Posted on 05/16/2009 4:24:22 AM PDT by rellimpank
At 11 a.m. Monday, Front Sight Firearms Training Institute and its president, Ignatius Piazza, went into receivership.
All financial transactions involving the firearms training facility -- from accepting payment for classes to paying staff and vendors -- must take place through a court-appointed administrator.
The facility and all assets have been seized by the court, down to the hundreds of firearms included as part of new members' benefits.
However, despite the ruling, this weekend at Front Sight everything was "business as usual," according to Operations Manager Rick Morello.
He said he knew nothing about the legal proceedings. "We have a big weekend coming up with a full schedule of classes," Morello said. "Business is booming."
The ruling, handed down by U.S. District Judge James Ware in San Jose, Calif., had its beginning in November 2005 when Stacy James, Bill Haag and Michael Schriber filed a class action suit against Piazza on behalf of themselves and other qualified Front Sight members.
(Excerpt) Read more at pahrumpvalleytimes.com ...
Sounds like a lot of bad blood between them. I could see a small settlement but it appears they are trying to get rich off the place.
I’ve met three people (at the local gun range and gun stores here in NE Florida) who have been to Front Sight and they had nothing but praise. I’ve read some books and blogs by people in the survivalist movement lately, and Front Sight comes up as their training location of choice too.
I think this lawsuit was primarily designed to “get” Piazza and put Front Sight out of business.
For people that aren’t familiar, Piazza does look like a slick used-car salesman and his email advertising campaign makes you feel like you are being pursued by a cult (or at least an Amway distributor), but the classes look intriguing and a couple friends and I have been considering taking the 4-day pistol course in the Fall. We’ll have to put that on hold until we see how this shakes out.
Fascinating. I was just looking over the Front Site website the other night, and even considered the classes. This is going to damage the company’s reputation, but Piazza should have known better. The squeeky wheel always gets the grease, and what could be more noisy than his sales pitch, which reminded me of a used car salesman’s pitch. I hope it all works out for the company, though. A definite attack on 2nd Amendment rights in a round a bout way.
Is it any wonder a place like this is in receivership. It is experiencing an economic tsunami with the increased costs to shoot.
With the high cost of firing a weapon there is going to be less of it.
And thanks for promoting TR. Come to Oregon, spend lots of money, and then go away. :)
Clint is a great guy and a good teacher.
I will update Arlen thanks for the reminder.
Piazza is a big-time scientologist, from what I understand.
I didn’t know that.
But, that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as that giant cheesy mustache!
I always called it his John Holmes moustache
The training has been top notch in the past.
The reason you feel like you’re being pursued by a cult could be the fact that Piazza is a level-whatever cleared of thetans pooh bah in Scientology.
Just a hunch from someone with no first-hand knowledge, but by this fall I don’t think that’ll be an option.
I hope he can recover from this. I’d really like to get out there for some training.
What could possibly take four days to learn about pistols?
Thunder Ranch is out of my price range. Wish they would have stayed in TX, but even here they were out of my price range.
At least with Front Sight, you can pick up the “transferable training certificates” for next to nothing on the internet, so it was on my “To Do List”.
Hope they don’t go under.
Also, I always wondered if these days if I could even afford or find the Lead Free Frangible Projectile Ammunition required by Thunder Ranch.
I’ve always heard absolutely great things about them, they are just out of my price range.
The cost is now high, because many believe there may soon be a whole lot more of it. Only it won't be training and games.
First, in NO WAY is the suit against Front Sight an attack on our Second Amendment rights.
The Class Action suit against Front Sight is not for money or to put it out of business. People bought into a dream of 1. having a world class training facility and if they had the money (say from selling a home) they 2. invested a couple hundred thousand dollars in a Platinum membership which came with a piece of land to build a home and free lessons, free gunsmithing, free getting your gosh darn boots shined if you want that.
Instead of a home around the golf course, they invested to have a “home at the range”. For many reasons too lengthy to list, Naish Piazza took the investments, but never improved the land. It’s poof dirt and boulders. It would cost almost as much as our new federal deficit (no, just kidding) — it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to get the infrastruction in to begin development.
