Even the concept of gunsmiths making serial production guns is weird to me. Gunsmiths should do repair, factories with robots and CNC machines should make high precision gear.

CNC machines do the bulk manufacturing. In high end shops, gunsmiths do the final finish work. It used to be that high production firearms still had gunsmiths overseeing production. Now, in places like Remington, firearms come off the machines and get put right into the box.

A range friend of mine is on his 3rd new Remington 700. He sent the original new unit back and they shipped him a new one. It was defective, he sent it back. They sent him another one. This was in the last 6 months. These were all issues with the machining of the chamber that should never have been shipped in the first place. A simple check with a flashlight would have revealed the problems that were plainly visible to the naked eye.

Conversely, I have 7 Remington products that I purchased new as late as 2005 and they have all been perfect.

So the problem is mostly lack of quality assurance, rather than an intrinsically bad product? With proper quality control, where would the Remington 700 fall in the scale from cheap to average to good? Is it overpriced, or technically inferior, or strange, compared to the competition?

It's interesting because removing people who inspect shotguns is quick, easy and relatively reversible, while declining product quality and loss of design and production skills are normally gradual trends with an eventful story of bad decisions.

The Remington 700 is an excellent platform and used to be highly regarded for precision rifles. It was the basis of both the US Army and Marine Corps' bolt-action sniper rifles for many decades (M24 and M40, respectively). Remington's manufacturing quality has just gone downhill in recent years.

There are other manufacturers that still make them to a high standard. I'm not sure whether they're licensed copies or just clones, but I recently heard someone joke that "these days everyone makes a great Remington 700 except Remington".

Gunsmiths design and create the guns. Much of the manufacturing is done by machine.