Polymer80 may survive the court battle but not their own reputation....

Racer88

Racer88

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I'm seeing a LOT of this out there:

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/polymer80/comments/19105db/order_placed_in_march/

A posted comment...
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It is my opinion that if they were simply honest / transparent AND COMMUNICATIVE, this building community would be very understanding, supportive, and patient. But taking orders, collecting payment, failing to deliver, and then going radio silent for MONTHS... is not going to cultivate loyalty or future business.

I am writing this, NOT to vacuously or pointlessly criticize Polymer80... but rather in hopes that they right the course of their PR ship so that they may THRIVE in the future. I think we all want to see Polymer80 survive and then thrive. I think it's IMPORTANT to the 2nd Amendment that they continue to stay in business! But they need to do something pronto, or their potential customers will be gone after P80 survives the court battle (and I think they / we will win).
 
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Without a political 180 I think the days of mail order gun kits any 12 year old with a Dremel can do in under an hour may rightfully be over. These things have become a plague in schools and on the streets.
They're literally participation trophy "builds". Personally Manufactured Firearms were never an issue when it required tools and actual skill to make a firearm. Once the router AR's and Dremel Glocks hit the market it was a matter of time before they would become a public menace. At least my shop teacher when he realized that I was making Mac 10's marched me over to the band saw and made me cut them up. If these Poly80's had been available I probably would have been making them in Jr High School with nobody noticing.
 
Hvymax said:
Without a political 180 I think the days of mail order gun kits any 12 year old with a Dremel can do in under an hour may rightfully be over.
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You're not helping, and that's bullshit. Sorry, but yeah... Absolutely and provably FALSE.

Grown-ass adults (who aren't career machinists, eh?) have trouble building working examples with UNLIMITED time.

Hvymax said:
These things have become a plague in schools and on the streets.
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Also bullshit. Prove it. Please show the ACTUAL data (not liberal talking points) that demonstrate PMFs, SPECIFICALLY, are proliferating as a criminal "plague." This is also absolutely false and not supported by actual data. Same goes for assault prevention weapons. You're making THEIR argument.
 
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Hvymax said:
Without a political 180 I think the days of mail order gun kits any 12 year old with a Dremel can do in under an hour may rightfully be over. These things have become a plague in schools and on the streets.
They're literally participation trophy "builds". Personally Manufactured Firearms were never an issue when it required tools and actual skill to make a firearm. Once the router AR's and Dremel Glocks hit the market it was a matter of time before they would become a public menace. At least my shop teacher when he realized that I was making Mac 10's marched me over to the band saw and made me cut them up. If these Poly80's had been available I probably would have been making them in Jr High School with nobody noticing.
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WTF? Please cite actual facts that show "these things have become a plague in schools and on the streets." I call bullshit on this. You sound like you've been drinking the Moms Demand Some Action Koolaid. Hardcore lefty thinking at worst or serious Fudd at best.
 
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Hardly a day goes by where a few of these don't turn up in schools and drug stops locally. I could have seen myself being a 14yr old Lord of War if these things were available!!! At 15 I had made a pair of 0% Mac10's in shop class. I was fitting and assembling when the teacher realized what I was doing!!! After a year of essentially being banned they are starting to slow down to a few times a week. I'm an absolute believer in that if you're legal to own it you're legal to make it for personal use. But how do you keep them away from kids and criminals? We wouldn't need laws if people could act like they had any sense.
 
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Hvymax said:
Hardly a day goes by where a few of these don't turn up in schools and drug stops locally. I could have seen myself being a 14yr old Lord of War if these things were available!!! At 15 I had made a pair of 0% Mac10's in shop class. I was fitting and assembling when the teacher realized what I was doing!!!
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Again, please post any kind of substantiation for your assertions. I think you're just regurgitating CNN talking points.
 
Multiple anecdotes do not make DATA.
(A basic tenet of actual science.)

Show me the DATA on PMFs used in crimes. And then show it in the context of overall gun crime.

And there is a reason I'm asking for DATA (which is the ONLY thing that matters) on PMFs used in crimes. I'm asking because I already know the answer. The answer is that there is no such data on PMFs. Why? Because the anti-gunners don't have it, AND they don't WANT it. They don't want it, because the numbers would PALE in comparison to factory guns. Even lower than the number of assault prevention weapons used in crime.

That's why they have conflated PMFs with defaced / de-serialized guns and COMBINING their numbers and painting them with the broad pejorative brush as "đź‘»guns."

And they've even gotten some self-professed "gun experts" and "Constitutional advocates" making their argument for them. To wit....
This Up Here GIF by Chord Overstreet
 
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I probably would have wound up in jail if these had been available 45 years or so ago. I used to build all kinds of models in the basement so making these without notice would have been silly easy when I was 13-14. I'm as offended as anyone at having to spend hundreds of dollars getting decades of my builds serialized and disposing of any not quite worth the investment. I'm all about dangerous liberty but you can only lower the bar so much before stupid things start happening. Like I said these are 12yr old skill level.
I'm glad they weren't available when my son was in school for the same reason. I could have paid for a car, motorcycle hobbies and a few bad habits if they were. At least until I got arrested for being a stupid kid with tools and skills.
 
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It was really hard trying to argue against the stupid ban in my state just because when I was asked how long it takes I had to admit to doing it in 5 minutes and an hour for an AR. Like I said I firmly believe that if you are legal to own it you're legal to make it for your personal use. How do we protect our rights and protect our kids and prevent criminals from getting them? I've been part of the Builder Community for over 40 years starting when I was 13.
 
