Here at Guns Save Life, we’re no stranger to threats of legal action for reporting the facts. Facts sometimes make people uncomfortable.
Why, it was barely two months ago when we got word that Mike and Valinda Rowe had retained counsel and were moving forward with a lawsuit against me and GSL for defamation over our reports of Mike Rowe’s physical touching of GSL women and little girls at last year’s Illinois Gun Owners Lobby Day event. Guess what, like the ten other threatened lawsuits over the years, that one never materialized as the truth is an absolute defense to defamation. We bring it up because we find it despicable that some people threaten legal action to suppress publicity of their shameful behavior.
Well, seems as though Guns Save Life isn’t the only blog out there navigating through threats of legal action for reporting facts.
FireClean didn’t like some reporting that an obscure gun blog conducted on their FireClean lubricant. It sort of began last fall when the Vuurwapen blog owner Andrew Tuohy posted “Infrared Spectroscopy of Fireclean and Crisco Oils”.
Intrepid users can see a remarkable similarity between Crisco cooking oil and the MUCH higher priced FireClean product. The story went viral, and more articles were written. One fellow (Everett Baker) who works in a lab even replicated Tuohy’s work and wrote a detailed explanation of how Infrared Spectroscopy works, seemingly supportive of Tuohy’s work and results.
No factory Prvi Partizan (made in Serbia) ammunition would ship with a random Cor-Bon (not made in Serbia) case and a different primer.
No honest person with a basic understanding of the scientific method would use handloaded or +P ammunition in a comparison with standard pressure bargain priced ammunition if the comparison was meant to show differences between lubricants and their effect on how much smoke comes out of the chamber during firing.
And, on top of FireClean changing ammo types mid-way through their “comparison”, Vuurwapen expressed skepticism that the premise that “smoke” coming from the discharge of a firearm was carbon repelled from the metal of the gun by the FireClean product. From the Vuurwapen blog post:
Smoke after firing is put forth as evidence of a cleaner gun. The cleaner gun concept is central to the ethos of FireClean; it’s even their URL. Different ammunition was selected for the FireClean portion of the demonstration to give the appearance of more smoke and thus a cleaner gun.
FireClean is very upset about the findings, and claims that sales have tanked to the tune of $25,000 per month since the story was originally published. Frankly, I believe sales of FireClean will probably plummet at least twice that as the Streisand Effect kicks in.
The Streisand effect is the phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet.
It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently drew further public attention to it. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters to suppress numbers, files, and websites. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.[1][2]
FireClean has now sued in federal court, claiming defamation. And they want punitive damages as well.
Recently I discovered that myself and Everett Baker were being sued by FireClean for publishing the results of scientific testing of their product along with, among other things, canola oil. You may read their entire complaint here.
A major thrust of their suit is that I claimed or implied their product was Crisco. If you will recall from the first article, I clearly stated “I did not – and still do not – believe that FireClean is Crisco…”
When TFB posted an article titled in part “FireClean is Crisco,” I urged the author to change his title and commented publicly on the article that, again, I did not think FireClean was Crisco.
There are obviously issues with their other claims in the complaint, but that is one I felt needed to be addressed immediately.
Furthermore, the series of articles published here contained tests from three different laboratories, and I published every bit of available data and every relevant quote from those who reviewed the data. FireClean’s legal complaint contains a redacted (missing the full spectra) NMR test from a single laboratory.
This will be one worth watching. It’s a dangerous attempt to intimidate people out of their First Amendment right to report the truth. I don’t see, unless Vuurwapen/Tuohy and Baker cooked the books or published written statements that FireClean was indeed Crisco (and not just similar to said vegetable oil), that these two guys are going to be held liable. Having said that, the defendants will have expended serious money defending against this suit until it’s thrown out.
As for FireClean?
You couldn’t give me their product at this point. I’ll stick with Ed’s Red.
6 thoughts on “CRISCO? REALLY? FireClean sues blog for pointing out similarities between FireClean and Crisco Vegetable Oil.”
My rifle smokes when I burn through a couple of mags rapid fire. Hell, it even smokes after I quit shooting. Is CleanFire or FireClean gonna say that is carbon being repelled by their product line as well?
This stuff sounds like snakeoil. Literally.
I hope I am not at risk of being sued. but a very famous health spokesman claims that Crisco is actually a lubricant created by the Germans during the WWI as a way to lube their U-boats. Seems that subs at the time had a problem with oils that smoke at lower temps. Crisco doesn’t create as much of a smoke problem as traditional oils. After the
war they tried to market Crisco as a soap making product but that didnt work so it was sold for food production as in cooking
Germans had nothing to do with it. Made in 1911 by Proctor and Gamble. It was the first all vegetable shortening.
The way the accusation against Mike Rowe is phrased needs to be revisited. It makes it sound like “inappropriate touching” in the worst way, when that was never what was alleged. You should really edit that to make it read what it was – a scuffle. Otherwise, a casual reading would cause someone to infer that there was something sexual there, and that was NEVER alleged by ANYONE.
Having no knowledge of this incident prior to reading this article, that was the underlying message that paragraph communicated to me – ‘Mike Rowe is a sexual predator’.
Specifically the highlighting of his “inappropriate touching of GSL women and little girls” has strong sexual connotations.
I’m sure its just an innocent mistake, but I would amend that phrasing pronto, Jboch.
There was zero sexual connotation in our post.
His touching was unwelcome and highly inappropriate.
To eliminate any further misunderstand from people who equate “inappropriate touching” with sexual abuse, I’ve tweaked the verbiage.
My rifle smokes when I burn through a couple of mags rapid fire. Hell, it even smokes after I quit shooting. Is CleanFire or FireClean gonna say that is carbon being repelled by their product line as well?
This stuff sounds like snakeoil. Literally.
I hope I am not at risk of being sued. but a very famous health spokesman claims that Crisco is actually a lubricant created by the Germans during the WWI as a way to lube their U-boats. Seems that subs at the time had a problem with oils that smoke at lower temps. Crisco doesn’t create as much of a smoke problem as traditional oils. After the
war they tried to market Crisco as a soap making product but that didnt work so it was sold for food production as in cooking
Germans had nothing to do with it. Made in 1911 by Proctor and Gamble. It was the first all vegetable shortening.
The way the accusation against Mike Rowe is phrased needs to be revisited. It makes it sound like “inappropriate touching” in the worst way, when that was never what was alleged. You should really edit that to make it read what it was – a scuffle. Otherwise, a casual reading would cause someone to infer that there was something sexual there, and that was NEVER alleged by ANYONE.
Having no knowledge of this incident prior to reading this article, that was the underlying message that paragraph communicated to me – ‘Mike Rowe is a sexual predator’.
Specifically the highlighting of his “inappropriate touching of GSL women and little girls” has strong sexual connotations.
I’m sure its just an innocent mistake, but I would amend that phrasing pronto, Jboch.
There was zero sexual connotation in our post.
His touching was unwelcome and highly inappropriate.
To eliminate any further misunderstand from people who equate “inappropriate touching” with sexual abuse, I’ve tweaked the verbiage.
I’ll just leave it at that.