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What do you guys think about this lawsuit?

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  • stdreb27

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    Dec 12, 2011
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    I personally wouldn't call it a news article. But if this isn't the appropriate place just move it.

    I know very little "inside baseball" about the gun industry. And curious about your thoughts



    "Below is a brief essay from David Rooney explaining why he sued the internet forum Snipers Hide. Because David is in a lawsuit, he can’t talk about specifics of the case… but I can. This isn’t a case of repressing 1st Amendment freedom, at least not from David’s side. This is a case about standing up to an internet bully who makes his own rules for his private fifedom and uses it to intentionally hurt a good business that makes honest guns, and one that supports 2nd Amendment freedom with his wallet like few others are willing, leastwise the owner/moderator of an anonymous internet forum. David is a huge supporter of the NRA and when I spoke to him this week about the case had just shipped a new rifle to them to raffle off. The “bloggers” should have done there homework before blasting TacticalRifles.net. Nobody supports the violation of any provisions of the Bill of Rights, especially the 1st. The Truth About this story is that it was David Rooney whose 1st Amendment rights were pilfered for personal gain, so he sued their asses.


    If you haven’t seen the “blogger” stories on the case, the basic story is that an anonymous video was posted on YouTube, embedded here, beating up the workmanship of rifles from TacticalRifles.net. The video was promoted on Snipers Hide, and though David has said that it might be Frank Galli’s voice in the video, as you can see in the comments below, Frank completely denies any involvement whatsoever. The video goes on to explain about some imperfections in the plastic of the stock on the gun, then they demonstrate wobbling that is clearly done at the end of tapered barrel threads, where any barrel will and should be wobbling. Then it goes on to admit that the rifle is 1/2MOA, which would be impossible without top notch workmanship, methods and materials.

    The Truth About the gun is that it is a 4 year old sale, and the customer recently contacted David to pay over $1,000 to replace the barrel. When David said no I won’t replace your worn out barrel, this video was the result. It is clearly a hit piece. The gun is still 1/2MOA of course, and I had David look up the original test of the gun. On the 100yd test target the group size was .172” with Federal Gold Medal. This is back in November of 2008.


    This is the November of 2011 article that David Rooney wrote for American Rifleman. You can click all of these to make them bigger so you can read it.




    The Truth About the lawsuit is that David has an entire binder of proof that The Snipers Hide has been dogging Tacrifles for years. At some point there must have been a disgruntled customer involved. You always have disgruntled customers no matter what you do. But the story went far beyond a disgruntled customer posting hate posts. First the Snipers Hide deleted David’s account, so he wasn’t able to answer any bad comments that were made against his products. Then, whenever anyone posted a positive comment about Tacrifles, they were told not to do that again or they would be banned. Unbeknownst to The Snipers Hide, this stuff has been reported to David over the last couple years, and printed off and saved. The video was the last straw in a very clear case of an internet bully using his popularity to intentionally hurt someone.

    As many of you know, at GunsAmerica we don’t allow a “free flow of ideas” from armchair experts who comment negatively on every story. Most of them have given up here, but they find a home on places where that behavior is encouraged to create controversy, which leads to more comments on stories, which gives the illusion that the site is very active, which brings in more ad dollars. The Truth About those sites is that they are run by parasites to our industry who had little interest in guns or the 2nd Amendment before 2008′s election of Barack Obama, which led to a windfall boom for the gun business and interest in guns.

    David Rooney not only builds great guns that we have personally tested at 1,000 yards, he is an avid long range shooter, and since he got into this industry, has funneled tons of his profits directly to the NRA. Chris Cox personally owns two of his rifles, and David wrote an article for American Rifleman back in 2011, explaining what has happened in England, and that the anti-gunners are much stronger in the USA. We have included the article here. Click on the pictures, then full screen them. From his British perspective, David is almost up in arms that Americans just don’t get it that we are under a constant and organized attack. To quote the article, David says “How many gun owners skim through these pages without truly seeing the significance of the NRA’s efforts? The NRA is the sole protector of the 2nd Amendment, the very backbone of our constitution. The enemies of our rights are far more wealthy and organized than in the U.K. The NRA needs your continued support against these adversaries.”

    Unity among the true supporters of the 2nd Amendment is crucial to the future of our freedom. Those same sites that allow and even participate in the bullying tactics are often also seen bashing the NRA for policies from the 1960s, when the current leaders were little children, and long before the power and money of Brady and Bloomberg were focused on taking away civilian ownership of guns.

