At least a couple of the bloggers I read have linked and commented on the hoopla regarding Chiappa Firearms deciding to add RFID chips to their inventory methodology. Or rather, the press release apparently put out on the subject by MKS (Chiappa’s US distributor).
Now, first off, I’ll be surprised if this is the first firearm manufacturer who’s decided to put RFIDs on their guns, and I’m betting that after this whole mess that Kahr got themselves into a bunch more may just decide that RFIDs are the way to go. As long as I can remove the chip at my leisure without voiding the warranty I really don’t care if thats the chosen method for inventory control. And from reading the comments it looks like I’m not the only one who thinks so.
The problem comes in with the wording of the alleged press release:
Others may prefer to wrap the revolver and their head in aluminum foil, curl in a ball and watch reruns of Mel Gibson’s 1997 film, Conspiracy Theory. Well, that’s a plan too!
Sounds pretty bad huh? and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that someone with more money than brains put their foot in their mouth that badly and killed their business. But there’s a reason why I say “alleged” press release.
First off, what halfway skilled PR person is going to let a press release with those words out into the public? But ok, so the PR person needs to eat too and would rather keep his or her job than censor a VIP in the company….right? But there are other problems with this press release. Almost all the bloggers and forums having snits over this are doing one of two things: a huge number aren’t linking to ANYTHING, simply quoting the press release from somewhere, the large percentage of the rest are linking to each other in a circular pattern. So I hit Google. I wanted to see the original press release. But there’s a problem. At least 3 different places are saying that THEY received the press release:
http://trochronicles.blogspot.com/2011/07/chiappa-firearm-tracking-chip-rfid.html
http://www.ammoland.com/2011/07/28/rfid-chip-in-chiappa-firearms/
http://www.gunreports.com/news/news/Chiappa-to-put-Radio-Frequency-ID-Chips-in-Firearms_3209-1.html?CMP=OTC-RSS
now I can believe that the press release was sent out to several places in an attempt to get it out publicly, but there are some subtle differences between them. And that combined with the rest of this is making me wonder a bit.
The one from AmmoLand appears to be the earliest of the 3 to post the PR (though one doesn’t give the time actually posted so I can’t be sure), and in that particular version there are several italicized and () comments, which is usually a mark of a comment from the publishing author rather than part of the actual press release, and those italicized comments INCLUDE the damning lines that are the actual problem. There are also some factual errors in the statement as well.
Now, its entirely possible that this is an actual press release from MKS and they really don’t care that this is going to annoy their customers, and the factual errors are the result of that same “don’t care” attitude, BUT its enough to make me wonder a bit.
Now I know absolutely nothing about any of the above companies so, either way it should be interesting to watch and see what happens!