Gollnick
Musical Director
- Joined
- Mar 22, 1999
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On Saturday, Sept. 16, 2006, Doug Ritter of Equipped to Survive fame (Critter here on bf.c) held a briefing about his proposed new United States Knife & Tool Association (www.uskta.org) at BladeShow West in Portland. I was pleased to have been invited to attend along with quite a number of cutlery industry luminaries.
Faithful readers will doubtlessly recall that the Wall Street Journal recently published a rather unfavorable article about the knife industry, particularly the so-called tactical knives (refer to THIS, THIS, and THIS thread among others here at bf.c).
Mr. Ritter suspects that the Anti crowd feels that they have stalled in their efforts against guns due to the very active and aggressive pro-gun-rights movement organized by the NRA and other gun-owner organizations. He thinks they've decided to target knives in hopes of creating some momentum for themselves. He believes that they perceive knives and knife-rights as "easy pickings" because we don't have a substantial national organization. So, he is trying to very quickly create such an organization.
You can read his announcement of this in THIS thread.
He reported that he has received some small initial financial support already. He has been reviewing the organization of other, similar owner-advocate organizations including the NRA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association AOPA, and the Boat Owners Association of The United States BoatUS, and has learned quite a bit about what it will take to start such an organization and make it successful. He has already started all of the legal paperwork and expects to have it all in place by the end of the year. This will take about $8,000-$10,000 just for legal costs and such. He hopes to have a trust account established (which can be done very quickly and with minimal paperwork) very shortly for those who might like to make initial seed-money contributions to help with these costs. His hope is to raise $25,000-$30,000 with the additional money going to fund an improved website and promotional efforts. Once that is established, he hopes to attract 100,000 members to his new organization within just a few years.
He noted that the NRA has four million members and that just about everyone who owns a gun owns some sort of knife too. If USKTA could attract just a small fraction of those people, it would be dramatic.
The purpose of the organization is to create political muscle. Mr. Ritter said, "The only way to influence some politician who is hell-bent on making headlines by making some knee-jerk reaction to some event that has happened is to flood his office with calls and mail... numbers."
Of course, one question asked was what relationship USKTA would have to the American Knife and Tool Institute AKTI which was founded in 1997 and which has been 100% successful since its institution in fighting governmental challenges to the knife industry. Les de Asis of Benchmade who is President of AKTI, noted, "Everything AKTI has gotten involved with, we've won."
Mr. Ritter explained that Knives are the only major industry facing threat from the Anti movement which does not have two organizations, an industry organization to represent manufacturers and dealers, and a separate organization for owners and users. Guns, for example, have several owner/user organizations lead by the NRA, and several industry organizations lead by The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute SAAMI. Having two organizations that work together can be a big benefit because the two can sort of play "good cop/bad cop" when dealing with legislators: "Mr. Congressman, why not let our industry organization help you craft better legislation so that our X-million-member owners organization doesn't have to conduct a massive campaign against you? And then you can then tell your Anti friends that you arrived at this conclusion after working with our industry association instead of that you caved in under pressure from our massive owners association. It's a win-win solution."
There are times when the prestige, the respectability, and the technical resources of an industry association are the right tools for the job. And then there are times when the shear numbers and grass-roots political pressure that can be generated by a large, organized, and motivated owner organization is the right tool for the job.
There are some politicians who will be motivated by industry statistics about job creation, tax revenue, trade balance, etc., which is best provided by an industry association. And there are those who only care about popular opinion poles.
AKTI has primarily been a manufacturers/industry association. Mr. Ritter sees USKTI as filling the grass-roots owners' association roll in a complimentary way working in partnership with AKTI.
AKTI has tried to attract individual owners as members. Several years ago, they included some one million flyers with knives sold by several major knife manufacturers and got very few responses. The root cause of this problem is possibly that the average American knife owner does not yet feel under threat. He hopes to educate knife owners about the growing threat they face.
