Gary Barnes  Barnespneumatic Grievances, Refuted

   The reason why this was written: for all of Gary's criticisms of my guns it didn't bother me because I just considered the lack of credibility of the source.  But when he recruited partisans, masquerading as fellow enthusiasts, to agitate on public forums, such as this it moved me to answer back.
 http://www.network54.com/Forum/417256/message/1134244800/Oh%2C+BTW%2C+Quackenbush+was+lying...
 http://www.network54.com/Forum/417256/message/1134421300/I+placed+the+ad+for+the+Bison+for+a+friend..
And every time they start making up something to trash me with, I answer back.

   Every time I think this page has outlived its usefulness, and would be deleted, some of Gary's followers, wanting to find favor in his eyes, start agitating on websites.  This page is a cause and effect , and they're the cause why the page is still here.

   I haven’t answered these grievances previously, and by doing so I let the other side control the issue.  Without rebuttal the stories became bolder and bolder.  So I’m compelled to answer, to curtail their proliferation.

I asked Gary Barnes for a list of grievances, he gave a lot of excuses but declined to send me any, so I’ll just glean from his posts what he complains about the most.

   When dealing with Gary, he uses very charged words.  In my post about Billets (footnote 4), my term was “misused”.  Gary turned this into “scam” and “fraud”.  This is the kind of writing you would expect from the tabloids The Star and The Enquirer.

   The other thing I need to expose is when Gary writes he changes the timeline, combines two separate events, leaves out very important parts of the story, takes things out of context (partial quotes) and ad-libs crucial parts of the conversation.  This is the same as if Michael Moore wrote an article for Al-Jezeera.

   I’m not going to answer every charge because many of them are superfluous.   Gary’s tactic is to keep on making charges to keep the other person off balance.  One charge isn’t answered yet and another one is made is the typical process.  I’m not the only recipient of this treatment, this has been done to other good people such as HTD and the Standing Stone IV participants (Dennis Skinner, Randy Mitchell and others).

   The first charge is that,” I’ve had it in for Gary Barnes since the first time we met at the Little Rock Airgun Show.”  His version is an alternate reality.  We had display tables next to each other.  Of course, we talked airguns.  His wife was quite gracious, lending me a screwdriver because I had left mine behind.  In the middle of the afternoon I invited him to accompany Roger Yost and I to a nearby gas station (on the west side of the Expo center, now closed) to get some snacks.  At the end of the show we parted without difficulties.  Later that summer he called me for advice about a lathe.  He had purchased a Jet lathe that wouldn’t perform a machining operation as he wanted to.  My advice was to do it the way he wanted, he would need a toolmakers lathe, like the ones made by Monarch, American or Hardinge.  We met again at the Winston-Salem show that fall.  During our morning conversation I asked that we should cooperate and set some standards for the policy of dealing with big bore airguns.  Gary told me that he could mail order a muzzle loader rifle that was much more powerful than any airgun. (footnote 3)  So if that was unregulated why should he bother with airguns.

   I didn’t see Gary Barnes again until the Little Rock show once again and it was immediately evident his air of superiority.  He was in charge now.  He knew best and there was no talking to him.

   Shooting the ceiling in Little Rock:  Gary Barnes has a picture on his website, Barnespneumatic, of a prank pulled on him at Little Rock.  I am one, amongst many, in the photo who knows he shot the ceiling.  Gary says it wasn’t him.  (It’s always somebody else’s fault.)  He says another person shot the ceiling, with his gun.  He designed a gun without a trigger guard and he was handing it, loaded and cocked, to an inexperienced person.  This is an even worse case of gun handling safety.  So it’s either: Gary had an accidental discharge because he built a gun without a trigger guard or he made an even bigger mistake in gun handling safety, as he tells the story.  This photo is obscure on the net.  The place it is found is on Gary’s website.  Why he keeps it there is a puzzle because it’s an embarrassment for him either way the story is told.

