Friday, August 29, 2014

Down the memory hole at Jupiter Entertainment. The self-inflicted wounds of Sons of Guns.

So in the Libyan fable it is told
That once an eagle, stricken with a dart,
Said, when he saw the fashion of the shaft,
"With our own feathers, not by others' hands,
Are we now smitten." -- Aeschylus.
Jupiter Entertainment, the production company for Sons of Guns, has scrubbed any mention of it from their website. Discovery Channel, as previously noted, cancelled the show.
Will Hayden is entitled to a presumption of innocence of the charges. But the fact of the matter is that Will, the show and Red Jacket management were already hip deep in big problems, legal and otherwise, deriving from a multi-sided contest of over-inflated "look-at-me-I'm-on-TV" egos, piss-poor business practices and shady dealings, in which Jupiter Entertainment toward the end was at least in part complicit. As the Devil is certainly abroad in the land, seeking whom he may devour, I rather suspect that ATF is not done with the principals, current and former, of Red Jacket and the sad thing is that those same folks charitably supplied all the rope to that agency necessary to hang themselves. For those who see in the latest charges against Will the unseen hand of some ATF conspiracy, rest assured that they did not need it and there is, to my knowledge, no evidence of it. It is, however, a combination of Greek tragedy and Shakespearean farce that it will end this way but Aeschylus certainly applies here. Or, in the modern American version by Frank Zappa:
Do you love it?
Do you hate it?
There it is,
The way you made it.

7 comments:

T. Paine said...

Will Hayden would not be a man to frame and railroad.
However, if he's guilty.....

Anonymous said...

Mike, some folks would say your blog, and your traveling speeches are "over the top look at me ego" trips. That's a bunch of judgemental garbage whether aimed at you or those at red jacket. It's subjective emotional spew.

They blow stuff up, big deal. So does myth busters. Notice that show was just hastily dismantled also. Imagine that.
Shady business practices? Really? Ffl after ffl has been accosted over Ts not crossed and Is not dotted -to the point that many just bowed and gave up their permission slips.

How dare those folks pursue their own happiness? How dare they do something others aren't doing. How dare they ummm exercise their rights in spite of the fact that others get their panties up in a bunch about it?

Where you stand up to the man in your way, often criticized in some quarters heavily, I oft viewed those folks doing exactly the same thing in their own way.

And a guy who encourages smuggling talking about shady business practices leaves something to be desired...

Whether people are arrogant or not is meaningless drivel. AND absolutely NOBODY gives the alphabets rope because there shouldn't even BE an ATF to give rope to in the first place.

Like the Rick Perry scenario, what ALL gun folks should be pointing at is the bogus reality that both examples demonstrate punishment to the tune of stripping away inalienable enumerated rights based on accusation alone.

Dutchman6 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dutchman6 said...

(Odd, but the system deleted my own comment. -??- In any case, here it is as I wrote it.)


Anon,

You seek to defend the indefensible from a position of what I will presume to be inadequate information. People who victimize other people, whether business associates, employees, friends or family, generally get what they deserve. I stand by everything I wrote about the situation which is based on my own inside industry sources. There are few secrets in the firearm business. It is easy to find ex-employees of Red Jacket's who were screwed, blued and tattooed by their employers. It is equally easy to find other folks who did business with RJ who long ago swore they would never do business with them again. This has nothing to do with whether or not the ATF has a constitutional right to do what they do -- they don't. It has everything to do with right and common decency. The mystery is not that Will came to grief. The mystery is that it took so long. One other item. It is certain that ATF had more than one informant inside the Red Jacket operation. If they held off doing anything serious over the past two years, it is because they were waiting for more folks to be caught in the web. If RJ now goes under, finally, of its own weight, at least the number of victims will be limited to those already ensnared.

Anonymous said...

I'll go along with people getting what they deserve but I ain't down with being punished wrongly for something you didn't do to make up for something else. You know, the OJ got away with it so hammer him now aspect.

Literally every business has happy customers and unhappy customers. The karma there comes in when nobody is left to do business with because folks think it's better to do business elsewhere. It's certainly not done by crushing them because someone who doesn't like to get the raw end of the deal is pissed off and can exact their revenge. Businesses go under as a result of poor treatment of customers all the time.

We uninformed folks can only go by what we know. If there is so much info hidden, what can be expected? Maybe it's time to share information for a more educated public. That where the real common decency exists - telling the truth. Shining the light of truth.

All to often that insider information runs the show. Whether governments do it or "industry" does it matters not. It's the same corruption either way. And leads to the same end......pot meet kettle.

And as for the comment deleted on yourself... Karma comes to pass in interesting ways. Doesn't it.

Anonymous said...

Anon,

In case no one told you, apples do not equal oranges. Trying to feebly grope for an equivalence when none exists is a bit silly. I would recommend that you put way your smug self-righteousness and re-read the text. Or go do, as Mike suggests, your own digging on the maleficence that was Red Jacket Arms.

If you do stupid shit, stupid shit happens to you. The ATF needed no help in contrived evidence to crack that particular nut. And when it comes to the ATF, having the moral legs to stand on would be present were it not for all of the stupid shit. Get it now? Sorry (not really) you do not like the news about Sons of Guns, but there is it.

I suppose next you're going to tell me Michael Brown was just a pedestrian.

Anonymous said...

Would you let Will babysit your preteen daughters for a weekend?