senior leadership for a few weeks. And, even though I’ve been ringing the defendant’s cash register for many months, we’re still years away from a trial.
These are some of the reasons why defendants settle.
This is why the legal profession is underrated. That sounds like fun to you, a nightmare to me. On the other hand, put me in licensing or a compliance group and I’ll happily do that until I retire.
Biggest obstacle has been finding an opening in one of the “acceptable” states. That means no Springfield, etc.
It was fun to me. And just so you don’t think that I was nothing but a total prikc before I retired, as in-house defense counsel I usually settled cases when I thought that the plaintiff had been wronged and the amount (after negotiation) was fair.
I was very fortunate. My clients were principled people who knew that they had to pay for their mistakes.
OTOH, when I thought that a plaintiff was FOS, I took great delight in nailing him to a cross whenever I could.
I had no such thoughts, it just takes the right person to enjoy litigation. One of my range friends at work is in our claims department. My cousin has his firm. Me? All transaction, all the time.
I worked one litigation case while in law school and that was enough for me.
+1 Bahaha
“What would be your dream firearms-related job?”
I want to be the one in charge of hiring, training, and *cough*, ‘Quality Control’, *cough* of the trade show booth babes…
(I can dream, can’t I?)
*snicker*
Gunsmith… I would love to be fine tuning 1911’s and milling slide serrations/dovetails on Glocks and the like.
I don’t really know how the market is for those skills anymore though. Seems like most of the striker fired guns are capable of being worked on by the end user though and I have to imagine that there’s about 8-10 strikers sold for each 1911 or wheel-gun sold these days.
I’d be Hickok45’s new found brother.
Firearm tester is probably the worst job in the industry besides janitor. It stops being fun after the first day and starts to hurt pretty quick even with a lot of padding. You’re wearing double hearing protection in a room that you hope has good enough ventilation and it is super boring.
Plus you get to experience the joy of having your blood tested for lead every six months.
I’ve been doing that for a year and it is still fun for me. I love my job. Some days I can’t believe they pay me to do what I do.
Curator at the NRA National Firearms Museum
+ 100 on that one. Would love to do that when I retire or for any firearms museum for that matter.
Also would love to be a gunsmith as a second career after I am done with software engineering.
My buddy’s son is starting a brand new job out of school at a well known mfg as an Mech engr.
Shoots competitively at 1,00 yards, makes guns from raw stock, knows his way around lathes (obviously), and has Southern manners to boot. The world is his oyster.
General Counsel, and I’m available.
Engineer. R&D, manufacturing, etc.
Photo/Video. My fee would be one of whatever it is I was documenting.
I currently work in metallurgy and quality assurance, so there is a likely fit. I just wouldn’t want to have to live in Massachusetts to do it.
I’m in service and sales by not for firearms sadly. I’d probably stay in this region of the gun world.
Reliability tester.
Manufacturer/wildcatter – I want to put a .50 bullet in a necked down brass 12 Gauge shell. It’s the same concept as the .300 Blackout just short range .50 caliber work. I’d call it .50 Blunderbuss or .50 Arquebus.
I’m doing marketing. Because current marketing isn’t that great.
Sort of doing what I’m doing now: debugging problems in guns and making custom guns by hand.
Pushing a mouse around in Solidworks or pushing the green button on the front panel might be entertaining for a day, but that’s about it.
I would actually do IT for one, preferably running their shop. Hey it doesn’t have the glitz and the glam of doing their designs or something but you could always do drinks with those guys afterward or something. With compliance the way it is these days I am of the opinion that IT is super critical to compliance. Ask Stag.
I’ll go into elected politics, because I’ve always wanted to do product design: colors (nothing black), ergonomics (grips and sizes), accessories (magazines, muzzle devices). What better way to be sure my choices will be the market favorites, than to ban all the others?
Procurement for a large firearms/parts distributor. Or buying machined parts for a firearms manufacturer.
Had an opportunity to apply to a company in Texas years ago. It sounded perfect. Would I have been hired? Who knows.
Gunsmithing, repair and restorations. I love bringing old pieces of machinery back to life.
Taste tester at a pie factory or mattress tester.
Wait, what were the options again?
I m good at autocad and solidworks so designing/development/ custom designs that can product white cnc ore 3d laser printer.
Gun tryer-outer.
I have a job in the gun industry but it isn’t great.
On the other hand, I do get to shoot some post-86 full autos whenever I want.
Target stapler, bowling pin setter upper, boomstick operator
Best job ever: secret shopper for training classes. Get paid to go shoot! Wish that job was out there…
No dreams here. I sell for a living so I guess selling guns. I know I’ve “helped” some gun store mopes choose a gun and “helped” the lame salesdude.
As a former test engineer (got duped into management last year), I can only imagine how awesome it would be to validate weapons designs. The only downside is that any firearms test I can think of could be automated rather easily. Then you’d get to design and build the test equipment.
Trade show designer/manager for IWI.
I design concerts and TV shows for a living so have the experience. Love my Tavor so why not.
If not IWI, maybe Glock is hiring.
CEO, Sig Sauer USA
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chief knurler and meplat inspector.
“Make me a sergeant in charge of the booze……” (with apologies to the old SF movie ‘Them’ – not a bad flick by the way although the effects were a bit cheesy)
I’d love to be one of those evil NRA lobbyists. It’d be the best way to make a difference.
Apologies to RF and the Mods if this exceeds their posting guidelines:
Training. And I’m doing it, slowly.
I own San Antonio-based Interritus, LLC. We provide on-demand, in-home training across Texas.
And we’re looking to expand our Instructional Consultant Network based on the Mary Kay model. We need more instructors to spread the gospel of safe gun handling and personal responsibility to shooters who can’t make it to regularly-scheduled classes.
CV to [email protected]
No problem. Want to write a post about your training? What makes it special/better? Send to [email protected].
I am graduating sometime in the next year with a manufacturing master’s. I would love to put that to good use.