Non-Event Gets Plenty of Media Play

When mainstream media reports that a “coalition” of local police departments, municipalities and clergy have been visiting major gun companies and getting a “warm reception” and a hearing on their insistence that the manufacturers start embracing new “smart gun technologies” that’s big news in our part of the world.

And that’s exactly the report that aired earlier this week on WCBS-TV in New York City. The report characterized the group’s work as a “form of gun control without legislation”.

As you can imagine, it didn’t take long for online discussion groups to start “energizing their base” (the elections haven’t been over that long, so the pol-speak remains) by calling for the skins, scalps and other parts of everyone at Ruger – the company the coalition had visited and the CBS crew accompanied.

It didn’t help that Glock and Beretta were reported to have been “cool to the idea”. But it would seem that there’s less to the fact-check and more to the implications of this one than what meets the eye. Honestly, having listened to Mike Fifer patiently turn back financial analysts’ questions on “using new technologies to keep the company competitive” recently, my first reaction was to doubt the accuracy of the characterization.

That’s not just based on Fifer’s patient explanations to “the questions I know I’m going to get every time we have one of these calls”, it’s based on the fact that Ruger has not played the silly games required to do business in California when it comes to making -and staying-on the state’s crazy quilt list of “safe” guns for California owners.

Smith & Wesson and Ruger were the first “majors” to say “no thanks” to the latest requirements -saying simply that when their guns were modified, they weren’t going to re-submit them for another approval. That’s not intransigence, incidentally, it’s clear-headed business decision-making. According to the latest left coast logic, any change cosmetic or operational, would mean the gun would fall off the list until such time as it was re-approved.

Rather than play those silly games, S&W and Ruger simply moved on. According to Fifer’s own admission, that was a ten million dollar write-off, not something to sneeze at in the gun business. But the message to gun owners and Second Amendment advocates was a strong one: Ruger isn’t playing those crazy gun games.

And that’s the back story on why I didn’t get all riled up at the report. It just doesn’t jibe with what I’ve seen and heard first-hand.

Our friend and colleague Michael Bane has shed some bright light on this little report and, as many suspected, there’s really a lot less there than meets the eye. In Texas with Ruger’s Ken Jorgensen, Bane did the reportorial thing about the report: he just asked if it were so. Jorgensen, in turn, asked Mike Fifer.

Here, with thanks to Michael and Down Range TV is Fifer’s verbatim response:

“Our General Counsel met them inside our front entryway, said I was not present (I was actually out of the building at a meeting when they showed up), accepted their envelope addressed to me, said goodbye to them and that was the end of it. They left.

Perhaps “warm reception” is a relative description. While we disagree with their methods and specifics, there is little to be gained by being rude to them (which they might have preferred, given that they had Channel 3 news cameras with them). They also behaved well, did not make a fuss, and quietly left. It was a non-event, in spite of their goal of gaining publicity.
Best regards,
Mike Fifer ”

Where I grew up, the TV report on their “warm welcome” – based on Fifer’s characterization- might be called a “great big cackle over an itty-bitty egg.”

Unfortunately, there’s probably no egg on anyone’s face in New York TV circles because a correction or clarification wouldn’t “fit their narrative” on gun control. After all, they continue to assert that gun companies are wide-open for using any sort of technologies but are prevented from doing so by “right-wing crazies”.

Those, FYI, would be us.

And it’s official, Remington has announced yet another round of layoffs in their Ilion, New York manufacturing facility. According to the CNY Central website, 126 workers were meeting with outplacement people yesterday. If you’re keeping county, that’s 231 workers let go since August.

State Assemblywoman Claudia Tenney may have said it all for her constituents with her tweet: “Thanks Cuomo for killing NY manufacturing. 126 layoffs at Remington today. @RemingtonArms is oldest manufacturer in NY. #iconicremington”

Remington is only two months away from celebrating it’s 200th anniversary in Ilion.

To borrow a phrase from the late, great Paul Harvey, “now you know the rest of these stories.”

Finally, a quick note as we look toward the holidays. We have several special features planned over the coming weeks as we wind down toward Christmas and New Years. Among those are editor’s selections of products for gift-giving. We have bunches of them ready to go, and we’ll be posting them online where you can quickly go to them as well. They include everything from great reads (and, boy, are there some great new books out there these days on everything from “Hummingbirds” by Ronald Orenstein for birders to “The Shooters Bible of Extreme Iron” by Stan Skinner which is a delight for all shooting enthusiasts-especially for those of those heavy calibers) to accessories and major gifts.

We are using one common qualifier for each: we’re only going to be featuring those gifts that are actually available for purchase and delivery before the holiday. It’s not unusual for gift-giving features to have products that are only “scheduled” for distribution, and that’s one of the biggest disappointments I can imagine as a gift-giver.

No playing those silly games here- although products may run out-of-stock, they’ll be available as of the time we tell you about them.

And we’ll be telling you some exciting news about our own operations over the next few weeks- everything from new automation systems to new services. Not one more word on those today, but as always, those changes will help us keep our promise: we’ll keep you posted.

– Jim Shepherd

Jim Shepherd is the Editor and Publisher of the The Outdoor Wire Digital Network and The Shooting Wire.
For other news and updates from the outdoor industry, follow Jim on Twitter.