Stray Shots

Apr 17, 2015
Trying to get it back together after the NRA Show is tough. There are stacks of business cards, hundreds of random images and notes of all sorts on the computer-all begging to get out. Today, I'm going to toss out a couple of images and some "stray shots" from NRA. The biggest impression of this year's NRA Show might be my feeling really up-tempo by the mood of the more than 78,000 (second largest crowd ever for an Annual Meeting) people who periodically jammed the aisles, crowded the concert areas and generally occupied every available parking space in downtown Nashville. I've been to plenty of shows over the years and I've never felt such a friendly, jovial vibe. Don't get me wrong, Nashville's one of the most vibrant, up-tempo places in the country today, but it wasn't just the Music City Center's great look, the bluebird skies and mild temperatures that got everyone fired up. Looking at some of the random candid shots I took of attendees, I think it's because this year's show looked -maybe more than ever before- like a cross-section of "average Americans". All ages, nationalities and backgrounds came together to enjoy a common interest -and that makes for very positive vibes. Here are some examples: One industry-related business comment before I shoot out for the weekend. This one uses Magpul as a primer on how to own up to a problem if you're a business owner. Magpul Issues Mea Culpa on New PMAG How do you handle telling customers that a production mold error has caused some "random issues of failure to feed" in your initial release of a new magazine? If you're Magpul Industries and it's your Glock PMAG 17 GL9s, you own it. Here's how they handled the issue on their Facebook page: "OK we screwed up. After initial release of the Glock PMAG 17 GL9 a few days ago we started seeing random issues of failure to feed with the new magazine in other Glock models, primarily the Glock 19 and 26. Of all the challenges of building a Glock magazine with a single new composite, issues like drop free, impact strength and feed lip retention were foremost on our mind. The failure to feed came as a bit of a surprise to us and we immediately headed out to the range to investigate. In short order we found the problem. Without getting into technical details, some small, but critical geometry changes did not make it into the initial production molds. We should have caught this but no failures showed up on our factory guns during live fire testing and flaws in our internal processes of checks/balances did not flag the oversight as it should. So as I said before, we screwed up and here is what we are going to do about it. Molds are being updated with the correct geometry as we speak and a replacement magazine body with the correct geometry should be available by May 4th, 2015. These will be date coded 5/15 or later and will replace any magazine bodies in service of earlier manufacture. Just use your existing spring, follower, and floor plate with the new body. -If you purchased your magazines direct from Magpul, Brownells or Midway, you do not need to do anything, replacement magazine bodies for the magazines ordered (1 for 1) will be shipped to you automatically. -If you purchased your magazines from a gun store, replacement bodies will be sent out to the store in question for you to pick up. -If neither of the above works for you then Magpul customer service will handle the replacement directly. In short, we are updating ALL of the affected magazines released as quick as we possibly can. Richard Fitzpatrick President/CEO -Magpul Industries Corp That's the way grownups handle problems- they own them. A lesson for us all. I'm a little more scattered than normal this week and it's not just because of all the new projects we have going. It's because my daughter -and able associate editor- is about to do two things that have me scrambling: 1) have a baby (our first grandchild), 2) take a maternity leave that will take away help I've come to rely on. As we're rolling through the blessed event and getting re-organized, this is a good time for me to give a really quick primer on how to make certain your news gets into the wires. If you're a Corporate Member submitting releases, please make certain to send your releases to these email addresses: editor@theoutdoorwire.com and releases@shootingwire.com. If you send them to my personal email, there's really no guarantee -anytime- that I'm going to be sitting there looking for it. And you should always use your Corporate Membership number in the subject line (CM#1234-Outdoor and Shooting Wire- ABC Company Announces…). And please - everyone- no PDFs. They're pretty in print, but don't work in our system. Send word or text files and attach (don't embed) your image and logo. Not trying to make more work for you, but I am using Richard Fitzpatrick's good example and let you know that if you don't follow the procedure, the "mea" is "you-a, not me." Nothing like a bad joke to start what I hope is a great weekend. If you have the chance, go shooting and take someone new to the sport along. You'll both enjoy it. --Jim Shepherd