Did TFB spike the Honor Guard pistol drop safety story?
courtesy The Firearm Rack

Earlier today, we ran a story on drop safety issues with the Honor Guard pistol. Our report revealed that Patrick Roberts of The Firearm Rack made the gun discharge by striking it with a hammer and dropping it onto the rear of the slide. [Click here to view the video.] This afternoon, TTAG Testing and Evaluation Editor Jeremy S. duplicated the test shown in the video, confirming Mr. Roberts’ claims . . .

In an interview this afternoon, Mr. Roberts told TTAG that he discovered the drop safety problem in August 2017. Mr. Roberts said he called Honor Guard’s president Gary Ramey and left a voicemail raising the alarm.

Shortly thereafter, one of The Firearm Blog’s editors texted Mr. Roberts (who was working for the website at the time) spiking the story. Mr. Roberts provided the following screencap of that exchange.

We spoke to Mr. Ramey who had no comment. We’ve also reached out to The Firearm Blog for comment. As of this writing, we haven’t received a response. If we do, we’ll publish it here.

SIG SAUER recalled their P320 when the gunblogosphere discovered the same drop safety issue. We don’t expect anything less from Honor Defense. Then again, we wouldn’t expect a firearms website to withhold life-or-death information from its readers. 

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88 COMMENTS

    • I got blocked from commenting on TFB after nothing more than pointing out that they had a serious error in an instructional disasembly video. No cussing or additude..I just didn’t want to see anyone using a hammer on their carbine when it was completly uncalled for. I emailed them asking wtf and got the “it wasn’t us, it must be a computer glitch” answer and some crap about wait a few days and try again maybe it’ll,work (it didn’t)…haven’t been back since, obviously no big loss.

      • Interesting, I have definitely said much worse things about them on their website and gotten plenty of upvotes for it and am still active.

        All constructive, of course. I by-and-large have enjoyed TFB’s content for many years. It’s disheartening when they screw up because they do a pretty good job 90% of the time, same with TTAG.

        I didn’t know about this though, and I didn’t know Patrick had left, either (as I am finding out now). I’ll cycle in The Firearm Rack now to see how they do there. Not sure if I can bother with TFB anymore though knowing this.

        Hey Patrick, you should poach James and Miles while you’re at it! Y’all three came up with the only content I ever bothered to read or watch on that site anyway.

    • Me neither. The time-honored tradition of trading favorable reviews and deep-sixing negative feedback for free handouts goes back well before the internet. Gun rags have been notorious of the same quid pro quo for a long time.

      It’s time for integrity to come back in style.

      Speaking of which, thanks Andrew for all of your unbiased and objective reviews, evaluations and insights. You’ve set a good example.

    • I got in a helluva lot of trouble for posting about the lawsuit on TFB. I assumed it would be okay since you and the editor went way back.

    • Didn’t know that. Paul was being a little naive to the community he was building, and ultra defensive when I pointed out the issue of a fan base that shuns anyone doing it right as a “tacticool oper8tor” and that everything over $200 was too expensive. Pushing away knowledge people and replacing with kids who don’t buy things.

      You came up in that conversation, I never got the impression from him he took sides on that…. but looking at it now, there is little chance that TFB / AllOutdoor wasn’t being paid by FC.

  3. Yeah this sounds disheartening. I’ve always liked TFB and hearing that they may have snubbed alarming safety info is concerning. BUT this is one person’s account.

    • I wouldn’t be surprised if Honor Defense had a hand in this. If you look at the comments on their Facebook page, anytime anyone has the audacity to question their claims or product they VICIOUSLY defend it to the point of attacking the poster.

      • You got that right. I will not TRUST Honor Defense in any way. A lot of total BS from them. I also do not like the way they Milk the “Honor” advertising . I would advise anyone to just stay away from this company. Personally I wonder how they stay in business to begin with.

  4. Has anyone noticed that the quality of The Firearm Blog took a nose-dive when Alex C. left?

    It’s never been the same.

    • Yeah, I’d like to hear Alex C’s insight on things. He seemed like a pretty sharp guy….unusually sharp for the 2nd amendment community.