The USKTI name is probably only temporary. Look for the name to change to something a bit more "zippy" in the near future.
Right now, USKTI is simply accepting names and addresses of people who would like to be notified of its progress. You can sign up on their website, http://www.uskta.org/.
Faithful readers will doubtlessly recall that the Wall Street Journal recently published a rather unfavorable article about the knife industry, particularly the so-called tactical knives (refer to THIS, THIS, and THIS thread among others here at bf.c).
Mr. Ritter suspects that the Anti crowd feels that they have stalled in their efforts against guns due to the very active and aggressive pro-gun-rights movement organized by the NRA and other gun-owner organizations. He thinks they've decided to target knives in hopes of creating some momentum for themselves. He believes that they perceive knives and knife-rights as "easy pickings" because we don't have a substantial national organization. So, he is trying to very quickly create such an organization.
You can read his announcement of this in THIS thread.
He reported that he has received some small initial financial support already. He has been reviewing the organization of other, similar owner-advocate organizations including the NRA, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association AOPA, and the Boat Owners Association of The United States BoatUS, and has learned quite a bit about what it will take to start such an organization and make it successful. He has already started all of the legal paperwork and expects to have it all in place by the end of the year. This will take about $8,000-$10,000 just for legal costs and such. He hopes to have a trust account established (which can be done very quickly and with minimal paperwork) very shortly for those who might like to make initial seed-money contributions to help with these costs. His hope is to raise $25,000-$30,000 with the additional money going to fund an improved website and promotional efforts. Once that is established, he hopes to attract 100,000 members to his new organization within just a few years.
He noted that the NRA has four million members and that just about everyone who owns a gun owns some sort of knife too. If USKTA could attract just a small fraction of those people, it would be dramatic.
The purpose of the organization is to create political muscle. Mr. Ritter said, "The only way to influence some politician who is hell-bent on making headlines by making some knee-jerk reaction to some event that has happened is to flood his office with calls and mail... numbers."
Of course, one question asked was what relationship USKTA would have to the American Knife and Tool Institute AKTI which was founded in 1997 and which has been 100% successful since its institution in fighting governmental challenges to the knife industry. Les de Asis of Benchmade who is President of AKTI, noted, "Everything AKTI has gotten involved with, we've won."
Mr. Ritter explained that Knives are the only major industry facing threat from the Anti movement which does not have two organizations, an industry organization to represent manufacturers and dealers, and a separate organization for owners and users. Guns, for example, have several owner/user organizations lead by the NRA, and several industry organizations lead by The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute SAAMI. Having two organizations that work together can be a big benefit because the two can sort of play "good cop/bad cop" when dealing with legislators: "Mr. Congressman, why not let our industry organization help you craft better legislation so that our X-million-member owners organization doesn't have to conduct a massive campaign against you? And then you can then tell your Anti friends that you arrived at this conclusion after working with our industry association instead of that you caved in under pressure from our massive owners association. It's a win-win solution."
There are times when the prestige, the respectability, and the technical resources of an industry association are the right tools for the job. And then there are times when the shear numbers and grass-roots political pressure that can be generated by a large, organized, and motivated owner organization is the right tool for the job.
There are some politicians who will be motivated by industry statistics about job creation, tax revenue, trade balance, etc., which is best provided by an industry association. And there are those who only care about popular opinion poles.
AKTI has primarily been a manufacturers/industry association. Mr. Ritter sees USKTI as filling the grass-roots owners' association roll in a complimentary way working in partnership with AKTI.
AKTI has tried to attract individual owners as members. Several years ago, they included some one million flyers with knives sold by several major knife manufacturers and got very few responses. The root cause of this problem is possibly that the average American knife owner does not yet feel under threat. He hopes to educate knife owners about the growing threat they face.
The USKTI name is probably only temporary. Look for the name to change to something a bit more "zippy" in the near future.
Right now, USKTI is simply accepting names and addresses of people who would like to be notified of its progress. You can sign up on their website, http://www.uskta.org/.
