As noted in the post about RFIDs in Chiappa firearms, MKS Supply seems to have a problem with public relations. Thomas, aka farmboy7.62, wrote MKS to express his opinion on this issue, and posted a letter he received from Charles Brown, president of MKS, as a reply. After reading the letter, I decided to write my own. The response I received was essentially the same as that which was received by farmboy7.62, with a few minor changes.
For those who are interested, here’s my email:
Mr Brown
I was very disappointed to read the press release you put out regarding RFIDs in Chiappa firearms. Although I am a blogger (vuurwapenblog.com), I did not really take offense at your comments regarding bloggers, or tinfoil, or anything like that. I could see that you were trying to be funny. Taken as individual parts, they did not disappoint me. As a whole, the release was horrifying.
You are now, in a very public manner, associated with Chiappa firearms, and may have caused the company serious damage – guilt by association, if you will. I’ve toured Chiappa’s factory in Azzano Mella and met Cinzia Pinzoni – in fact, she was my “tour guide.” She is a very nice person. Every single employee I met at Chiappa was polite, which I expected to find, but they were also, simply put, classy.
You serve as a, if not the, de facto representative for this company in America, a company of wonderful, hardworking people – and you represent it in a classless, rude, and disrespectful manner. The technical aspects of your press release were laughably incorrect, so it also appeared that you were willing to lie to as well as insult your end customers. This called into doubt the veracity of any statements you made regarding the timeline for implementation of this program.
I do not know what you plan to do about this issue, but at this time, I wonder why a company like Chiappa would wish to associate itself with the likes of you.
Regards
Andrew Tuohy
Here’s Mr. Brown’s response to my missive:
I appreciate your response to the barcode chip Release that was sent out last week, I am handling each one of the few responses we received individually, I feel if you took the time to contact me and express yourself I should extend the courtesy of responding to you.
I agree 100% with your observation that the tin foil comment sounded and read like we were uncaring pompous asses who did not care about the customers we market to, I like to try to put some humor in all of my releases and the shooting press seems to find it a nice departure from the mundane who-what-where-when contained in most the releases they get, however the intent of the humor came thru in a totally different feel-(yes we forgot the whole internet thing about how you can’t read inflection or feelings) I also try to let all of our releases sleep over night and come back in the next day with fresh eyes and take a look at it unfortunately I did not with this one.
I do however disagree with your statement about lying to anyone and I stand by the facts in the release about the RFID info.
My family has been in the firearms business since 1953 and I have owned MKS for the last 28 years, always supporting the firearms industry and supporting the preservation of our constitutional rights and being on the watch for erosion of such.
Actually because of all of the concern and contact with consumers regarding the RFID issue Chiappa is looking at ways to attach the chip to the gun only for manufacture and shipping into the USA and then be able to detach it and return it to Italy and reuse it in a future batch of guns being made, so this had actually had very positive results.
MKS was one of the charter members of the Heritage fund that has pledged 1% of all of our sales to go toward fighting for our firearms rights, I am an NRA life member and support with cash and donations, thru MKS numerous events, friends of NRA, first shots programs, NSSF, US Sportsmanâs alliance..In the 90’s we were one of the first to send donations of cash to the organizations in California fighting for our firearms rights. ect.
I am hoping that our ACTIONS of the past and future will show through and one comment that was supposed to produce a chuckle (unfortunately made us look like Jackasses) won’t forever hurt the way we are viewed. I guess I should have just re-stated that the glued in easy to find Barcode chip can be easily removed and left it at that.
Yesterday I sent a similar not to all of the blog contacts I had to help get the word out
Humbly and respectfully yours
Charles Brown
…wow. This guy just keeps digging himself deeper.