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.
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.
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).