Running a business is hard. Everyone who gripes about CEO salaries has never actually tried to run one. I say that as someone who has and who has failed at it more than once. It's hard as hell.
And, unfortunately, success in one area doesn't ensure success in others, especially when they're only tangentially related.
Michael Cargill challenged the federal government's ban on bump stocks. The reasoning was simple. The stocks didn't meet the legal definition of a machine gun, so the ATF couldn't just decide to classify them as such, especially when they'd already determined they were no such thing.
He won, and it was a significant victory for the Second Amendment.
Now, though, he faces losing his business entirely, and not because he somehow crossed the ATF.
Austin gun-rights advocate Michael Cargill has fought for looser restrictions on firearms for more than a decade. He even helped win a case at the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the first Trump administration’s ban on bump stocks — devices that can convert a semi-automatic into a near fully automatic weapon.
But the Supreme Court may be a cakewalk compared to the challenge Cargill and his gun shop are facing from creditors in bankruptcy court.Cargill and his Central Texas Gun Works owe nearly $3 million to individuals, other businesses, the federal government and even Alex Jones’ bankruptcy estate.
According to court documents, CTCHGC LLC, the gun shop’s registered name, is deep under water, with about five times more in debt than it has in assets. And Cargill’s wealth is so tied up in the gun shop that his personal bankruptcy proceedings are being administered concurrently with those of the business.
The situation is so desperate for Cargill that he has petitioned the court for an emergency hearing this week to allow him to use cash to pay his staff. Their paychecks were due Friday and the motion asks for a hearing as soon as today or Tuesday.
This is the second time in two years the gun shop has declared bankruptcy. The abrupt and untimely death of Cargill’s former attorney Kell Mercer may have been a contributing factor to the need to reenter bankruptcy, according to Stephen Sather, his current attorney.
To make matters worse, he may not have filed as timely as he should have, which means he may not get the protection from creditors he's hoping for here.
That's bad.
His current attorney also says that one creditor started seeing Cargill's business struggle, then went to people who owed Cargill money and tried to collect directly from them, claiming they had a lien on the business. As a result, people who owed Cargill reportedly just shut down entirely because they didn't know what to do.
In fairness, I don't know that I'd know what to do in such a situation either.
Of course, these are what Cargill's attorney says. We don't know if this is accurate or not, but if so, I can see part of why the problems started happening. It's bad enough to start sliding, but then something like that happens, and you might as well be caught in quicksand, because the more you struggle, the worse it gets.
I hate to see this happen to Cargill. I don't know the guy, but he's been a champion for the Second Amendment, and that holds a lot of weight in my book. He took on the feds when they crossed the line, and that's not easy. It's a lot of stress on a person, and it tends to be costly. I hate to think that his fight contributed to his company's problems, though I'm not sure how much he ponied up for the challenge, if anything.
Still, if you're in the area and need something, stop by Cargill's shop in Austin and spend some money. I doubt we can cover the full $3 million, but if nothing else, he should know that the community he supports also supports him.
