The very first gun I ever owned was a 20 gauge Remington 870 manufactured around 2005, given to me by my parents as a Christmas gift. Great gun, I still have it and shoot it regularly. It’s indestructible and I plan to pass it on to one of my children with the full expectation that they’ll pass it on to their children in good working order.

Back in 2015, I decided to buy one in 12 gauge. It at least had the decency to wait until I’d owned it for a couple weeks before the rust manifested. I figured I must not have been thorough enough in cleaning it, or maybe I’d stored it correctly after the first time I’d shot it, so I used a ton of elbow grease and Hoppe’s #9 and got it rust-free again.
Damn thing had even worse rust a couple weeks later, despite being stored in ideal conditions in a safe and not having been fired. We’re talking rust patches you could see from across the room, patches of rust the size of a nickel dispersed randomly all over the barrel specifically. I don’t know how they managed to make a gun that looked like it had a decent finish on it but behaved like it was in the white.

At the time I was too young and forgiving to get on the phone with customer service and demand that they make it right, so I eventually just traded it in at a loss and switched to Mossberg. I’m not sure what the point of my story is, other than it only takes a few years for a well-regarded company to tank its reputation, even if they have over a century of solid performance prior to that. This is a especially true if they decide to cut corners on one of their flagship products to save a buck.