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Sometimes sales and marketing folks like to broadcast from the NRA or SHOT show booths about having sold guns to the SEALs or Secret Service, or other important sounding agencies. It makes for good sales pitches. However, such stories aren’t always what they appear to be.
Sir, having ID’d yourself, I know who you are. I won’t expose your real name but your initials are N. McD. Having files of military or law enforcement conferences doesn’t constitute Government contracts.
On several occasions I spoke directly with the SEAL who bought some Combat Masters from us. He was somewhat of a gunsmith and had his own FFL (which was not unusual back then) and he bought the guns as a “dealer” and sold some (not all, maybe 4 or 5 at most) to some of his buddies on the SEAL team. Hardly any kind of a Government contract! But a sales person can certainly make use of that, telling others, “We have SEALs carrying our guns”. Sounds great, doesn’t it? And it really was kinda cool. I told others about it too, but you can’t really call that a Government contract.
And by the way, the stainless steel project was R&D’d in ’79!!! No “SEAL contract of ’78 caused the creation of the stainless versions”. (LOL) The SEAL guy didn’t start buying the guns until ’80 at the earliest, when stainless production started up, (and some of the guns he bought were in 9mm, which came even later). He was not the cause of the project, and the checks that paid for the guns were not Government or Navy checks.
I was involved. I helped build the guns. I helped test fire the guns. I helped clean and ship the guns. I helped log the guns out of the ATF books too: thus, I knew who the guns were shipped to. It was to the FFL holding SEAL, at his FFL address, not to the Navy. We never shipped a gun threaded for a silencer either. It didn’t happen. The assembly supervisor is also in agreement with me on this. If any silencer work was done, it would have to have been done outside of the shop and would have required a custom made barrel, not of our origin (since back then our barrels were made from castings and the casting slug simply was NOT long enough to accommodate silencer threads).
Later, after a.ka.Skeeter was no longer working for us, we made the barrels out of cylinder stock, and made longer barrels for our Scoremaster size guns, but the SEAL thing was over with long before that.
Did we send guns to Government agencies with hopes of contracts? Sure we did. All kinds of ‘em. Army, Air Force, Marines, etc. Did we get some “inside” help from time to time? Sure we did. (Such as the pretty blond who worked with the sales and marketing department, and later married a Secret Service agent). Did we provide that agent with a gun or two? Sure we did. Did it result in a Government contract? NOPE. But we could then tell others, “We have guns in the Secret Service”. Sounds pretty cool, eh? Great sales pitch too; but it’s NOT a Government contract.
As for some of the other rumors… did we ship Combat Masters to England? Yup; and some came back with British proof marks on ‘em. They’re real. But the story about them being for the SAS simply isn’t true. Just another false rumor, along with the one about the unmarked MK VII’s that supposedly went to the CIA. I’ve posted before about how the rumors just keep getting better, and become more and more entertaining; and they do!... but they’re just not true.
I think the gun world just loves the intrigue.
About the closest we ever came to any kind of a Government contract would have been when we sold 4 Combat Masters to the Bellevue PD narcs for undercover work. That would have been during a.ka.Skeeter’s time. Tuff to call that a Government contract. No real quantities to speak of, and no ongoing production dedicated to that purpose. Just 4 blue Combat Masters from the production line, (before we even called them MK I’s). The Police Chief became a real fan of our guns, and he inspired and received the first (and only blue factory custom) sightless CM. The stainless MK VII line was modeled after his gun. (There’s a “true rumor” for you).
The reality? No Government contracts. Sorry.
Deeton