Lets say you were advising a new young shooter that was looking to buy their first deer rifle, one that they intend to hunt with for many years and shoot 200 or 300 rounds a year at the range with to build skills.
This is really what I try to let guide me. Both for new rifles I buy for myself, but especially for rifles I might recommend to new shooters.
It’s simply bad advice and unfair for an older generation of gun owners (regardless of actual chronological age) to recommend away from new cartridges on the basis of older cartridges.
As an example to that end, I am a huge (completely subjective) fan of the 7mm Remington Magnum, but I absolutely do not recommend one for a would-be new rifle hunter, or especially a new long range rifle shooter. Between ~20 and 30years ago, I was splitting time living in Texas, Minnesota, and Kansas, with family cattle partners in Colorado and Wyoming. The 7mm Rem mag was highly recommended in all of these local “networks” as a remarkably effective long range rifle, especially for hunting. So I HAD to have one, and I picked up a Sendero 700 in 7RM. It didn’t do anything the 30-06 I already had wasn’t doing, except weigh more, cost more to shoot and reload, bark louder - and blow out a lot of extra meat from a couple speedgoats. I’m not saying the 7mm mag was anything bad for the task, and I remain to LOVE the round, but in 2019 if a new hunter asks me what rifle to buy for Kansas whitetails & mulies, and occasional Colorado elk and Wyoming pronghorn trips, I just can’t responsibly tell them to buy a 7mm Rem Mag. I absolutely fell in love with the 7mm Mauser at 17yrs old, and still feel giddy every time I send one down range - but equally, I just can’t tell a new rifle buyer, especially a young person, to buy a 7mm Mauser. The Swede is the same for me. Admittedly, I never have had a taste for the 270win, almost wholly subjective disfavor, as my brother had a 270win and I had a .30-06, but I look a new buyer in the face and say they are the “best” option for anything at all moving from 2019 forward.
The ONLY viable justification I can support in these “new versus old” arguments is ammo and brass supply - for example, certainly a 7mm Rem mag has a better pipeline than a 6.5 PRC, so such consideration is substantially and objectively valid. Alternatively, there’s no better supply chain for 270win vs. 6.5 creed, so that’s really not a consideration between these two.
Sticking with the old you own is fine, nobody is asking you to buy anything new, and I feel bad for GR and those in this thread who feel the need to count the angels on the head of a pin just to feel good about the old rifle they own. But recommending old to the next generation without considering and acknowledging the virtues of the new is just silly. Technology builds upon technology - the great ideas of the past are great products of today, and are great foundations of tomorrow.
I’m a young man (kinda still), but I have owned already some of my rifles for over 25 years. I’ll hunt one of my .30-06’s until I can no longer hunt, God willing another 30+ years. My son will get a deer rifle this year of his own, at 5yrs old. I cannot, in good conscience, tell my son a .30-06 is the best cartridge for his hunting pursuits for the next 60+ years of his life. Not a .270, nor 7mm Rem mag, or any Mauser cartridge.... doesn’t matter if I like it or not.
So this thread, and a dozen others like it on this forum, and hundreds if not thousands more like it around the web just doesn’t deserve to live. It’s just silliness, akin to foolish old “hold outs” who refuse to use a “new fangled smart phone” - I think less of people who insist on refusing “new” because it is new.
