The History of Sturm, Ruger & Co.: 1949 to Today

In 1949, a Yale-trained painter and a self-taught gun designer pooled $50,000 and rented a small machine shop in Southport, Connecticut. Seventy-seven years later, the company they started builds more firearms than anyone else in America.

The full Ruger history is one of the great American manufacturing stories, and it’s still being written. Just in the past two years, Ruger has celebrated its 75th anniversary, launched a pistol co-designed with Magpul, handed the reins to a new CEO, and quietly moved its headquarters out of Connecticut after three-quarters of a century.

Most Ruger histories you’ll find online stop somewhere around the 10/22. This one goes all the way to today. We’ve sold Ruger firearms and magazines for over two decades, and the questions customers ask about the brand tend to be the same ones people type into Google: Who founded Ruger? Is it a German company? Why is the eagle in the logo black? Who owns it now?

Here’s the full story, start to present.

Ruger history at a glance

• 1949: Founded in Southport, Connecticut; the Ruger Standard .22 pistol launches
• 1951: Alexander Sturm dies at 28; the eagle logo changes from red to black
• 1953–1964: Single-Six, Blackhawk, Bearcat, and the 10/22 arrive
• 1969: Company goes public (joins the NYSE in 1990 as RGR)
• 1987: P85 9mm pistol debuts; Prescott, Arizona plant opens
• 2002: William B. Ruger dies after 53 years leading the company
• 2008–2015: LCP, American rifle, and Precision Rifle define the modern catalog
• 2020: Ruger buys Marlin Firearms out of the Remington bankruptcy
• 2024: 75th anniversary; the RXM pistol launches with Magpul
• 2026: Headquarters officially moves to Mayodan, North Carolina

When was Ruger founded?

Sturm, Ruger & Company was founded in 1949 by William B. Ruger and Alexander McCormick Sturm in a small rented machine shop in Southport, Connecticut. Sturm put up $50,000 of family money; Ruger supplied the design. Their first product, the Ruger Standard .22 pistol, sold well enough to carry the entire company.

The two founders could hardly have been more different. William B. Ruger, born in Brooklyn in 1916, was a self-taught firearms designer who sketched a machine gun design while studying at the University of North Carolina. He went on to work in a Springfield Armory machine shop and spent World War II improving designs at Auto-Ordnance, the company behind the Thompson submachine gun.

Alexander Sturm was a 26-year-old Yale Art School graduate, a writer, a painter, and a student of heraldry from a wealthy Connecticut family. He brought the money, the artistic eye, and the company’s now-famous eagle emblem, which he designed himself.

Ruger had already watched one venture fail. His earlier company, Ruger Corporation, went under in the late 1940s making tools and parts. The partnership with Sturm was his second chance, and he didn’t waste it.

The Ruger Standard: the .22 pistol that built a company

The Ruger Standard looked like a German Luger P08 and handled like a Colt Woodsman, and that was no accident. Ruger had studied captured Japanese Baby Nambu pistols after the war and borrowed the silhouette shooters found irresistible. More important, he designed the pistol around simple stamped and cast parts that kept the price at $37.50, undercutting the Woodsman by a wide margin.

The formula worked immediately. Mail orders poured into the little red barn shop in Southport, and the company turned a profit in its first year. Gun writers of the day praised the Standard as that rare thing: an affordable firearm that wasn’t a compromise.

That first pistol never left the catalog. It evolved into the Mark I, Mark II, Mark III, and today’s Mark IV, one of the most popular .22 pistols ever made. If you shoot one now, you’re holding the direct descendant of the gun that started it all. We keep Ruger firearms and their magazines in stock for exactly that reason: the platforms have never gone out of style.

Is Ruger a German company?

No. Ruger is American, and always has been. The company was founded in Connecticut in 1949 by Brooklyn-born William B. Ruger and Connecticut native Alexander Sturm, and every Ruger firearm is made in the United States. The German-sounding name comes from the founder’s surname, not from any German ownership or manufacturing.

The confusion is understandable. “Ruger” sounds a lot like “Luger,” and the company’s first pistol deliberately echoed the German P08’s profile. Plenty of shooters over the years have assumed a connection that simply isn’t there.

For the record, Ruger’s factories are in Newport, New Hampshire; Prescott, Arizona; and Mayodan, North Carolina. Every firearm in the catalog, from the 10/22 to the new RXM, is built in one of those American plants.

Why is the Ruger eagle black?