   Another picture that Gary Barnes likes to show is of the Bar Lock rifle that he broke.  Part of his defense is showing the gun at his house.   In that photo you can see that the gunstock is not yet broken, so the gun did not arrive broken.  Yet when Tom returned home from Gary’s house and removed it from its case, it was broken.  Only two people touched the gun, Gary and Tom.  Tom has no reason to disassemble the gun.  Tom had called me after discovering that the gun stock was broken and couldn’t imagine what had happened to it because it was broke in such an unusual spot.  I explained that the lock plate on a Bar Lock is attached to the barrel, so if you attempt to disassemble it, as if it were a regular muzzle loader by pulling up on the barrel, the lock plate, being attached, would break the stock out above it.  I’m certain that Gary broke the gun.  But I didn’t see Gary break the gun.  I’ve been going on circumstance.  He won’t admit it and I couldn’t embarrass him into admitting it, so I dropped it.  This is another picture you’ll only find on Gary’s site.  The end result is I have a broken gun and he is smug in his denial.

   The snubbed handshake:  At the Roanoke airgun show Gary Barnes approached a group of airgunners, (footnote 1) including myself, and then put out his hand to me.  The first thing he said was: "Where's your tody?", meaning Eric.  I had never heard the term tody before, but I found out that it means the same thing as the word I use, which is sycophant. Some first greeting.  I told him that I can’t shake hands with a person who is stabbing me in the back at the same time.  I have to do a little philosophy next in this.  I come from a generation of men who don’t hug, don’t spill our guts or cry when we have setbacks, but do place a lot of trust in personal loyalty (footnote 8).  When you make a deal with somebody you look level into their eyes for the sincerity that the handshake secures the deal.  To use a handshake, like a glad-handing politician, would make it meaningless.  If you honor is in your word then you don’t do something that would dishonor it.  That’s why I didn’t shake the hand of someone who has no honor.  He was doing it for the audience, not for the sincerity. (footnote 2)   

Overweight, oversize, overpriced and oddly decorated airguns:  that’s my opinion.  I don’t have the same opinion as Gary that’s why my airguns don’t look like his.  Barnespneumatic created a new market for airguns.  He makes a crossover product.  He brought the idea of fantasy knives into airguns, making fantasy airguns.  That’s not my market and why he insists on me being his competition I don’t know.  I make a $595. rifle, not a $5,000. rifle.  Some of his guns look like they were made for the Klingons, or came from Bizzaro world, that’s my opinion.  He has voiced his opinion about my rifles.  The difference is, I don’t care about his opinion.  Why is my approval so important to him?

   A minor point in the litany of complaints is that “buckshot sucks”.  I make my .25 caliber pistol barrels to the standard .257 bore size, so it shoots pellets very well.  Barnespneumatic makes his barrels out of tubing.  The inside of the tubing runs undersize, so when he’s done rifling his bore is .250 to .252 which is not a good size for pellets but it’s a good size for .250 buckshot.  My point in the discussion was not the bore size, or fact that buckshot was very inexpensive to shoot.  My take on it was why buy a very expensive gun in order to shoot very inexpensive buckshot?  It didn’t make economic sense.  But this reasoned thinking, in Gary’s parlance becomes “buckshot sucks”.

1. Gary claims that he has witnesses to this episode.  Who are they and where were
     they standing when this took place?  Another example of creative writing.

2. A recent example: while trying to open a communication channel via email, Gary had
to bring the content of the email onto the Airgun Forum.  Again, he wants to have an
audience.

3. As an example, I’ll rewrite the previous passage as it would be written by Gary.
    Gary became angry and red in the face, told me he could mail order a muzzle loader
 rifle which was much more powerful than any airgun and then stomped off.

4. http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/message/1124821250/

5. http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/thread/1124891409/

6.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/417256/thread/1125246190/%26quot%3BBrief%26quot%3B

7.  http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/thread/1096301985/

8. To further expound on the point, men should not be affected by Oprah, the feminization of America.  A man's life is run by his mind and how he figures things out, not on emotion.  In this way a person will never become a candidate to be on the Jerry Springer show.  Love is not just a word on the lips but is measured by the deeds that we do, and the sacrifices we make, for friends, family & country.
©13 December 2005

This is from Gary’s web site. Because it contains material from my website and my image I took the liberty to copy it here.

http://glbarnes.com/lies.html

Private Page - 04

What's the issue regarding DAQ?
I never thought I'd be spending the evening this way. Utterly amazing.

