Have knife retailers and distributors started dropping Benchmade knives?

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Jalaro said:
I spend about 95% of my time on gun forums and maybe 5% here. If this Benchmade fiasco is anything like the Springfield mess they stepped in, it will not go well for them. As far as the gun forums are concerned, the overwhelming consensus there is that Springfield can pound sand and it will not get any better any time soon. 2a people have very long memories. I Was a Benchmade fanboy but I've bought my last one.
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Not to worry, this likely wont be affecting benchmade at all. People still buy tons of cold steel and strider and microtechs and bark rivers, and those companies have had much worse issues than helping the local police force.
 
I read through what happened and don't think it was a bad thing that they did.
No good deed goes unpunished :oops:/ that's what you get for helping the cops maan o_O :p
Guns aren't a religion for me, but if I was a large knife manufacturer I wouldn't have done anything like that
with the knowledge that a potentially large portion of my customer base would be mad as hell.

I don't think they did anything wrong, just made a bad business move. The cops oughta destroy 'em themselves.
I'd rather pack a dip and run a cutting torch/ power tools than patrol the damn highway for an afternoon anyway, but I'm not law enforcement.

I've never really liked Benchmade because I prefer Spyderco and CRK, but they make a good knife :) They'll be fine :thumbsup:
 
For whatever it’s worth, I won’t be buying Benchmade. There are plenty of options from manufacturers that support 2A, or at the very least are politically neutral on the matter.

If BM wants to reverse this, a sizable donation to GOA may work, but I doubt it happening.
 
As far as I can tell, they
1- helped out the local police force (always good to have a good relationship with those guys)
2 - helped gun makers (they can make more to replace the ones that couldn't be legally sold - increased revenue!)
3 - gave money to the OR politicians who have given us here in the land of the weird some of the most favorable knife laws around.

What are they supposed to repent for again?
 
not2sharp said:
This was the latest debacle/an interview with Benchmade's Marketing Director:

http://guntalk.libsyn.com/benchmade...trict-gun-control-bill-gun-talk-radio-22419-a

It provides a good summary of what has been going on.

n2s
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Thanks for the link. At least based on the discussion therein, I would say this thread is definitely political and I'm surprised it's gone on this long without suffering the fate of the other threads on this subject.

To quote some old cliches and to keep things in perspective, always remember that 1) politics make for strange bedfellows, and 2) two things you don't want to see being made are sausages and legislation.

Things aren't always as black and white or as simple as we would like them to be, especially when it comes to politics. Benchmade is just looking out to protect their interest, which is knife manufacturing, and I wouldn't expect them to do otherwise. The collateral damage, if you will, is unfortunate, and hopefully they take the right steps to revisit their approach to this issue.
 
Shotgun said:
If a “bad business move” means having to worry about the reaction from a bunch of irrational wingnuts then no business anywhere can do anything.
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There's a definite balance between doing your own thing and public relations. Lots of businesses purposefully stay smaller so that they don't have to worry about stuff like that.
Cutting up a bunch of guns that are going to be thrown out anyway shouldn't be a big deal, but to many people the symbolism of it doesn't look good.
I don't have a business degree, I don't run a knife company, so I don't really know, but what they did seems like a bad idea to me.
BUT if my equipment was originally intended for knife making I'd keep it that way.

If I ran a vegan health food store, I wouldn't lend the local butcher my veggie cutters to cut meat.
Nothing wrong with eating meat, but my customer base would be pissed.

I'm a hypocrite I guess. I'm saying that they shouldn't have gotten involved at all and minded their own business.
With that said, here I am sloggin it out with y'all wing nuts about some crap I don't really care about.
As well designed and functional as it is, I hate the axis lock anyway :p
 
On one hand, Nike had record revenues and at least one independent store that refused to carry Nike gear went under. On the other, the Chick-Fil-A boycott resulted in a record sales week for the chain. Your mileage may vary.
 
melmac said:
What's interesting about this is that even though there's been more and more controversy over guns and access to guns, knife laws around the country have been continuing to become more lenient thanks to work from places like Knife Rights.

Oddly enough, most of the time, the right and the left want to repeal knife laws. In places like New York, knife laws disproportionally affect minorities and the working class so the left sees it as a civil rights issue.
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The bipartisan support for overturning the auto ban in Texas in 2013 was largely led by rural Republicans and urban minority Democrats. One saw it as a constitutional liberty issue, the other saw it as a law that was being disproportionally used against poor people of color, common goal in the end.
 
Shotgun said:
If a “bad business move” means having to worry about the reaction from a bunch of irrational wingnuts then no business anywhere can do anything.
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Untrue. A business needs to know it's market. Benchmade, like Dicks, and Gander will go on fine without my future knife purchases.
I probably should be on your "Ignore" list as I am disgusted with their excuses.
 
xraso said:
As far as I can tell, they
1- helped out the local police force (always good to have a good relationship with those guys)
2 - helped gun makers (they can make more to replace the ones that couldn't be legally sold - increased revenue!)
3 - gave money to the OR politicians who have given us here in the land of the weird some of the most favorable knife laws around.

