Miller,
I going to go out on a limb and guess Richland was gunning, no pun intended, for the guy who had a mortgage, a wife who didnt work, 2.5 kids, a single car garage with one car in it, and just enough room in the budget for a new gun, built to do nothing superbly, but, a few different things well. Provided the gun came in at less that $150 Richard Nixon era dollars, something our hero had to think twice about spending.
It would have been fine in a duck blind, ditto tramping around in a stubble field behind a lab, looking for pheasants, an OK squirrel gun, as you noted, and a grouse gun, if the shooter did his part. A few of them might have had a slug loaded into them also, and a deer taken.
I knew guys with one gun as a kid. A good rule of thumb I noticed was the more kids a family in my neighborhood had, the fewer guns, tools, and hobbies were practiced in that house.
We, as in you and I, were not the intended market, from what I can see from this late juncture.
Best,
Ted
