The name of Bill Ruger is well-known around the world. Named William Batterman Ruger, he was born on 21 June 1916 in Brooklyn, New York, to a father practising as an attorney and a housewife mother.
Both Ruger’s father and grandfather were landowners and very fond of hunting. It is through them, as well as the hunting opportunities the land offered him from an early age, that he acquired his love for firearms. I have never seen much on Ruger’s hunting, so his interest in firearms must have been mechanical rather than recreational.
His father’s death shortly after his 12th birthday coincided with him receiving his first firearm, a Remington Model 12 rim-fire pump-action rifle. After his father’s passing, Ruger moved to Flatbush, New York, with his mother and her father. The rim-fire he owned was often used in the basement of the house of his friend, William Lett. The two saw an advertisement for surplus .30-40 Krag rifles from the Spanish-American War and purchased one for US$15. They could not fire the Krag in the Flatbush basement, so they regularly took the train
