I still own and use mechs from time to time but if I owned a vape store no way in hell would I sell them. As @Jose mentioned in vapings infancy mechs were the only way to get better performance over say a Provari or other low wattage devices at the time. I loved my first mech and RDA, really what finally got me off the stinkies and into vaping full time. Now that there are safer options that provide the same or better performance mechs are too much of a liability IMO for most of the vaping public.
The FDA deserves part of the blame as well, I always thought it was absolutely stupid to stop vape shops from doing builds and offering as much help as they can. They put handcuffs on the vape shops then blame them when someone is uneducated, how stupid is that?
I heard about this story on the news, second death in the US from an exploding vape pen and both where mech mods. Sorry to say but if it means banning mech mods to save vaping then that is better than banning all vape devices.
Feel for the guy and his family though, just too young.
Edit: I decided a while back to not do anymore mech reviews, semi-mechanical with protections are ok though, basically a regulated mod. It was when I got the Lost Vape Furyan in for review and found that it had to be taken apart a lot to clean the contacts to get the best performance. When I began to think about it I didn’t want to tell a possible noob to do the same thing, they put it back together wrong and boom. The vendor who sent it to me for review was not happy and I don’t blame them but it just didn’t feel right. I would never recommend a mech to a noob and reviewing them felt like promoting there use. There fine with an experienced vaper who knows how to use them safely but why take the chance with a noob when there are better options.