JPFO ALERT:THE KIMBER KISS-UP
>
> By L. Neil Smith <mailtto:[email protected]
>
> For Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership
> http://www.JPFO.org
>
>
> For those of us who make the transition from gun owner and shooter
> to Second Amendment activist, the most disillusioning phenomenon we
> have to face is that not everyone we might expect to be an ally in the
> fight for the right to own and carry weapons can actually be relied
> on.
>
> When I first became involved in this historical struggle, Smith &
> Wesson, that quintessentially American revolver manufacturer was
> actually owned by a British holding company that didn’t give a rap
> about the Second Amendment, was much more concerned with the company’s
> sales to police departments across the country, and was inclined to go
> along with any regulatory scheme politicians and bureaucrats came up
> with.
>
> Similarly, the late Bill Ruger, the head Sturm Ruger & Company,
> never seemed to understand the Second Amendment. Paternalist and
> aristocrat that he appeared to fancy himself, he actually volunteered
> advice to the government concerning what he believed ought to be legal
> (whatever his company manufactured) and what should be outlawed. We
> have Ruger mostly to thank for the ten-round limit that was imposed
> during the ill-conceived Clinton-Dole Ugly Gun and Adequate Magazine
> Ban.
>
> Some gun companies and their executives care only about the bottom
> line. Hired away from soft drink or underwear manufacturers, the men
> at the top don’t really have any moral or sentimental attachment to
> the product itself. They don’t love what they do. They might as well
> be manufacturing faucet washers. I don’t suppose there’s anything
> wrong with that, as far as it goes — I’m a big fan of capitalism,
> myself — but other companies are like the historic makers of fine
> musical instruments — violins and guitars. Money is important chiefly
> in that it keeps the company and its employees going. What really
> counts is the quality of their product and the satisfaction of their
> customers.
>
> Wildey J. Moore, inventor of magnum automatic pistols comes to
> mind. He actually ran for office in his home state as a libertarian
> and Second Amendment advocate. Ronnie Barrett stoutly refuses to sell
> his famous .50 caliber rifles to agencies of gun-banning governments,
> and he won’t service the ones they already have. STI International
> won’t sell their nifty 1911s to California police agencies because of
> the bizarre, insane microstamping scheme passed by that state’s
> legislature.
>
> Regrettably, another famous maker of 1911s, Kimber Manufacturing,
> seems to have trouble separating the goodguys from the badguys.
> According to an article by Ken Hanson, Esq., circulated on the Web by
> the Buckeye Firearms Association, and appearing on _U.S. Concealed
> Carry Magazine_’s website, Kimber has acquired a bad habit: kissing up
> disgustingly to the destroyers of individual liberty by creating
> weapons especially dedicated to various California police agencies. In
> Hanson’s words, these guns were specifically “designed for a local
> government committed to stripping civilians of the right to own _this
> same gun_.”
>
> Emphasis added.
>
> See: http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/5674
>
> Hanson urges his readers to “educate” Kimber with regard to what a
> terrible idea this is. It’s exactly as if Jewish tailors in the 1930s
> had taken pride in making uniforms for the Nazi S.S. There is no moral
> distinction. The author suggests a number of actions that concerned
> gun owners might take. chiefly calling or writing to the company at
> 914-964-0771×324, or via US mail at Kimber, 2590 Hwy 35, Kalispell, MT
> 59901.
>
> Although Hanson wants you to warn Kimber and its dealers of a
> possible boycott of their products by shooters concerned with their
> rights, he suggests your communication remain “polite, professional
> yet firm”. I would make no such suggestion. This is a major breach of
> an implicit moral bond between a gunmaker and its clients, it is the
> rankest, most repulsive kind of hypocrisy, and it must be dealt with
> no less promptly and harshly than I urged in my 2000 essay “S&W Must
> Die”.
>
> See: http://www.jpfo.org/alerts/alert20000406.htm
>
> The worldwide boycott which that essay helped to start broke S&W
> and sent them plunging — repeatedly — into bankruptcy. (Much the
> same thing happened to K-Mart when they foolishly hired the slavering,
> hysterical anti-gunner Rosie O’Donnell as their spokeswoman.) It is a
> story of which no firearms manufacturer today can possibly still be
> ignorant.
>
> In short, we must ask shooters to kick the Kimber habit.
>
> I agree with Hanson about the need for gun owners to react to
> Kimber’s suicidal stupidity, but I would suggest also dealing with
> the problem at the other end. Why not a written pledge, to be taken
> and signed by individual police officers, that they will never attempt
> to confiscate weapons from civilians, whether it’s during disasters
> like Hurricane Katrina, or as a result of local, state, or federal
> legislation.
>
> If it’s unconstitutional, it’s automatically null and void.
>
> That pledge can be archived by an organization like JPFO, and
> openly displayed online, making it easier to see who the goodguys and
> the badguys are. We could probably even design and make a nice little
> embroidered patch — it might say “BILL OF RIGHTS ENFORCER” — for the
> pledge-making police officers to sew on their uniforms. Until their
> superiors, veins standing out on their foreheads and little gobbets of
> spit blasting from their lips as they scream, order them to take it
> off.
>
> Of course that, in itself, will teach cops everywhere a valuable
> lesson, and even make them ask themselves an important question,
> “Why am I helping to destroy The Bill of Rights”, and the Kimber
> Kiss-ups should ask themselves the same question.