When the Ruger Mini-14 was first offered, the Sturm, Ruger advertising campaign touted it as "the world's most expensive plinker." That was pretty cheeky, and the rifle had everyone excited. Basically, to steal market share from Colt, Ruger had built a rifle that wasn't an AR but was instead the rifle the Colt-haters loved: a Garand/M14, but one in .223 Remington.

The Mini-14 of then was durable, reliable, reasonably accurate and inexpensive--or at least close enough in all those areas. In 1974, a Colt AR-15 (there were no others) listed at $234 compared to the Ruger's $199 price tag. Back then, $35 was a bunch of ammo.

I can tell you from fixing a bunch Mini-14s that when one was dropped from a guard tower the only things that broke were the stocks and rear sights. And as long as you stayed away from corrosively primed ammo, the Mini chugged right along. However, if you got cheap and bought corrosive, you'd have the devil's own time getting the gas system apart and scrubbing the rust off.

Despite all it had going for it, within a decade the Mini had fallen way behind. The AR was much more accurate. As we were teasing out the details of making ARs into minute-of-angle rifles, the Mini was still delivering only three to four m.o.a.

In the 1980s I had a customer who so loved his Mini that he paid me to do the full U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit accurizing process to his Mini. Done to a Garand or M1A, the results were sub-m.o.a. with match ammo. His Ruger? No change.

The stock not only folds, it extends as well, and it comes with a bolt-on cheekpiece to raise the eye for use with optics.

Rumors on why the Minis failed to achieve high levels of accuracy were legion. Some shooters thought barrel quality was to blame. Others pointed to the gas system: It was too heavy, too light, dampened the barrel harmonics too much, or not enough. The bedding was blamed as well--not tight enough, too tight, binding, whatever.

While the Mini was often touted as more reliable, AR-15s started to catch up in that department, and the AR platform was much quicker to embrace "bells and whistles." Until relatively recently, civilians had their choice of wood or wood stocks for the Mini. You could get telescoping stocks for an AR but not the Ruger, although the company did offer a law-enforcement-only telescoping stock and an LE-only folder as well. Pistol grip? Forget it.

Rails began to appear on ARs more than a decade ago. If you wanted rails on the Mini, you had to bolt them onto the fore-end yourself. On top of all that, getting magazines was not easy. Five-shot mags, yes. But 20- and 30-rounders? Ruger sold those only to police departments, which caused resentment among a lot of shooters.

Well, let go of your resentments and your low expectations because Ruger is back at it. Its new Mini, with a model designation Mini-14/20CF, is what the company could have done to the Mini 20 years ago but didn't.

First off is the barrel. Ruger makes its own barrels, and the company has become more attentive to complaints that Minis don't shoot well (and, in fact, it brought out an accurized Mini-14 called the Target Rifle just a few years ago). The improvement is partly due to a heavier barrel but mostly due to Ruger making an accurate, hammer-forged 16-inch barrel.