People invested in the good life and got ... lessons. The land is not buildable. There are none of the amenities shown in the color brochures.
There are no sewers (10 years of using porta-potties and counting). There is no potable water. Even the site-built classroom has no building permit; it never passed a safety inspection.
Piazza is a visionary and a marketing genious. But in my opinion (I’ve known him for 10 years), he started out as a good guy but is now totally unfit to run anything.
It would have been a wonderful community, but Piazza should have just stuck with training and stayed away from everything else. I think the money, fancy cars, house on Lake Tahoe changed him.
Yes, there is bad blood. But NOBODY — especially the members — want Front Sight to fail. We (yep, I’m a Silver member) just want what we were promised. I am NOT part of the Class Action - but obviously I support it.
Get a cheap cert online and take a class. You won’t get the kind of training we all did in the beginning, when all the instructors were former cops and military — now first time students are “coaches” for other first time students (dangerous). But the rangemasters are still good and even bad training is better than no training.
Plus ... it’s fun. Exhausting. Just don’t sign on the dotted line for anything BIG.
They don't like my guns down there. And I take it personally.
I’ve never liked Piazza’s advertising campaign either. However, I have nothing but praise for the Front Sight (FS) training. Attended the 4-day Practical Rifle (PR) in Jan 2009 and my son and a friend attended the 4-day pistol at the same time. Top notch and I’ve taken other professional training (Chuck Taylor American Small Arms Academy in 1995). Here’s my FS trip report from another board where I discussed merits of my rifle as well:
Steyr Scout .308 was absolutely awesome for 4-day PR. Would not take PR with any other bolt action rifle. As each of the four days progressed I was increasingly thankful for Jeff Cooper’s legacy, the Steyr Scout. Not ONE malfunction in 400 rounds of .308 Magtech ammo purchased at the Pro Shop. (very clean ammo by the way).
Lightness was the chief advantage. You do a lot of holding your rifle up and 7 lbs. is much easier than 9 to 12 lbs. The both eyes open, long eye relief scope was another user friendly feature. The two 5-round mags (one in the stock) prompted me to christen my Scout a ‘tactical hunting rifle.’ Made using a bolt for malfunction drills much easier than old-fashioned floor plates.
FS rangemaster worked with me to utilize unique features of the Scout, e.g., I was able to use the integrated bipod by unlatching before fire command and then sweeping legs forward and falling forward into prone. He realized unlatching each leg would slow me down too much. Shooting prone from 200 yards WITH a bipod beats an elbow. Still slowed me down a bit but I’m more concerned about accuracy than speed and wanted to learn the most efficient way to leverage this awesome rifle - which I did with the help of the great staff at FS.
Everyone that I’ve encountered has lots of praise for FS. I watched a guy at my local range practicing his drills from FS and I was impressed by the military precision of the drills. I had never heard of FS until I spoke to him after he was done shooting. I went home, logged in, and the emails started flooding in! LOL.
Like it or not, you have to admit that his advertising is effective because its just enough to keep me interested and not enough to get placed on the spam list!
What could possibly take four days to learn about pistols?
For the more trainable remainder of folks they take four days to learn basic competence.
I have been looking into some training courses at Tactical Response located in TN.
Anyone here have experience with Tactical Response?
This lawsuit process has actually been going on for a few years. Front sight already lost the lawsuit itself, this money thing is just from the after effects. No it wasn’t an attack on the 2nd Amendment, it was about some poor real estate development practices when the center first opened.
And no it hasn’t really damaged their firearms training business. Business is up, and they were just hiring new instructors (yet again) a few weeks/months back to keep up with demand.
Yes the place is a bit pricey compared to other facilities, but oh man the training is five star.
If you look around you can get some great one time only deals on their classes in the form of transferable gift certificates, you just gotta pay for the trip to Nevada and supply your own ammo (no reloads, only factory).
Anyone ever taken one of their armorer’s courses?
Or has anyone viewed an AGI armorer’s course?
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