What are they supposed to repent for again?
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1. They helped an anti 2A local chief push his anti gun message.

2. They gave tens of thousands of dollars to only gun grabbing politicians in 4 states, over the last 9 years, and lied about it, because their customers would be livid.

3. It wasn't just the local gun grabbers.

For some, integrity is worth more than an $200 knife.
At worst they were giving money to gun grabbers who seek to remove the rights of honest, law abiding citizens, and repeatedly lied about the situation.

At best they were engaging in pay-to-play (bribery) with the elected Dems...and repeatedly lied about it.
Pick your poison.
Getting stabbed in the back with a Benchmade doesn't make it any less painful.
 
Yep it's a "political disaster", and you should buy up all BM knives you can before the dealers cut the brand loose. Demand will surely tank.
 
r8shell said:
I've been boycotting delicious chicken sandwiches for years now, and it hasn't made a bit of difference. :(
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You mean your own, personal boycott against Pilgrim’s Pride for using their bandsaws to cut up decommissioned hams for Smithfield has done nothing?

No dents were made in the mighty amount of chicken sandwich sales?

Are the ham eaters angry? I wonder if any of the ham eaters also eat chicken. I wonder if the chicken eaters who also love ham will ever get over the destruction of all those delicious hams. :confused:
 
https://www.recoilweb.com/benchmade-anti-gun-we-ask-them-to-explain-147462.html

Interesting interview with Benchmade's director of marketing, Matt Elliott, by Recoil Magazine. Part that stuck out to me was the bit I posted below. Damage control.



R: What will be the answer to the Oregon City Police Department if they ask Benchmade to assist in cutting firearms into smaller pieces that fit inside of an incineration box?

ME: Benchmade now has a policy to politely decline to assist Law Enforcement in the cutting up of firearms regardless of reason. If the local law enforcement request assistance with other matters, we will be happy to accommodate them as long as doesn’t involve cutting firearms.

R: Was it known that the police department was taking photos of the firearms being cut up by a Benchmade employee?

ME: The police department was given permission to take the photos even though the Benchmade policy is that there is no photographs allowed in the facility. We have launched an investigation internally to ensure that this type of incident never happens again.
 
jdm61 said:
On one hand, Nike had record revenues and at least one independent store that refused to carry Nike gear went under. On the other, the Chick-Fil-A boycott resulted in a record sales week for the chain. Your mileage may vary.
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Boycotts only have teeth on the internet. Honestly I can't think of a single successful one. People love outrage, but love their stuff way more.
 
skyhorse said:
Your right and I think what some here may not understand is
1.) In the big picture this has nothing to to with gun guys or knife guys.If there's guys in the knife community that could care less about guns even though it's a right under the constution and the right to carry or own a knife isn't. Thats ok. They "should" be concerned about the loss of Liberty because once it's lost , very hard if not impossible to get back;


2.) They should also keep in mind millions of their fellow Americans nowadays could care less about either guns or knives.
3.)Sure as the sun shall rise tomorrow when the gun guys loose there rights the knife guys will be next and no one will really care about that either
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This was the point I tried to make earlier exactly! Why anyone that likes their guns or knives does not support the other is beyond me! I support both as adamantly as I can.
I’ve said it already, once the guns are gone they’ll come after your knives even if you don’t believe it!

dirc said:
No politics, I am good with that. In fact, I am Canadian and neither dem nor gop. I have a question:

- but last I checked there were many dems on the nra A list... guys like Sanford Bishop in Georgia, etc etc and other dems who get nra funding.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/nra-political-money-clout/index.html

Is this really no longer the case? Have 100% of dems lost nra standing??

If not, then simply looking at which party someone makes donations to has nothing to do with 2A support right?
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It’s not exactly that they were donating to dems, it’s the dems they were donating to that was the issue. Extreme anti gun dems and the policy they’re trying to push through is very bad for knife laws. Read up on it, listen to the interviews with Benchmade PR employee!

I won’t buy another Benchmade and yes I DID get rid of all my Benchmade this week! There are plenty of great knife companies that support the actual customers and their rights.
 
Of the people who carry a $100-150 knife, 99% don't have any time or interest to be engaged politically about their next knife-buying decision.

Of the 1% who do, 10% care about this issue at all, and of those, 10% will stop buying Benchmade completely, and of those, 10% will even stop buying from any dealer that carries Benchmade at all.

So Benchmade will lose 1 out of 10,000 customers, and Benchmade dealers will lose 1 out of 100,000 customers.

Let's say those customers they lose are the "knife guys" who spend on average 100x more knives than normal people. That's a 1% sales hit for Benchmade, and a 0.1% hit for dealers.

:rolleyes:
 
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