        • Patrick did the right thing. Glad to hear that not everyone in the industry is beholden to keeping the gravy train running at all costs and willing to sell their souls to make a buck off of a poorly designed handgun.

    • Alex Capps was a rich trust fund d-bag with too much time on his hands. He loved to bad mouth companies. The only thing Alex likes is Alex.

        • Alex C. originated from 4chan, where folks consistently noticed he would show off his dad’s newest acquisitions and acted like a tremendous douchebag, when he was called out on it he simply disappeared. His later hijinks with becoming a ‘manufacturer’ so he could make post sample firearms for personal use and his stance that lifting the NFA was undesirable because it would hurt his investments were just more strikes against him. It didn’t hurt that a lot of his ‘informative’ pieces on H&K and other companies were little more than copy/paste jobs from Wikipedia or other websites.

  5. Paul’s job as editor should be to assure that any articles with negative information about his advertisers’ products are properly verified/attributed and objectively written. His job should NOT be to squelch important stories, especially where safety is the main issue. Maybe he’d be happier working for a fake news publisher where access is paramount. CNN perhaps?

    • fixed it for you 🙂

      Paul’s job as editor should be to assure that any articles with negative information about ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶d̶v̶e̶r̶t̶i̶s̶e̶r̶s̶’̶ any reviewed products are properly verified/attributed

  6. Well assuming Twitter hasn’t already purged all firearms related pages #HonorGate should probably end up being a thing quickly.

    And I’m once again happy that I only own SA/DA hammer fired pistols.

    • @Noishkel: I have been thinking that same thing about my choices, just once in a while. I’m not the type to dismiss strker pistols out of hand, because there are so many reliable models, but I’ve personally leaned toward hammer only, and DA/SA with strong DA, followed by nice SA. I rely upon people like Patrick, because I simply cannot safely test like he does. Frankly I admire the nerve it takes to do what he is doing.

      • The reviews on Kahr pistols were what I went to TFB and TTAG for before my purchase.

        I have zero respect for TFB now, lump them in with CNN fake news.

  7. If that screen grab is accurate the proper response, in this situation, to “You are not allowed to…” would have been “Fuck you. I quit, oh and by the way, fuck you”.

  8. It looks like the TFB higher ups are a bunch of dicks. I still go there every day to check things out, and then go lose a few brain cells reading the comments section, or head over to see how badly James is getting slammed in comments on TFBTV. Their higher ups do not seem like people I would want to work for.

    • From the comment section in that link :

      ” Frosty_The_White_Man Mark • 5 hours ago

      Which color is drop safe?”

      *snicker*…

  10. Not surprised…the “no politics” lie kept me from TFB. That and nasty gun snobs. Facebook and TTAG are(usually)the extent of my 2A voyage.

    • Neither was Rube Goldberg, but I certainly wouldn’t want to work on any of contraption from either one of those guys. John Brownings designs aren’t the be-all, end-all of the firearms world, any more than Henry Fords model T is the last word in automobiles. Which .22 would you rather work on…a Winchester 1890, or a Ruger 10/22? Do you even know how hard it is to work on a Winchester 1890? Every day, John Brownings work gets more and more harder to see in the rearview mirror, and for good reason.

      • I know. You never see anyone wanting a government model…or a High Power….or a 94 winchester….or 92 winchester ……or 97 winchester……..lmao

        He may not be the “be all, end all”, but he is way the hell ahead of 2nd place.

  13. Sad. Now I have to limit my TFB visits or curtail them entirely. I like their military-arms related posts. Oh well. If CNN has taught me anything, compromising with truth is a dance with the devil.

  14. I go over there just to stir up stuff. I can’t stand a few of their writers, Nathaniel being #1. He may be a ballistics “expert” but is not the military expert he thinks he is.

  15. I bailed on TFB when they were acquired by Vertical Scope. It’s a Canadian outfit that buys up established forums and blogs in many interest areas. Then, it fucks them up. They do that by pushing out the visionaries who created the property in the first place. Which is where the real value is.
    http://www.verticalscope.com/about-us/acquisitions.html

    If TTAG ever sells out to them, I’ll bail on TTAG.

