It's well known within the firearms industry that gun shops are often the first line of defense in any potentially nefarious transaction — and that extends to companies who make firearms and accessories. If something seems shady (and could get them in trouble down the line) it's within their right to refuse the sale and stave off an potentially disastrous outcome.

What's not so common is a retailer or manufacturer getting public credit for it — often the story is instead about the gun shop who unwittingly sold a firearm to an evil doer, or the brand he used to commit the crime.

But a Utah gun maker is getting kudos for putting principle before profit by refusing a sale of its precision rifles to the government of Pakistan, believing the risk was too great that those firearms would wind up in the hands of jihadists targeting American troops and their allies.

The West Valley City, Utah-based Desert Tech (which recently changed its name from Desert Tactical Arms) said in a Facebook post announcing the move that while the sale would have been legal through the U.S. government's foreign military sales agreements with Pakistan, it just didn't feel right.

"In consulting with other arms companies the general responses I got was, if they don't buy it from you, then they will get it somewhere else, or money is money," said Desert Tech president and founder Nick Young. "After much internal review we elected not to sell to Pakistan."

The lucrative deal was estimated at $15 million for Desert Tech's innovative bullpup rifles — that's a significant sum for the boutique rifle company that was founded in 2007, though the company does reportedly have several foreign military sales contracts already.