At a currently running Airgun Show, The Little Rock, Ark. show - produced by the previous publishers of US Airgun Magazine, absolute lies are openly being displayed regarding myself and my work.

Evidently, abject jealousy and hatred have finally just snapped the spring in a few minds. This stuff was posted on an internet forum tonight, targeted for the airgun enthusiast. Let's go see...

Posted openly on the show table of a known airgunsmith ...

My comment? Utter fabrication. Total lies. Wonder who's lying to whom? Read the names mentioned.

Who's nutty enough to post something like this on a table at a major public airgun show?

Well yes ... pulled this pic right off Mr. Quackenbush's site tonight. I believe he's called it a bar lock. Now ... odd thing here. That's my fence.

How in the world would I get a pic of Dennis' gun on my fence? I mean, he doesn't send me rifles ya know. Well, Mr. Gaylord visited my shop to photograph my work for an article in the German gun magazine Visier. While doing so, he went to the car and produced two Quackenbush guns. He said something to the order of ..."he hoped I didn't mind, but there was no use for him to set up backdrops at home too, when he was taking pics at my place anyway."

I just happened to take pics that day too, at the same time. These were two of my rifles that went into that same article. Both the QB rifles photographed arrived broken and/or unfinished. They went into the article in the German magazine Visier just that way. The Liege lock even had no mainspring on it. The buttstock was a chunk of wood sprayed painted black with a tube in it. Later ones were leather covered. This was an unfinished, unworking early one. (Visier - issue labeled Aug. 8, 1998 - pages 110-111 QB pics - verify). I'll bet someone wished I hadn't taken pics, or that I couldn't remember what or where to find this picture ....

Take a look at the center board in the pic. You see that skunk stripe down the middle of it? Now scroll back up the page and look at the pic from Mr. Quackenbush's site ... you see that same board in the center of the pic? Same fence, same photo shoot, same day, same article.

Now, said QB gun came out of Mr. Gaylord's van without a trigger and the lock was sloppily hacked into the busted wood. And, scroll back up now ... there was some fiddling to get that missing trigger area to line up with the crack in the fence to mask the fact that no trigger existed. Who'd ever know? Well ... no-body, until I have to start putting up with crap like this.

I never touched that gun. Why on earth would I? The thing was never left here -never went into the shop. It came from Tom's van, was photographed, and went back into the van. Take it apart? Where, in the driveway? While it was being photographed? Something has a screw loose alright ...

I put up with stories like this all the time. For whatever reason, some folks are just gonna want to see the guy that's doing well fall down a staircase. However; when someone goes to such lengths, to post slander on their table at a major airgun show before the general public ... then those pics are posted on a public internet forum targeted specifically at the airgun enthusiast, that's a bit over the top. I'll set the record straight.

Here's some more great fun from the same show. You happen to see anyone familiar. I don't know who's idea of fun this is ... but I do recognize Dennis on the right. Might have been taken as just a good natured "roast" until you toss in this gentleman's over the top efforts to slander me at his table. I see he didn't miss the fun here either.

 
 Another pic I just happen to have kept. My customers are real glad (when they've lost their records) that I can fine mine. And, seems this stuff comes in handy too.

This is the first "Expedition Class" I made. I made it in the flavor of some old rifles I'd seen ... without a trigger guard ... like an old crossbow. At Little Rock that year, one of my good customers was present with his lady friend. She to shoot the rifle. That was fine. I loaded it for her, cocked it for her, and handed it to her - muzzle up and away. She took it from my hands and; in doing so, accidentally touched off the trigger. A shame, but we'd taken proper precautions. Later I altered the rifle with a trigger guard - realizing this design wasn't suitable. May have worked for some historic rifles, not here. Glad you are enjoying the hole boys. It's a collector's item for sure...

Below is a posting that was on the Airgun Forum that I used for my response to the list of grievances, that Gary Barnes declined to send to me.  As you can see, he does have a list of grievances.  His post was in response to my asking “why is chrome-moly tubing is good to make an airgun barrel out of?”  He didn’t answer the question, but came up with this.