What's the advantage of Ruger Mark III's fluted barrel?

[John Sabato]

Ron's hilarious response reminded me that as a young computer technician in my spare time, I used to do occasional jobs for a rural computer store.

One day they called me and asked me to go to a surgeon's house and upgrade the memory in a PC that he had purchased from them. It turned out that doctor was my neighbor a couple of houses down from mine and we knew each other.

Rather than charge my neighbor friend for the simple task of inserting some new memory chips, I called him and told him all he had to do was power the system off, open the case and insert the two new chips in the sockets provided for them since they couldn't be inserted incorrectly, and then close the case.

His response to me made me fall off my chair in laughter. He was deathly afraid of electricity...and strangely, not very mechanically inclined. He said, " I will gladly pay you because I would rather cut open somebody's abdomen and do a bowel resection than stick my hand into a computer!"

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Regarding the fluted barrel on the target version of the Ruger .22 auto. I would have to submit that they are purely decorative in this instance, since rigidity could hardly be an issue in a barrel only 6 inches long... flutes may play a roll in a bench rest type target barrel... but not on a pistol...IMHO.

I have a 6 inch tapered barrel on mine and it is a great fun and accurate gun to shoot, even with standard non-adjustable sights.