I don’t think so

I have listened to, read about, and commented on Fascitelli for almost 10 years*. I know enough about him that I think he’s probably a nice guy. I don’t think he is stupid either. He has changed his stance toward gun control and gotten a lot smarter about things (read the links below* and see how his attitude has changed over the years). But this indicates he has some other problem:

They’ve been working on Philadelphia-based Lodestar for a couple of years now. The duo recruited Ginger Chandler, a former Remington executive, to design the product, which, Fascitelli says, will be a gun accompanied by an RFID tag (some argue for fingerprint technology). Smart guns reached a turning point this summer, when New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy reformed that state’s law to allow more research and development of smart guns.

Lodestar, which raised $250,000, is now looking for an additional $3 million to finish its prototype. Its three-person payroll is about $10,000 a month while the team waits for the shift in the political landscape to catch funders’ interest. They estimate potential sales at $1 billion, or about 40% of the 7-million-unit handgun market.

I’ve pointed out the probably unsurmountable problems with his proposed product and company before. But this is another layer of frosting on that cake.

Can he possibly believe their product has a realistic chance at 40% of the handgun market? I don’t think so. Perhaps the author of the article twisted his words, I could believe that. I’ve been misquoted enough that I can give him the benefit of the doubt here. Otherwise one has to conclude he is lying and/or delusional. In the past there have been a number of hints this was true but in recent years he seems to have gotten that pretty much under control.


* Here is a partial list of my posts quoting or referring to him:

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7 thoughts on “I don’t think so

  1. Out of morbid curiosity, what gun/manufacturer holds the highest percentage of the market currently? 40% is Huge!

    • If you include LEO/agency contracts, probably Glock, but I don’t think even they have 40%. Lodestar is dreaming. The only way they could get 40% of the market is similar to how Harper Lee sold billions of copies of To Kill a Mockingbird: somehow get it on the required reading list in every school district in the nation.

      Or in this case, support and/or impose government requirements in several states that limit the retail market to your company’s offerings and not much else (e.g.: New Jersey’s mandate that three years after a “smart gun” hits the commercial market, ALL handguns sold in New Jersey must be “smart guns”; or California’s “microstamping” mandate; or multiple states’ “safe/approved” rosters).

      When you can get the government to impose anti-competition laws on your behalf, it’s not difficult to garner a large share of the market.

  2. Don’t look now, but I think someone has “unrecoverable depletion of venture capital investment” as a bullet point in their corporate mission statement. Well, their internal version. Public version stays on narrative.

    Those dudes are the carbon credit exchange of the civil disarmament movement. They don’t have to believe a word of what they’re spouting. They just gotta spout it to the right people, produce an occasional demo or mock-up, and cash the checks.

  3. 40% is quite reasonable if .gov mandates the technology be used in all new firearms.

    It would force manufacturers to license the technology or not sell in that market.
    In the environmental market it is called best available technology or BAT and .gov used that club in certain states for any expansion of chemical plants or refineries.

    The courts MAY find that it is regulation and not restriction of the 2nd A.

    I tend to think it’s a great leap of faith, but that is how I would sell it to investors.

  4. By the time you got finished reading the “End User/ Disclaimer”, you’ll be to old to use the gun.

  5. I can’t possibly have any respect at all for a person whose entire business proposition is predicated on the government’s utter disrespect for the Constitution.
    In other words, I hold him to be morally equivalent to Al Sharpton and David Duke. If that.

  6. What percentage of the handgun market is law enforcement and prisons? They might be thinking that a technology that _works_ to prevent cops’ and guards’ guns from being grabbed and used against them would capture that whole market.

    But they are probably delusional in thinking that their tech works.

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