I did indeed. Right after I told him I'd never shop in his shitty store again. Kind of an "I quit before I was fired situation".
I have no respect for someone who has such little regard for his customers. Bend over for Maura but send out a blast to get your customers to come in and buy up your last stock (the legality of which was questionable at the time). All he cared about was not getting stuck with a few guns he couldn't sell, but gave 0 shits if the people that bought them got jammed up. F him. Seriously.
The reality is nobody was going to get jammed up nor will anyone really get jammed up.
I do kinda hold it against him though for rolling over in an alarmist fashion though- EG, instead of saying "we received this notice and are having our attorneys investigate the legality of this notice, until that has been determined conclusively, sales will continue as normal" instead of that- FS pretty much rolled over in 10 nanoseconds. I was in cali at the time and I got flooded with phone calls from friends the moment after they rolled. I think this induced a panic of fear among other dealers- EG, "if FS is shitting their pants about it, then we should too" which sucked. I think it made everything worse.
My gut feeling is if the dealers all told the AG to **** off we wouldn't be talking about this AWB stuff at this point. Similar to when EOPS issued that stupid edict about how rifles could not be made compliant etc (that everyone ignored because everyone knew and more or less unilaterally agreed that it was bullshit because it didn't align with the law as written. But somehow everyone shits their pants because its from the AG and not EOPS. ) Then again it's easy for me to say that- I'm not the guy with the big FFL making a livelihood from selling guns in this shithole...... so there's that I guess.
None of this really matters because most of the FFLs I use in MA these days are so small that you would miss them when you drive by; some of them don't even have inventory. Most of the bigger locals to me at this point are like empty beercans of Schlitz or something. IMHO "full true retail" gun sales in MA is pretty much turned into a sort of wasteland of garbage at this point. I don't even browse the shops with stock anymore because like maybe a handful of them even have something that I would actually want to buy "off the shelf. " I used to probably spend like a few hours a month in gun shops across the state. Not anymore. Now I use remotes and inbound nearly everything; it's literally a waste of time for me to shop otherwise. About the only reason for me to go to an LGS is if they do consignments and browse at consigned guns that may or may not be at a reasonable price. (over the years I've gotten some gems that way. ) Otherwise the rest of the stuff they have? Meh, hard pass.
-Mike
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