Hey, GunsAmerica?

F*&% right off.

I’ve used them to buy a few items, but they’re certainly never going to see a dime of my money again. Not after this.

From the NSSF blog,  posting about bloggers at the SHOT show:

Gun Bloggers and Internet Media: Instant, Viral Coverage of the SHOT Show

January 11, 2012 By Chris Dolnack

With the advent of social media, text messages and email, news travels instantly. A growing contingent at the SHOT Show is our Internet media. In fact, more than 600 Internet media representatives — bloggers, forum leaders and website producers — will be at the show this year. When we first started registering Internet media four years ago, that number was under 100. If you don’t think this group should be taken seriously, ask Netflix and Bank of America what their thoughts are. Both companies recently experienced instant backlash that quickly went viral after making announcements their customers weren’t too happy to hear about. Gun bloggers and the Internet media have the ability to take a new product and give it instant recognition — which also carries with it the possibility of it quickly going viral. And quite often, these writers and video producers are producing the same reviews that print magazine subscribers will read about months from now. It still amazes me how many companies out there do not include Internet media in their ad spend. Where can you find all this coverage? For one, follow the #shotshow hashtag on Twitter. Also, do a search for “SHOT Show” on YouTube, Facebook, Google+, Google Blog Search and countless other sites. The amount of coverage, comments and quality you’ll find will no doubt make you a believer.

In the comments section, by someone at GunsAmerica:

Paul Helinski / GunsAmerica

Now the question is when you are going to start qualifying internet media?   We have to crawl over nobodies who can install wordpress and have nobody reading anything they write, It isn’t so hard to qualify internet media using Alexa.com and Compete.com.  Why do you waste the manufacturers’ time and make the real internet media have to deal with wish I were internet journalists who are just using your stamp of approve to solicit review guns and accessories?  You’ve created this giant gorilla in the room and we all have to deal with it, and you may think the industry takes your numbers seriously, but everyone sees things for what they are.  If you are serious about bringing value to your exhibitors, you need to vet the press list.

That’s some first-class elitism right there. Now, I’m a 32nd-ish tier pseudo-gun blogger, and I’ve never asked for or received a single free item, but still. If you think that isn’t going to offend me you’re wrong.

If you think I won’t vote with my money and encourage every single person I know who buys and sells guns to avoid that place like an ebola epidemic you’re also wrong. That number is not trivial, either – we buy and sell a lot of guns amongst us. Gues who won’t see any of it going forward. And I was just in the market for an item or two…

I swear, you’d think they had hired Jim Zumbo to handle their internet presence.

H/T’s to Capitalist Pig and Uncle