Firearms Friday: Bad Glock!

I have always been a fan of Glock. The prices are reasonable, the guns are accurate, and I have never had any issues with the firearms that I have used on the range. Additionally, replacement and enhancement parts are plentiful and reasonably priced. It is for these reasons that I carried a Glock for a while. Never had any issues and still don’t have any issue with the actual firearms themselves. Period.

However, I recently received an email from a local gun shop (not my usual gun shop) that had me a little perturbed. In the subject line I read “ALERT: Response to Glock Blue Label Program Termination” and immediately had to open up the message to find out what this was about. I was expecting some kind of pricing dispute (the prices aren’t really that good) or some other kind argument that resulted in this termination. As soon as I began reading, I knew that this was a much different scenario. Please note that I have omitted the name of the gun shop as it is not necessary for the purposes of this post. The letter to customers begins as follows:

While I can understand Glock’s concern in the matter and wanting to find some way of accounting for all Blue Label sales, the sharing of information such as this is not something that I support. I am very familiar with this particular gun shop and know for a fact that they sell to a lot of military and law enforcement personnel. They always have great prices and are a high volume seller that does everything by the book and according to the law. There is no doubt in my mind that they are in the right. If anything, this whole debate demonstrates a lack of trust that Glock has with their dealers/distributors. While these first two paragraphs are bad enough, the details just kept on getting worse:

So, this wasn’t just a letter, phone call, or email… a Glock representative was physically in the store making these demands. Furthermore, he was focused on the ATF Form 4473 which, as you know, contain a lot of personal information including name, address, birthday, social security number, etc. Anyone who has bought a firearm at a gun shop has filled out this form. While dealers are required to keep these forms on premise they are only referenced under extreme and specific circumstances… Glock’s request does not meet the criteria. Thankfully, this local shop cares about their customers, their privacy, and their rights.   

This is a matter of personal privacy and individual freedom. This is a fight that we have been having for years now… the right to keep this information private. If access is granted to manufacturers why wouldn’t the government insist on the same access? It is a slippery slope but what do you expect when the hill is covered with this kind of BS. So, I fully support this gun shop in taking a stand against Glock and I encourage all dealers who participate in the Blue Label Program to take a stand as well. We have to do all that we can to protect and preserve our rights at every opportunity and not let instances like this slowly chip away and cause cracks in our foundation.

And You Thought Wal-Mart Was Crowded!

There were a lot of 4473's filled out on Friday
which means we will soon be accused of killing trees. 

Black Friday Facebook posts seemed to be the norm this past week especially for the local shops in the area that don’t put the money into fancy commercials or newspaper inserts. This was especially true for the small shops around the region. Even the local gun shops took to Facebook to promote the discounts that they were offering this weekend (Tanner’s Sports Center is a perfect example of this). And, as it turns out, my local mom and pop shops were not the only ones cutting prices.

While I kept reading about the lines at various retailers across the country, it didn’t quite click that the same thing would be happening at the local gun shops and big chain stores. Just like last year, I didn’t have the need to go wait in those lines and none of those stores are along my usual commute so I was fairly oblivious to the rampant sales that were happening across the nation. Those thoughts were soon chipped away when I started reading through some of the comments left on the Facebook sale posts.

These demonstrated that there was a higher than normal pace to the sales but the volume was still something that I didn’t fully grasp until additional posts were made by a few of these stores. As it turns out, the PICS system was completely overloaded (no back door gun control theories here just the pointing out of a crappy antiquated system). Something that I cannot remember happening for some time and not this bad since the first few months of 2013. That is when I really began to wonder how many firearms were being sold on Black (Rifle) Friday.

And then I came across a CNN article (via The Blaze) that summarized the mass buying that was taking place across the country and why the system was unable to handle the load. Here is a little bit from the article:

The busiest shopping day of the year also saw a major boom for gun sales, with the federal background check system setting a record of more than 175,000 background checks Friday, according to the FBI.

The staggering number of checks -- an average of almost three per second, nearly three times the daily average -- falls on the shoulders of 600 FBI and contract call center employees who will endure 17-hour workdays in an attempt to complete the background reviews in three business days, as required by law, FBI spokesman Stephen Fischer said.

"Traditionally, Black Friday is one of our busiest days for transaction volume," Fischer said.

Indeed, Friday saw the highest number of background checks ever for a Black Friday, and second in history. The highest day on record was December 21, 2012, with more than 177,000 background checks.

Without any major controversies or political maneuvering currently being considered, it really came down to price this year. While there may not have been great Black Friday deals to be had overall, it seems as though the firearms industry is doing well and the real deals were in the gun shops. Like it or not, firearms are part of our culture and the ownership thereof is our right. Thankfully, there are many people out there who choose to exercise that right and Black Friday was there opportunity to embrace that right… and at a discount.