doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com COOPER ARMS

While I/we appreciate the points of view from our friends in other countries, I doubt we(Americans) have much to learn from how these other countries are run. The only emigrants we have moving from the USA to England or Canada seem to be our draft dodgers and Madonna. You're quite welcome to both categories.
No real offense is intended as I excercise my free speech.
Thank you for all the opinions,

GET OUT AND VOTE!

I wonder how many of you feel you should be justifiably be fired if you donated to the candidate supported by your boss or supervisor or whatever? Would you feel it was legit? I suspect not.

Meanwhile, another gunmaker has bitten the dust and the antigunners never lifted a finger. No doubt they are laughing their collective arses off over this.

Brent

PS. Maybe Cooper sees Obama as inevitable and better to get into his camp and work from the inside than stand on the outside, locked out. Who knows? But I'm sure a lot of you are about to resign where your political views fail to dovetail with that of your employer's.

You have to know where Brown is coming from...a socialist state. Everything makes sense after that.

I seem to remember Bill Ruger on a TV show years back. I believe it was 60 Minutes. He was given free air time because he opposed the NRA on the issue. I don't remember if it was the Brady Bill or what but I do know that at the time I had a handful of Ruger products. I have yet to buy another and have since rid myself of all but one.

So long Mr. Cooper. Regardless of your excuse for selling out I'm glad you were exposed and dealt with accordingly.

Skip

Bill Rugers real problem was that he wanted the flow of cheap surplus military firearms into this Country cut off. He maintained, probably with some justification, the these impacted the sale of new firearms from Companies like his.
What was overlooked and shortsighted on his part IMO was that usually after fooling around with one of these clunkers you either had spent way too much money on it or it still didn't funtion as well as a commercially available hunting rifle.
The bottom line is that while these surplus rifles introduced many new shooters to the sport inexpensively it also provided the incentive to purchase much better commercial weapons in the long run.
Jim

That isn't the point at all, Brent. All walks of life live in a straightjacket to some degree. Perfectly legal behavior that would be acceptable for one person can be highly inappropriate for another, and carry severe consequences. That's just a fact of life.

Obama is entirely free to put his cigars wherever he likes. However, if he chooses a place as inappropriate as Bill Clinton did and word gets out, there's going to be hell to pay again.

It's about a lack of judgement that people in certain leadership roles should have. Mr. Cooper is free to say anything he wants, including political speech. However, what he chose to say publically called his judgement as president of Cooper into serious question, and the stockholders had a right to protect their investment. Free speech is a protected right, but the fact that the speech was political in this case is not germane. Free speech is free speech. Folks are free to say pretty much anything they want, but no one is protected from the social and economic fallout of ill advised speech.

When you run a business you have to be carefull of what you say. Rights aside, MR COOPER acted as a FOOL and Cooper Arms will never be the same because of it.

Domino's pizza franchise holders paid the price when the owner offended half the women in the country with his political donations. Likewise K-Mart when their spokeswoman came out of the closet and another rep shot his mouth off about fried chicken at a golf club dinner. It does not take much to drive off a large percentage of your customer base. We don't buy Levi Strauss products, now do we? This isn't a free speach issue, it's a customer relations issue and the customer is always right.

I cannot have any sympathy for Mr Cooper, nor can I feel that his ejection from his executive post was not completely legal or deserved.

Had he donated as Mr Cooper, of whatever street, some town, USA, he may have gotten away with supporting who he pleased, but he decided that as Mr Cooper, President of Cooper Firearms, to support a party that is effectively working towards destroying his own customer base in the first place.

From a personal and business sense, all I can ask is "What the F*** was he thinking?"

After the aforementioned S&W debacle, and the Zumbo affair, to think that one could be the head of a firearms company and NOT have such donations seen and acknowledged, let alone the statements to reporters, and to not expect it to have a negative affect on the companies business, is simply irresponsible.

I think that the damage is done, and as long as Mr Cooper holds shares in the company, they are going to suffer, as there are too many that will not spend any of their money if they believe that any of it may turn around and be spent on furthering interests that are directly opposed to their own.

As an executive decision goes, this rates beyond stupid. To make a public stand, supporting the same people that would see your own industry die without a qualm, is both stupid, and a failure of his responsibility to his shareholders, and to his employees.

Dan Cooper is free to speak his mind, as well as to spend his money as he sees fit. As are all those that were former and no longer potential customers.

Any Charter rights that may apply in Canada, or Constitutional rights that may apply in the US, are only worth the paper they are written on in the event that the government is bearing down, which is clearly not the case here. This is simple economics. Insult the customer base, and the customers go elsewhere.

If I were a shareholder, or an employee, I'd be pissed. A kindergarten kid would have seen the connection between the action and the reaction.

Cheers
Trev (from Canada)

Canada socialist? Canada hasn't spent a trillion dollars to nationalize its banks, insurance and mortgage companies. Canada hasn't taken a nickel from its taxpayers for market bailouts or picked private enterprise winners and losers. Canada, with the G8's strongest economy, is prudently conservative with a Conservative government that watches banks like hawks, regulates them to have money in their vaults. If that's socialist, I should think many Americans would welcome it!