As with many of our readers, whether it be with GUNS or American Handgunner, I always start backwards. That is, the first thing I look at is the last thing in the magazine, namely the back page. In this magazine our Esteemed Editorship always starts at the ending with his Insider column. This is always filled with good information and a story or two. A normal part of it is the “Add It Up” section consisting of statistics guaranteed to either make us feel warm and fuzzy or upset at some of the stuff going on around us. Someday I would like to see a number, a relatively high number, listed as the number of politicians in Washington who really care about the country. May I live so long!
Another number which is difficult to find, but certainly is high, is the number of sixgunners over the past 60 years who started the same way I did. In 1953 Bill Ruger gave us a glimpse of things to come as he set about to build revolvers, which had three main attributes. They would be extremely rugged, relatively low-priced and be the guns shooters actually wanted. His very first revolver filled in every one of these categories perfectly.
Thanks to those old cowboy movies we all watched back then, every budding sixgunner’s eyes were focused on the Colt Single Action. There were no new ones being produced, and the prices of the used ones continued to go higher and higher. Plus those old .45 Colt, .44-40 and .38-40 sixguns were very expensive to shoot at a time hardly anyone had discovered reloading. Ruger made the decision to give sixgunners a new single action. What he did proved how brilliant he was, not only as a gun designer but also as one who understood shooters.
Shooters wanted single actions, but there were none to be had at reasonable prices. If you did find one, then there was the cost of keeping it running both as to ammunition and repairs to the old action. Bill Ruger took care of both of these problems. Taking a good look at the Colt Single Action he stayed with the basic idea, however he improved it tremendously by changing the operation from flat springs to coil springs. Flat springs often break while coil springs rarely are a problem. Ruger also maintained the basic feel of the Colt by duplicating the grip frame. Pick up an old Ruger and it feels like a Colt.
To address the problem of expensive operation Ruger decided to chamber his first Single-Six in everyone’s favorite cartridge, the not so lowly .22 Long Rifle. This allowed for very inexpensive shooting, however in a full-size Colt such a chambering results in an overly heavy revolver. Bill addressed this by downsizing the frame of his sixgun to better match the size of the .22.
The overall result was a virtually indestructible, well-balanced sixgun selling for, at least by the time I bought mine in 1956, $63.25. (Note from Roy: When I bought my first handgun in 1970, it was a Ruger Super Single Six and it cost only $68!). Just as they had with his first .22 semi-automatics, shooters took the .22 Single-Six immediately into their shooting hearts and it’s been a bestseller ever since. How many thousands upon thousands upon thousands of young shooters have begun by starting with the Ruger .22 Single-Six?