    • It looks like they also own Autoguide.com. If so, my favorite car forum turned into crap after acquiring it. It had a good knowledgeable base, focused on the older Fords, and had some great articles on projects. Afterwards? They added the newer mustangs and tried to grow the user base. What happened was the old crew bailed, and what is left is a shell of what it used to be. I was on there today and it didn’t seem like there was much going on in the forum anymore. What I find a bit funny is, out of 52,000 members on the board, I am around #160 in total posts on the website with almost 900 posts, and I haven’t posted anything since 2012. I joined back in 2004.

    • Unless something has changed recently, TTAG is still owned by Media Lodge. Media Lodge employs some of the same techniques and employees from the old Harris Publications company (that many people would say was in bed with advertisers.)

      Standing by for comment deletion in 3…2…1…

  16. Kind of sad they thought they might get away with it.

    An web-driven business thinking it would not get out?

    All kinds of dumbass going on there.

  17. I don’t really have a dog in this fight. I seldom (okay, next to never) visit TFB. Their “No Politics” (unless they want to get into them) routine seemed nothing more than avoidance of topics that might anger advertisers. Kind of like Guns & Ammo’s gushing review of the Taurus Turd a couple of years ago, or the first generation R51 more recently. Or some people’s lame defense of Springfield Armory a few short months ago.

  18. Well I just in general get suspicious when someone states “just guns, no politics” or whatever it is. Sorry this ain’t like driving an suv and being on the front line against epa “gas guzzler” tax fighting. Politics are pretty hard to avoid when there are people that want to throw you in jail tomorrow for something that was legal yesterday.

    • Agreed completely. I am actually quite the fan of TFB in general (notwithstanding this story, which is alarming). I like a lot of the unique content they get (historical pieces, interesting technical/ballistics analysis, etc etc). But some of the recent personnel changes have REALLY tuned me off the site. Patrick for one (while the “victim” in this particular story, the guy was an a-hole, treated a lot of his opinions as fact, and got a lot of his actual facts wrong… the blog improved when he departed) was a terrible hire. But holy crap, their ammo tester is an idiot. He made a whole series of posts about how you shouldn’t trust anyone elses ballistics testing, as there are a lot of people claiming to be experts who don’t know what they’re doing… then continues to use substandard ballistics gel that isn’t calibrated, uses sample sizes that are laughable, etc etc etc all while talking and looking look a complete uneducated slob. He’s a terrible representative of the blog. Oh, and when I made a post pointing out how their penetration measurements are useless as they stack two blocks back-to-back to get sufficient length, and passing through an interface like that will be dramatically different than a single continuous piece, the comment was deleted. All three times I tried to post it. It’s a shame, TFB was a great blog, and in some ways it still is… rapidly going downhill though 🙁

      • Agree that Patrick is FLAME DELETED who thinks he is some savior when it comes to reporting on guns. He is just another blogger with an attitude who thinks he is saving us all with his opinions.

        It takes nothing more than a keyboard and an opinion to get “published” on the net, and he is a prime example. Example #2 is Nick Leghorm.

    • I think that makes two of us.
      Probably because nobody I follow ever linked to anything they published, at least before today.

  23. You pointed out that Sig recalled recalled the 320 and you don’t expect anything less, but didn’t sig just do a “voluntary upgrade” rather than an actual recall? TTAG seemed pretty ok with not getting dangerous pistols off the market then, but then again, you guys do publish an awful lot of sig related content.

  24. A disgruntled former employee posts a screen grab of a few lines of an exchange between him and his boss and you guys are ready to take it as gospel? I expected deeper critical thinking.

    Here’s a question: if this was such a glaring public safety issue, why did it take Patrick three months to actually talk about it? You’d think he’d post a story just days after he quit to protect us shooters.

    Or is this a desperate attempt to remain relevant, feeding off drama with a former boss?

