RDF009: I appreciate your much more positive tone -- it made me feel much more positive toward your position on the issue.
On the issue: based on my understanding of modern manufacturing processes and how they are managed (I am retired now from a Fortune 50 company), if defects tend to be related to just a single aspect or two in the making of a particular model, then the mangagement reaction would be to adjust or revamp the processes relating to those aspects. If defects are spread fairly randomly through the various parts and processes, then, as I said before, it comes down to pure cost balancing. Detailed individual inspection would be fairly expensive - 10 or 15 minutes of inspection of each gun (whether at the end or spread out at each step of processing) would not only entail additional labor costs, but would slow down the entire operation in a big way -- we are talking about hundreds of guns per day (per shift?) -- or more. When you factor in overhead and other fixed costs, the cost per unit go up quite a bit if the number of units out the door slows down.
For example, assume a model is in high demand, if they make 100 per day, then they can sell 100 per day -- but if they can boost that to 125 per day -- then they can sell all of those as well. The fixed costs per unit goes down by that much.
Unfortunately, all of that leads to your concern -- that consumers become the quality assurance department. You and many others do not like being enlisted into the process of making a decent gun. But to Ruger"s credit (and Taurus, and S&W, and Kahr, and Beretta, and, and...) they take care of the products as painlessly as possible.
I have gotten used to it as just being how it works when you have dozens of employees making thousands of units using largely computerized and automated processes. Oh well.
Cordially,
Ash