I like the ones I see from LaRue Tactical, especially in this time when others are showing their true colors (yellow). [Read]
UPDATE: GRNC wants to get other manufacturers on the record. Also note Kevin Wilmeth's concerns in comments -- I'm going to have to leave it up to comment posters to hash this out as I just won't have any time today to delve into this. I'll try to moderate as quickly as I can get to things.
[Via Dave Licht]
David, respectfully, I'll share here what I said yesterday when Kurt Hofmann first pointed me to the LaRue press release. In short: I'm as ready as anyone to recognize voluntary leadership in the marketplace--God knows we need it--but from what I've seen thus far I'm not sure this belongs on a bandwagon.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to be educated otherwise, btw.
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[Kurt, ] I had not seen that. And if I'm reading it right, I'm not entirely sure I'd call it a win. The disclaimer at the bottom seems to explicitly exclude Feds and .mil, which would seem to seriously dilute any point that they are making, but I fully admit I'm a lot more rigorous about that standard than most. And--please correct me if I've misread this--it appears from the release's narrative that the reason they are doing this is not so much to make a point about protecting the rights of the individual, but rather to protect the liability concerns of the business and its employees, should one of them mistakenly make a sale that they in good faith believe is compliant with state/local laws, but in fact is not and exposes them to lawsuits.
If that is true, while taking nothing away from the very real risk of failing to accurately traverse the ever-changing and deliberately deceptive legal landscape, and while taking nothing away from the effective practice of denying state/local agencies exactly what is denied the plebes, I would say that pinning the matter on the risk of lawsuit over mistaken discrimination blunts any point of principle in a negative way.
It's not my intention to pick on LaRue, there; thinking of them as a business I could understand fully if they simply wanted to go to least-common-denominator for all sales to mitigate risk. My only request would be that this be completely clear and unambiguous. We've all had quite enough of the semantic wordsmithy specifically designed to excuse behaviors that would never sell without a little deceptive "help", and I admit that I've got little patience left for anything that smacks of it in any way.
I would love to learn that I misread those words, and would happily accept education thereon. It's a time in which we need such leadership.
Way to miss the point. The laws being passed are State laws. In case you missed it, there are no new federal laws. The point is to force the police in NY and California to follow the same laws as the citizens in those states.
ReplyDeleteI will never understand why people make the perfect the enemy of the good. LaRue stands up to New York and you bitch that they aren't "standing up" to the US Marshalls Service. How does that make sense?
We need to get other manufacturers in on this. GRNC is pushing Glock, S&W, and SIG to sign on to this because the only three pistols approved for duty use in the NYPD are made by these manufacturers.
If you want to see change, this is how to do it, not standing on the sidelines bitching that LaRue isn't pure enough.
Hm. My comment was intended as a call for further clarification, and a request to be educated if I was somehow reading the press release improperly. I even went a little farther than I ordinarily would, in withholding judgment on LaRue's intentions before learning further, specifically out of my deep and abiding respect for Kurt and his outstanding work.
ReplyDeleteIn rereading it now, I'm not sure how I could have made that much clearer. Perhaps you can show me where I 'bitch that they aren't "standing up" to the US Marshalls Service'.
Please, do not mistake a call for caution in bandwagon-building, especially at a time in which mis- and disinformation is flying around everywhere, for a purity pissing match. I've got no interest in the latter, which should be pretty obvious for anyone who has read any volume of my own work; if anything I have been more castigated for my continued efforts to reach out to people many consider hopeless. And at the risk of sounding flip: any snickering you may hear in the background is probably people who do know my work, laughing at the idea that what is above is what I sound like when I'm actually 'bitching'. :-)
Let me repeat: I'm not picking on LaRue, absent further information. For all I know, that outfit might take the concern I note above and immediately re-word its press release so that nobody could read it as anything other than strictly a statement of support for individual rights, against local and state agencies. That simple clarification (requiring absolutely no change in the policy) would put the action right up there with what Ronnie Barrett did (which was also entirely about the State, not the Feds), and I've long held that up as a first-class model of marketplace resistance.
I'll not condemn anyone until they prove I must. But nor will I add anyone to a bandwagon that currently contains the likes of Barrett and those that pulled out of the ESOS show, without at least making sure that they belong with that company. And LaRue's verbiage, as it is, is ambiguous on that point.
Although I will happily accept both--and the de facto effect of LaRue's policy would certainly seem to put private individuals on the same level as state/local agencies, regardless of its intent--there's still a distance between "cum ulla sella in pugno taberna" and "hero of the resistance".
Please: I'm not here to divide, only to clarify. Okay?