    Here’s the thing about disingenuous, lying a**holes: they will do and say anything they please to get what they want, taking zero responsibility for their own actions, and will use drama and conflict to self promote rather than facts or experience.

    I guarantee there are screenshots of text conversations for everyone in the world that makes them either look like hero or saviors – I wonder what Roberts has said privately that may eventually surface and be taken in context or out against him.

    • “Here’s a question: if this was such a glaring public safety issue, why did it take Patrick three months to actually talk about it?”

      That’s a very good question, I look forward to hearing Pat’s response.

      (If they screwed you out a paycheck, Pat, I hope you take them to small claims court. If you win the case, that puts TFB in a rather tenuous place. They can either pay what they owe, or it lives in Google searches *forever*…)

      • Why did it take me 3 months to report on the issue?

        I have a family to feed so I didn’t bail from TFB until I had some work lined up and I needed to consult with a lawyer before bringing the information to light.

        I am all for shooter safety and honesty as long as I can still feed my 10-month-old son and keep a roof over his head.

        • I don’t really mind, at all; but fwiw now two more people there are out of jobs. I don’t like most of your videos and you need more firearm training imo – but you saw shit and said shit, so good for you.

          Also, your name is a swear word there now. Write ‘Patrick’ and the post goes to moderation.

      • Screw small claims court.
        Just file a complaint with the department of labor in the state they payed unemployment insurance premiums to when you worked for them. The DoL has ways of making them eager to pay up.

      • But can you prove he’s a liar, or are you just operating off of your precious little feelings?
        Gotta tell you Bubbs, you sound like you’re an assumptive cunt.

  25. First, if this were such a pressing “safety issue” then why didn’t Patrick R. cover it right away after he quit TFB instead of making a bunch of videos complaining about TFB first?

    Second, I’d love to hear what TFB says about this, but I’m surprised they let him publish anything after his embarrassing SIG P320 “hammer” video (TYM later called him out by name), and the video he made where he said that viewers should buy the RAS47 (which he then backtracked on). They were probably worried about getting sued if they let this guy keep talking.

    • I didn’t cover it until I was given the all clear by my lawyer. I have to make sure that I am protected and can keep a roof over my 10-month-old son’s head.

      The hammer test is described in detail in this video. It is legitimate and you should do some reading just like TYM should. The RAS 47 was one of the straws that broke the proverbial camel’s back. I left TFB shortly after that because I never wanted to put out surface level reviews again.

      • Hey Patrick.

        What’s with the naked shilling for SilencerShop at TFB?

        I read TFB, TTAG and others blogs daily just because I cannot get enough Gun news… but damn, one author there, maybe more, post the most blatently positive articles about anything silencershop related. Cawk Worshiping type stuff… such as the NFA Barcode story talking about how it so amazing and going to change approval timeframes to #2weekapprovals, etc… When called out that there isn’t data to support that in the comments, the author jumps in and says no it’s all true and there is data to support it, but it’s never produced.

        It just seems obnoxiously and impossibly optimistic, and when one makes extraordinary claims, they require extraordinary proof. But they aren’t having it. Seems to me there must be some reason they are so blatently gargling the sack of silencershop. I have nothing against silencershop, in fact I buy from them, but the claims are outrageous.

  26. They had such a hard on for going after Sig for the same thing too, it was like an article a day (or more) for a week.

  27. Honor Defense has basically said on facebook that they had a lab test their guns and they passed those tests, so every other kind of testing is mishandling the gun and claim that every gun will go off if it is mishandled so the test is therefore invalid.

    They seem to have no intention of correcting this problem. It is probably a flaw inherent in the design so they don’t want to have to design a whole new gun and then replace every gun they have ever made. For a small company with only one product line, it would probably bankrupt them.

  31. I wonder which is doing more damage… the Honor Defense story to TFB or the mucho-whitespace blog-redesign to TTAG.

    In any event, both blogs have suffered declines in traffic and amount of time spent on the site. Do your research.

  32. Does TFB face any civil and/or criminal liability for promoting this defective gun and apparently conspiring with honor defense to cover up a potentially fatal defect?

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