You got me curious...what is the heartburn with Benchmade?
Started many years back. A little something
everyone forgot about.
President of Benchmade back then, Les DeAsis, decided no more foreign-made Benchmade knives. All would now be Made in the USA. Sounds great! Except for one thing.... DeAsis publicly stated that the reason why Benchmade was doing this had
NOTHING to do with patriotism! Absolutely nothing at all. He stopped short of saying America could go screw itself. But that was his basic attitude. Production was moved fully to America to tighten up Q.C. standards and be able to keep a closer eye on that to make sure it didn't slip. Which was B.S.
I owned a handful of foreign-made Benchmades at the time. Nothing wrong with them from a quality perspective. The Benchmade Benchmite II in particular was a fantastic little knife that fit easily in the watch-pocket of a pair of denim jeans.
I mean seriously, who does that? Your core customer base is made up of Americans. You move all the production to America. Move has nothing to do with patriotism. Why not just sit back, keep quiet, and enjoy the admiration of your core customer base. Enjoy the predictable short-term jump in sales. Literally no reason to admit that you don't give a crap about being patriotic.
Second reason happened about 4 years ago. The huge scandal involving a certain police department and an assist from Benchmade. But more than just an assist. It's no surprise that Benchmade has been Anti-2nd Amendment for the longest time. Even contributing to groups actively fighting to take away gun rights from law-abiding citizens. Nevermind the fact that a significant chunk of Benchmade's customers are gun owners. Benchmade doesn't care.
Here's a video that goes into more detail. Jeff used to be a CPFer decades ago, but left to concentrate on his channel. His decision was to ultimately keep buying and reviewing Benchmade knives. He's an admitted gun-owner by the way. With several firearms. He makes his living through his channel. I don't with mine. Not with my review channel, nor with my ASMR channel. Even if I did, I would never review products from a company that clearly despises America and the Constitution. And, has done so for decades. (Same goes for Nike, and a few other companies. I don't forget. I can't. I literally can't forget things like that. Just how I was hard-wired.)