I had some people asking in good faith if we weren’t too harsh on Benchmade. The fact that they were doing a favor to the local cops and being a good corporate neighbor and all that should be taken in consideration.
But my brain kept coming to a quote from John Ross’ book Unintended Consequences and I believe explains somewhat why we react when we see guns destroyed for no good reason.
“Our culture is important, and we’re willing to pay for it. We have above -average educations, above – average incomes, and almost nonexistent criminal involvement. We pay far more in taxes and receive virtually no subsidy payments. You’d think Washington would be happy, but instead they are doing everything they can to destroy our culture.
In the ’20s, soldiers sat on their bunks in the cold at Camp Perry, cleaning the handmade .22 target rifles they would compete with the next day. When the President proudly announces that today, seventy years later, he is ordering these same guns thrown into a blast furnace, we in the gun culture feel powerful emotions. They are the same emotions a Native American would feel if the President proudly ordered the destruction of war clubs and other sacred tribal artifacts. They are the same emotions that Jews felt watching newsreel footage of Nazi Sturmtroopen gleefully burning intricate copies of the Torah.
We offer to buy the government’s surplus guns, and instead they pay to have them cut up. We offer to buy their surplus military ammo, shoot it, sell the brass to a smelter, and give the government the proceeds, and instead they pay to have it burned.
And that is all I have to say about this subject.
Well spoken Miguel! I agree on all points.
I’m more pissed they go out of their way – and out of their state – specifically to support and donate to Martin Heinrich and other leftists like him.
ditto
In their public statement in response to the “retaliation”, Benchmade said they donate to politicians who are in favor of knife rights and manufacturers’ rights.
What they don’t say is that nobody has proposed any legislation, at least in Oregon (where most of their donation recipients are based), to limit those things, so there has been literally nothing for those “pro-knife, pro-manufacturer” politicians to vote for or against. But donations still got sent. Repeatedly. Every election.
When it came to gun bills, however, every one of those recipients voted in favor of more restrictions. Whether they supported adding restrictions or opposed relaxing them, the trend was always toward as many restrictions as possible.
And historically, those in favor of gun restrictions nearly always support knife restrictions once guns are gone (see: the country where Great Britain used to be).
Benchmade is claiming we took their donations out of context, but really, they refuse to acknowledge the full context: Controllers gotta control, tyrants gotta tyrant, and Benchmade decided to support them.
That’s the bottom line, and why gunnies’ so-called “retaliation” is fully justified.