Alexander Sturm designed the company’s red eagle emblem, drawing on his lifelong study of heraldry. When Sturm died suddenly in 1951 at just 28 years old, William Ruger changed the eagle from red to black as a permanent gesture of mourning for his friend and partner. The black eagle has marked Ruger firearms ever since.

It’s one of the more moving details in Ruger’s history, and it says something about how Ruger regarded the man who bet $50,000 on him. Sturm never saw what the company became. He died two years into the venture, before the first revolver, before the 10/22, before any of it.

The red eagle didn’t vanish entirely. Ruger has revived it on select commemorative models over the years, and original Standard pistols with red eagle grip medallions, made before Sturm’s death, are among the most sought-after Rugers in the collector market. If a red-eagle Standard ever crosses your path at an estate sale, look closely. You may be holding the first two years of the company’s existence.

The classic era: Single-Six, Blackhawk, and the 10/22

With the Standard paying the bills, Bill Ruger turned to the market he read better than anyone: ordinary American shooters. In the early 1950s, Westerns ruled television, and Colt had stopped making single-action revolvers. Ruger stepped into the gap with the Single-Six, a .22 single-action revolver, in 1953, followed by the centerfire Blackhawk in 1955 and the compact Bearcat in 1958.

Then came the rifle that outsold them all. Introduced in 1964, the Ruger 10/22 paired a simple semi-automatic action with a clever 10-round rotary magazine that sat flush in the stock. Sixty-two years later, the 10/22 remains in production with millions sold, making it one of the best-selling rimfire rifles in history. It’s often the first rifle a new shooter learns on, and it runs happily on affordable .22 LR ammunition, which is a big part of why.

The hits kept coming through the 1960s and 70s: the No. 1 single-shot rifle in 1967, the M77 bolt-action in 1968, the Security-Six revolver in 1972, and the Mini-14 rifle in 1973.

The investment casting advantage

Ruger’s real edge in those years wasn’t a gun at all. It was a manufacturing process. While competitors machined parts from expensive forgings, Ruger embraced investment casting, pouring molten steel into precision molds at its own Pine Tree Castings foundry in Newport, New Hampshire.

Investment casting let Ruger build rugged, overbuilt firearms at working-man prices. Critics sniffed at cast parts in those days; the guns themselves settled the argument by refusing to break. That approach, real durability at an honest price, is the same value equation we’ve built our own business around for 23+ years. Ruger proved decades ago that affordable and well-made aren’t opposites.

Going public and growing: 1969 to 2002

Sturm, Ruger went public in 1969 and joined the New York Stock Exchange in 1990 under the ticker RGR. The catalog matured along with the balance sheet: the Redhawk magnum revolver arrived in 1979, the GP100 in 1985, and the P85, Ruger’s entry into the 9mm duty pistol market, in 1987, the same year the company opened its Prescott, Arizona plant.

Not every chapter of Ruger history from those years is remembered fondly. In 1989, Bill Ruger publicly endorsed magazine capacity limits in a letter to Congress, a stance that remains a sore subject with some enthusiasts to this day. We’ll leave the debate to the forums; it’s part of the historical record, and it belongs in an honest telling of the company’s story.

Bill Ruger led the company for more than five decades, stepping back in 2000 and passing away in 2002 at age 86. By 2004, the company he co-founded in a rented shop had produced more than 20 million firearms, per American Rifleman’s company history. Leadership passed in turn to William Ruger Jr., Stephen Sanetti, Michael Fifer, and Chris Killoy, but the founder’s product philosophy never really left the building.

The modern era: LCP, American, and the Marlin rescue

The 2000s brought a different market, and Ruger met it. The LCP, a pocket-sized .380 introduced in 2008, arrived just as concealed carry surged nationwide and became one of the most popular carry pistols in the country. The Ruger American rifle followed in 2011, bringing accurate, affordable bolt-actions to hunters, and the Ruger Precision Rifle in 2015 did the same for long-range shooting.

Then came the deal that defined the modern chapter of Ruger history.

Ruger buys Marlin

When Remington Outdoor Company collapsed into bankruptcy in 2020, the fate of Marlin Firearms, the 150-year-old lever-action maker, was suddenly in question. Ruger stepped in and bought substantially all of Marlin’s assets for about $28.3 million in cash, per the company’s announcement, closing the deal on November 23, 2020.

What happened next won Ruger real goodwill. Rather than rushing product out the door, Ruger spent a year re-engineering Marlin’s lever guns and tooling up a dedicated line at its Mayodan, North Carolina plant. The first Ruger-made Marlin, a Model 1895 in .45-70, shipped in December 2021 to reviews that called it the best-built Marlin in years.