Many of these same kids you are trying to protect from having a PMF are also guilty of having stolen guns or taking serialized guns from the parents. The problem is irresponsible people, not the item they choose to wield. Further, how are these folks getting ammo for said firearms? I'll propose stolen or ill gotten as well. A 13 year old isn't going into a gun shop and buying handgun ammo (or likely any ammo).

Any attempts to "prevent" lead to loss of freedom. It doesn't matter what is trying to be prevented. We should be focused on holding the wrong doers accountable. The only prevention we ought to want to focus on is their lack of moral compass that makes them want to do harm - not sure how we do that without infringing on rights either.
 
"To ban guns because criminals use them is to tell the law abiding that their rights and liberties depend not on their own conduct, but on the conduct of the guilty and the lawless."
- Lysander Spooner (January 19, 1808 – May 14, 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, abolitionist, entrepreneur, lawyer, essayist, legal theorist, pamphletist, political philosopher, Unitarian and writer.
 
There are many people who can knock out a properly functioning PMF in very little time (such as five minutes for a P80 or less than hour for an AR). However those timelines are not even close to the mean or average for the entire populace. Just because I personally may be able to remove, rebuild, and reinstall a fully functional four barrel Holley carburetor in less than two hours does not mean that everyone else can do it in the same time. It is unrealistic and unfair to extrapolate the skills, knowledge, and experience of the few and apply them to all.

As to skills and education- there are a dying a slow death in secondary education systems across the USA. There are fewer and fewer vocational and shop classes available to our children every year. Specifically regarding PMFs- one need only reference various social media outlets to witness numerous people having issues with their builds not functioning. Ironically, those same people could leverage many of the same sites to answer questions and assist themselves yet they choose not to.
 
Back on topic, and IMO: P80 is in a conundrum that they helped create.

At first, the biggest issues seemed to be their rails- originally polymer or malformed metal. While expanding their product lineup the onslaught of lawsuits started. The ease of and lack of credible standing to start an expensive, frivolous lawsuit in the USA is a topic for another day.

How P80 expanded/scaled their workforce and production capabilities, specifically in regards to Customer Service and parts availability, is an unknown to me and many of us. What is known now is that their actual product availability, their website (and advertised product availability), and product distribution are not in synch as they used to be. Their recent actions (method of payment processing months before shipping) and inactions (radio silent to many inquiries) is only hurting them in a business sense both short term and long. The lack of transparency and communication are the biggest issues I see many having.

The flip side of the same coin is the multitude of flippant restrictions and litigation placed upon them. Whether or not customers from specific cities, states, or locations can purchase your product is a great strain on a business. They must allocate resources towards updating every single zip code they may or may not conduct business. Unfortunately they cannot slap an “off-road use only” warning on their product and send them everywhere as other businesses can and do.

Combined with the distribution of deliberate and targeted misinformation about their products- P80 has a very arduous and uphill road to travel if they want their business to continue to exist. They’re bleeding money they shouldn’t need to battling unconstitutional lawsuits and viewpoints. They’re losing customers through poor relations and service, and if they don’t quickly improve their PR- i bet they’ll be filing bankruptcy within the next 12-18 months.
 
@Hvymax

Probably against forum rules for decorum, but when you post "news" from NBC, WAPO, and other lamestream media sources, you just prove to the rest of us forum members you are a horse's ass. Good lord, with all the evidence of lamestream media propaganda about everything from guns to climate change to the border crisis you are just loudly broadcasting your ignorance from the highest mountain top. You're not worth responding too. I wasted 2 minutes typing this. :rolleyes:
 
JCinPA said:
You ask the right questions. There are no reports of PMFs used in crimes.
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To be fair, there have been some, of course. But reports (aka "multiple anecdotes") are not science nor should multiple anecdotes be used as a basis for making law, policy, or even position statements.

Also see: The Fallacy of Misleading Vividness.

Show me the data. Actual numbers. Numbers (of PMFs, specifically... not the intentionally nebulous "đź‘»guns") as a percentage of all crimes committed using all types of guns. They can't, and they won't... and for good reason. The data won't support their narrative and agenda.

In the end, I ask only because I know they're full of shit. I know they're lying. So I'm just calling them on their lies, rather than validating their argument by even considering their IMAGINARY "data."

Furthermore, it doesn't matter which guns criminals use or don't use. It should have no bearing on the RIGHTS of FREE law-abiding citizens. Even if it WAS true... which it isn't.
 
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Dear Polymer80,
You suck at the retail side of your business. Shut down the ordering side of your website and link customers to retailers that have a clue how to actually ship something to a customer. Problem solved.

Didn't some cat in Germany say that if you repeat a lie often enough and loud enough, it becomes the truth? I saw 10 or 12 posts above, in different formats, tell of the awful onslaught of PMF's. Based on the pictures, authors, and cities, it was the same 3 instances. Repeated in different formats, on different outlets, on different days but all the same instances.

As a teenager, I too could have built a gun I always wanted. Or, I could have opened the glass case where my Dad kept his guns and taken one. Much easier. I didn't because I was brought up to respect firearms and my Dad would have kicked my ass if I did. I was able to buy .22LR as a kid at the local hardware store. With a note from my parents and the owner knew me. The owner did let me buy a hunting knife for my 15th birthday. No note from Mom. Score.
 

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