    Internet bullies who beat up champions of our freedom and important financial backers to our strongest political lobby are not welcome here in the trenches of 2nd Amendment freedom. They should be made an example of, and David should pursue this to the end. I strongly ask those who have pledged to support The Snipers Hide based on false premises to withdraw their support. GunsAmerica stayed mostly quiet during the Dick Metcalf fiasco (go Google Leo Hindery Jr., Managing Partner of Intermedia), but we aren’t staying silent on this one. We had to sue a internet bully ourselves back in 2009 and sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. Please read David’s response below. My guess is that if The Snipers Hide came clean and apologized, David would probably drop the suit. We will be very happy to publish the deposition transcript of the owner of The Snipers Hide when it is taken, when he has to answer for that binder of printed documents. – Paul Helinski@GA

    As an end note, after David’s essay below you will find several posts from Frank Galli in the comments, as well as from a bunch of his forum members. Frank openly admits that he tracked down positive posts about TR and eliminated them because David had asked his customers to post positive stories, due to the fact that he personally was not allowed to do so. If the noise level of the negative commentators (and even threats to our Facebook page) has proven anything, it is the power that a popular forum moderator has when he or she controls the discussion and specifically targets a business with whom he has a grudge. Frank feels that he is safe because of the case law involving Yelp and other opinion websites. But since we are such a small industry, my question to you all is how would you feel if someone did this to you? We all have irate customers from time to time. How would you feel if one of them happened to be friends with a popular forum moderator, and him and a half a dozen of his armchair snipers decided to do what they have done to David Rooney and TacticalRifles.net?

    TR: Setting the Record Straight!


    by David Rooney
    TacticalRifles.net

    After more than a decade of building high precision custom rifles, we were recently forced to file a Federal Lawsuit against a web forum. For the past two years, this forum owner has embarked on a campaign to smear the good name of Tactical Rifles (TR). We don’t understand the intent behind this unprovoked attack, particularly as cohesion within this industry is vital for the protection of the Second Amendment.

    Frank Galli is building his legal defense on the premise that the forum members are being sued. A few have even called TR to ask about what they have to do.

    There comes a point at which the dirty tricks can longer be tolerated. The following are examples of documented abuse:
    Allowing supporting companies of the forum to maintain multiple screen names so that anytime TR is mentioned, these companies can pose as dissatisfied customers;

    Deleting our account so we could not respond to posts;
    Deleting positive posts from our customers;
    Sending private messages to people who post positive comments, threatening them with expulsion from the forum and lifetime bans;
    Promoting a fabricated video of a 4 year old rifle that was part of a third party’s attempt to extort monies from us.
    Misleading people into believing that the forum has reviewed one of our rifles with unsatisfactory results, when they have never been sent a TR rifle in any capacity.
    Now, in what seems an attempt to further mislead his forum visitors and to extract money from them under false pretenses, the forum is posting that we are suing them to suppress their First Amendment Rights. This is a distortion. The intent of the lawsuit is to bring a halt to the malicious skewing of the truth, thus protecting First Amendments Rights....

    TacticalRifles.net Sues The Snipers Hide ? The Truth About Internet Bullies
    Target Sports
     

    Younggun

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    I got about half way before I just started scrolling and scanning for key words.


    I have no opinion on this.
     

    shortround

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    Anyone who believes in bullies has never punched one in the nose.

    I grow weary of every other 'Bully" story I see or hear.

    He is only a bully if you let him be.
     

    Texasjack

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    I don't know of any business that was destroyed by one bad customer.

    Every store discussed on here has had mixed reviews and there's at least one gun store in Houston that has had 99% negative reviews on here and they make more money than all the other stores in town combined.

    When lawyers get involved, I tend to think there are angles we're not privileged to know about.
     

    stdreb27

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    Guns aside I think it's really interesting for a manufacturer to sue a forum.

    Demanding equal time. Plays into how forum space is effected by ownership/property rights/free speech.
    As for the actual case, everything being alleged is pretty easy to verify or not. And the sniper hide guys point that out in the comments.
     

    Mike1234567

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    Anyone who believes in bullies has never punched one in the nose.

    I grow weary of every other 'Bully" story I see or hear.

    He is only a bully if you let him be.

    I have Parkinson's and am very weak now... can barely lift my left arm at all. Please keep your childish self-righteous "defend yourself, you pussy" attitude to yourself.

    EDIT #1: I was never a f-ing coward and still am not. But reality is what it is. At least I still have my 9mm and 12ga.

    EDIT #2: I just realized this has to do with "internet" bullies. Well... my mind is largely gone too so my statement stands. Often, we cannot defend ourselves with our weakened wits either.
     
    Last edited:

    benenglish

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    Here's one of those bad reviews, judge for yourself if you'd pay $8,600 for a gun put together like this:
    TacticalRifles.net
    That was awful. My favorite bolt action is a standard catalog item from a smaller maker. It's not a true custom by any means yet it displays *much* better workmanship than that for less than a quarter the cost.

    In general terms, when you spend $8K on a rifle, how much goes for better parts and workmanship? How much goes for hype, a "name" shop, and pure hubris on the part of the builder? More and more, I get the feeling that an imbalance in those attributes is present in a greater percentage of mega-priced customs than most people realize.
     

    ECS

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    I think I might have gotten lost in the story.

    What I did get out of it is that this David person did at one time have an account on that forum.

    If you ever, at any time, had an account on a forum, I believe you are fair game. Maybe especially if you are either directly or indirectly engaged in commerce on that forum.

    He was once on someone else's forum. If the admin chose to delete his account? Boo-hoo. He now can't respond to criticism? Boo-hoo.

    Maybe he ought to start his own forum.

    This sort of thing is why I would tell you that internet forums are actually mostly nonsense. There is real life -- and then there are internet forums.

    .
     
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