Enthusiasts who feared the brand would die in bankruptcy court instead watched it come back healthier. You’ll find lever-actions alongside bolt guns and semi-autos in our rifle selection, and the Marlin revival is a big reason lever guns are having a moment.

The Marlin deal capped a remarkable run. By ATF manufacturing data for 2022, Sturm, Ruger & Co. had become the largest firearm manufacturer in the United States, ahead of Smith & Wesson.

Ruger today: new leadership and a new home

Ruger marked its 75th anniversary in 2024 with nine commemorative models spanning the catalog, from the Mark IV to the 10/22. The anniversary year closed with a genuine surprise: the RXM, a 9mm pistol developed jointly with Magpul, launched in December 2024. Built around a removable stainless steel fire control insert that drops into interchangeable Magpul grip modules, the RXM pushed Ruger into the modular pistol market with one of the most respected accessory makers in the industry as a partner.

Who owns Ruger?

Sturm, Ruger & Co. is a publicly traded company listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: RGR). No parent company or private equity firm owns the Ruger firearms company; its shareholders do. The founding families no longer run the business. Day-to-day leadership rests with a professional management team and board.

That leadership changed hands recently. On March 1, 2025, Todd W. Seyfert became President and CEO, succeeding Chris Killoy, who retired after 20 years with the company. Seyfert arrived from FeraDyne Outdoors with a long resume in the outdoor industry, per Ruger’s announcement.

Where is Ruger’s headquarters now?

As of January 1, 2026, Ruger’s corporate headquarters is in Mayodan, North Carolina. The company quietly relocated from Southport, Connecticut, its home since 1949, and confirmed the move publicly in May 2026, as reported by the Hartford Business Journal. Roughly 100 positions were cut in the restructuring, and a small office of about 20 finance and legal staff remains in Connecticut.

The move was less dramatic than headlines suggested. Manufacturing left Southport back in the 1990s, and Mayodan, opened in 2013 and expanded since, had already grown into Ruger’s largest facility and the home of Marlin production. Still, it closes the Connecticut chapter that began in a rented machine shop 77 years ago, and it’s worth pausing on what that meant for the people whose jobs ended with it. Company towns and gunmakers have a long, intertwined history in New England, and Southport was part of it for three generations.

What Ruger’s history means for shooters and collectors

For shooters, the takeaway is simple: the value DNA that built the company in 1949 is still the pitch in 2026. Today’s Ruger products, from the American rifle and Wrangler revolver to the 10/22 and RXM, all follow the same formula as that $37.50 Standard: solid engineering, honest materials, fair price.

For collectors, Ruger’s long history creates real opportunities. A few worth knowing:

• Red eagle Standards: Pistols made before Alexander Sturm’s death in 1951 wear the original red eagle grip medallions. They’re the holy grail of Ruger collecting.
• “Three-screw” Blackhawks: Old Model single-actions made before the 1973 transfer-bar redesign are prized for their vintage lockwork. Collectors call them three-screws for the trio of screws in the frame.
• Southport-marked guns: With the Connecticut era now officially closed, firearms bearing the Southport address mark a finished chapter of the Ruger history.
• Early 10/22s: First-decade rifles with original finger-groove stocks have quietly climbed in value as the platform’s legend has grown.

Every so often, a piece like this comes across our counter, and it’s one of the best parts of the job. A worn Standard with red eagle grips isn’t just a .22 pistol; it’s the first two years of an American company you can hold in one hand.

If you’ve inherited or outgrown a collectible Ruger, our Sell To Us program is always glad to take a look. And if you’re keeping yours running instead, we stock Ruger magazines for everything from the Mark series to the Mini-14.

Final thoughts on 77 years of Ruger history

The history of Sturm, Ruger & Co. runs from a $50,000 handshake in 1949 to America’s largest firearm manufacturer. The outline of the Ruger history is worth remembering:

• The Standard pistol that started it all in 1949
• The black eagle that honors Alexander Sturm
• The investment casting that made quality affordable
• The Marlin rescue that saved a 150-year-old brand
• The 2026 headquarters move that closed the Connecticut era where it began

Through all of it, the company has sold the same basic promise: a well-built firearm at a price a working person can justify. That promise is why there’s probably a Ruger in your safe right now, and why there will probably be one in your grandkids’ safes too.

If this history has you eyeing a 10/22 for a new shooter in the family, hunting down magazines for a Mark II that’s been in the family for decades, or wondering what that old three-screw Blackhawk is worth, get in touch. We’ve been keeping Ruger owners shooting for 23+ years, and we’re glad to help with the next chapter of yours.