I wouldn't shun the gunshop fellow so quickly. Most would just try to hook as many folks as they can instead of looking out for a customer. He did half way have it right. A fellow is more likely to get a 77 that will shoot over 2" groups than one that will shoot under that. If a fellow get's ahold of a mini made between the late 80s to just a few years ago when they revamped the tooling then he would have a poor shooter as well. Same goes for a 10-22 from the mid 90s until today. Ruger does have a reputation for poor accuracy in their rifles so he was shooting you straight, just wasn't familiar with the No.1.
On average more of them would probably give what is acceptable big game accuracy than the ones that wouldn't. You can taylor a load and maybe even fine tune the gun if it still doesn't suit you. They are capable of sub MOA. Sure there are poor shooting ones like any other rifle, for the most part they are the minority though, from the ones I have worked on.
As for Rems, I think that's a crock. A left wing media outlet did a piece on them being unsafe. Hired an "expert" to give testimony (validity) to them being unsafe. Turns out he was just an actor. If 700s were prone to discharge when the trigger wasn't pulled there would be a whole lot of dead hunters, trucks with holes blown in them, neighbors houses shot up and so forth. The media just wanted to show the biggest boy on the block was unsafe so they could claim all guns are unsafe. Not a 700 fan myself but there's nothing wrong with them going off. I think someone said that there were 19 reported problems. Out of millions produced over the years that's a good percentage. How many of those were wore out or home trigger jobs? I'm not a 700 fan, don't even own one anymore, but not because they are unsafe.
Have a good one.
