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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.