F-bomb Ordnance, LLC

Article: F-bomb Ordnance, LLC

By: Tim Krenz

For: Original Submission; Printed version modified by editor.

July 27, 2015

An old saying goes, “Three sides exist to every story: Yours, mine, and the cold hard facts.” And in the same sense, no one owns a monopoly on truth, and facts stand above it. To explore a controversy in the City of St. Croix Falls, F-BOMB Ordnance, LLC, allowed the Osceola Sun, at its own request, to tour the establishment and conduct an interview last week.

Dr. Geoff Gorres, MD, and Mr. Troy Chamberlin, the two owners present, showed the Sun the firmly built, beautiful red brick building that Chamberlin purchased several years ago. Because of the economic environment of the area, the building had stood empty for 2-1/2 years, without a sustainable business having succeeded at the location, on the west side of main street as you approach the downtown from WI Hwy 8. Popularly referred to as the “red brick grille” building, it rests next to the old, vacant fire hall, and across the street from another venerable St. Croix Falls brick building, an old newspaper office, now a pet food store.

Inside the store, the establishment has a super-neat and very clean atmosphere, in all the details for a high-end, quality-product gun store that serves mainly advocates, sportswomen and -men, collectors, and law enforcement and US military personnel. The main shop floor in front of the counter tastefully displays non-lethal accessories, items, etc. for customers. One can see the décor immediately of stuffed animals and US and foreign military items, including hats. In fact, some of the items of historical meaning come from family members of the owner(s). Behind the counter, and accessible only to staff, one finds a varied collection of firearms, which also feature items developed by the company in their 5-plus years of business, and fulfilled currently in very secure rooms.

The owners obviously have a good sense of their business, and showed visiting customers product knowledge and customer service expertise with very confident and careful measures of handling both product and customers. Of the owners, Troy Chamberlin, who served in US Air Force Special Operations units as a qualified operator, and Dr. Gorres, now a retired Lt. Cmdr. (USN), both have other jobs. The other owners do, too.Yet, all the owners spend a large part of their time in the store because of the success of their business model so far. They hope to grow their business and receive a return on investment on their very, very large capital investment in F-BOMB. Since business has only one bottom line rule, make a profit, in growing their business they hope to engage two or three other part-or-full-time employees soon.

As investors in the community, and as active benefactors of charitable causes in the St. Croix Valley, their sense of values make a strong stake in helping, never harming, their neighbors. In the last twelve months, they have spent a documented $116,000 inside the city limits or its immediate townships. As their brick-and-mortar-store business grows, and as their online presence and website, www.f-bomb.net ,continues to generate sales, these valuable benefits from a once dead store-front would accrue to the benefit of any community. Furthermore, Gorres points out, “the store receives no subsidies; or asks for none.”

An “unspoken” issue in this St. Croix Falls conflict of perspectives, according to Gorres, comes from local concern about having a gun store in the community. In an “anonymous” “concerned citizens” letter, obtained by the Sun, requesting citizens to sign a petition and attend the June 29^th city council meeting to speak against the store, the author(s) state, “After all the massacres by homegrown terrorists, it's our chance to say we don't want to be the town where the next perpetrators buy weapons.”

That same concerned citizens letter, according to an F-BOMB Ordnance, LLC correspondence with city officials, “invokes imagery of 'massacres by homegrown terrorist' and decries a slogan on our website that 'WE believe in being THAT Guy!” The F-bomb letter to the city goes on to list some venerable heroes and figures of American history, showing what they mean by “that guy”: including General George S. Patton, USA, from the Second World War. Also listed: Lt. Gen. “Chesty” Puller, USMC, a key commander in the horror-filled campaign around the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, who helped save over 20,000 US and allied servicemen from destruction.

As Gorres and Chamberlin make clear, “Our customer puts on body armor and faces danger everyday. They live on the edge.” Stating to the city officials, in the above mentioned letter, “That guy ensures that we as citizens have the freedom to voice our opinions, and pursue life, liberty and happiness,” referring specifically to the law enforcement and military personnel who form a very key and solid customer base. And as like every other reputable, and very exclusive store providing firearms, F-BOMB must comply with some of the most stringent, and rather necessary, regulations of the US Code, the FBI for background checks, and as a firearms-security and licensed-sales retailer regulated by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF). They must maintain 100% compliance at all times, which the city officials verified to the BATF on behalf of F-BOMB, allowing the store to open and operate.

Since the city's public nuisance Ordinance 10.02 seems like the key tool to the efforts to remove the so-called “offending” F-bomb.net signs, which would ultimately hurt the business, several problems arise for the city if it censors the signage name. The “F-BOMB,” no matter whether it implies just the letter, a euphemism for profanity, or in some military parlance, the word “Freedom,” involves the city in dilemma of both intellectual and real property rights.

Public records for an LLC, or “limited liability company,” must go through a name search by a state agency of registration. That agency verifies that no other name exists using the same name, “F-BOMB Ordnance.” Upon approval by the state agency, that name becomes intellectual property, protected like registered copyrights. For a court to seriously contemplate outlawing, in effect, the letter “F,” sounds too ridiculous to believe. The courts, except in public endangerment and immediate and present threat, usually decides freedom of speech cases in favor of speech protection.

Finally, another problem arises with the property itself, which Mr. Chamberlin offered as an option, in a email to city mayor Brian Blesi, to sell to anyone for a sum of $379,900 and move F-BOMB out of the city. If any court anywhere in the United States rules against an owner to sell, use, dispose or otherwise alienate property in a legal, lawful, ethical and moral manner as they see fit, the entire edifice of the US Constitution and all its laws make no sense. As the F-BOMB.net owners say, they have a moral high ground, because “if we give up our rights, we'll never get them back.” They expect and plan to defend their store and any concerns others see in it, from any challengers, within the city or in any court of the land.