[987412365]

These are complex machines with many moving parts, parts wear out all the time, there is a large after market for custom parts too...

I'm sure someone more knowledgeable can chronicle the use of polymer frames in firearms, which maybe really caught on in the 1990s?

Failure to improve on old designs seems like a good thing to me as a consumer, it's preferable to churn

[dustinmoorenet]

The gun just doesn't fit as a product that can be made obsolete by future designs. Most guns were designed for the military to be field serviceable. Any attempt to make a cheap gun will just push consumers back to the established platforms. So the gun industry can't be run like other consumer industries, as we have seen with this bankruptcy. Investors came in thinking they could bleed an established brand of it's value, but evidently, consumers noticed and moved on.