We enjoy Sons of Guns and Top Shot. Sons of Guns can get a bit over the top at times and I have issues with the show but I like the big booms they end the episodes with. We like Top Shot to see all the neat weapons and challenges they come up with and pretty much ignore the drama llama when it strolls in. I don't know if I'm interested in watching this American Guns.
Frankly, I wanted do see what kind of parents allow their 16 year old daughter to dress like that for their TV show, so I did a little digging. It didn't take too much to find a dirt trail on Rich Wyatt that spans most of the last decade, but I spent hours last night anyway listening to podcasts and reading forums because it was like a train wreck that just didn't stop.
He's done some jail time for refusing to return two weapons to his ex wife and pay her a large sum of money even after he was court ordered to do so. There have been issues with weapons taken in by police departments that he worked for turning up missing, voluminous threads complaining of shoddy workmanship from his shop, lost weapons, using sub par parts rather than the parts the owner was asked, by the shop, to provide, sloppy workmanship that he insists is intentional, etc.
He also has (to my mind) bizarre business practices, such as requiring a customer to pay for their weapon before he runs the background check, then refusing to refund their money if they're denied. He will sell the weapon for them and take a 20% commission though. That garnered him a 4 day discussion on the radio show The Troubleshooter where he called in to rebut the discussion. I think the one thing I learned that boggles me the most though is their policy of stamping his store logo prominently on weapons that his store works on. Apparently without permission or the owners prior knowledge. Wanna replace the sights? Get a logo too. Upgrade the trigger? Here's your logo! After all, they're customizing the pistol for you. One of the complainers compared it to your mechanic sandblasting their logo onto the door of your car. I have to agree that I would be supremely pissed if that happened to one of our weapons.
Here are some links from whence I sourced the info. If you want to skip the other podcasts I'd recommend going straight to number 4 as it has a good, fair summary of the issue and shows how hard he tries to weasel things around. I was also rather surprised at how big of a weenie the representative from CBI (Colorado Bureau of Investigation) was in response to Rich's interrogation tactics when he used them to turn the conversation around on him.
Podcast 1, the original complaint to the Troubleshooter show:
http://tinyurl.com/3pcn3dc
Podcast 2:
http://tinyurl.com/3toyk95
Podcast 3:
http://tinyurl.com/3qwywuv
Podcast 4:
http://tinyurl.com/3hwvvjm
I was going to post the various articles and forum threads that I read about him, but this relatively current (as of 8/1/2011) 16 page thread on a Colorado AR-15 forum does a pretty good job of linking and copying most of them.
http://www.co-ar15.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41935
Here's an 8 page thread from 2009 where I found links for the first three podcasts but the fourth had not been made as of the original post. There are also many personal stories of dealing with his shop.
http://www.co-ar15.com/forums/showthread.php?t=13026
I did find some people that were satisfied with his work, liked his classes and are supportive of him and his shop, but they were in the minority.
