[SkunkApe]

http://john-ross.net/betrayal.htm

ROSS IN RANGE
The Betrayal and Redemption of an American Icon, or
Smith & Wesson and the Springfield Sledgehammer
By John Ross

Copyright 2003 by John Ross. Electronic reproduction of this article freely permitted provided it is reproduced in its entirety with attribution given.


For over a century, Smith and Wesson, the Springfield, Massachusetts gunmaker, has been known for producing some of the world’s finest handguns. Devotees of the marque are many, and I have been one since before I needed to shave. There are also some shooters and gun collectors who refuse to buy any firearm made by the company, now and forever. Those people should change their minds right now. Some background:

My life changed the morning of my 14th birthday on June 17, 1971, when my uncle came over and picked me up for a day of shooting. He was the kind of relative every kid should have in his life at least once: Tall, powerfully built, smart, exciting, generous, and wealthy. We often went to the range together to shoot target rifles, but on this day we went to the riverbank to pop driftwood with some handguns that he brought along. I owned a .22 Smith & Wesson revolver that my late father had given me which I was good with, and I’d shot my uncle’s .38s before, but today he brought something bigger.

My uncle opened a zippered case and handed me a gleaming blued steel .357 Magnum, a 5"-barreled Smith & Wesson Model 27, the one built on the N-Series frame, their largest frame size. I loaded it from a box of ammo he’d set out, put on my earmuffs, and began to try my skill with the big gun. My uncle began shooting the .45 he had carried in WWII.

There’d been a big storm up north the night before, and the river was filled with branches and other pieces of wood floating by. Soon we were both making sticks jump in the water. The .357 I was using fired a lighter bullet than his .45, but at a much higher velocity. The splash it made was a little bit bigger, and that threw the driftwood farther in the air, which I liked.

Different people with different eyes and hands will need different sight settings when shooting the same handgun. It had taken me two cylinders to figure out exactly where the .357 would hit for me using a center hold: an inch high and slightly to the left at ten yards. After I figured that out, I made the driftwood hop regularly. My uncle got a big kick out of the good time I was having, and when I finished the box of 50 rounds, he handed me another gun and said, "You’re doing pretty well with that--try this one."

It looked like the .357 I’d been shooting, but with a longer and thicker barrel. It was a .44 Magnum, the Model 29. I had read about them (endlessly) but had never seen one in the flesh. I knew they were very hard to get, as S&W didn’t produce many under the best of circumstances, and with semiauto pistol production at the Springfield plant cranked up for the Vietnam War, new or like-new 29s were so scarce they were bringing twice the suggested retail. "See what you think," he told me. I loaded it and took a firm two-handed grip, making sure the web of my right hand was high up on the backstrap. I’d read of the heavy recoil, but couldn’t believe it would be more painful than some other things I did, like playing football.

It wasn’t. The gun came back hard, but it only stung a little bit, and the results were spectacular. Unlike the .357, the sights on this gun were set just right for me. At about 25 feet, the first shot hit right where the sights were aligned, on the bottom edge of a foot-long piece of driftwood. A geyser of water sent the wood spinning fifteen feet in the air. My uncle let out a whoop, and shot at the wood as soon as it landed. He hit it in the middle and broke it, but the pieces only jumped a few inches off the water. (You have to hit right under a floating object to really kick it in the air. Tens of thousands of .22 rounds on the river had taught me this.)

I took aim at the larger of the two pieces and sent it even higher than before. While it was in the air, I had time to re-cock the gun and aim it where the wood was going to land. As soon as it hit the water I sent it on its way again, four times in a row.

The effect that my shooting performance had on my uncle was all out of proportion to the skill involved, and when I tried to hand the gun back to him, he insisted I finish the rest of the box. I started shooting targets that were farther and farther away, holding up more front sight as I had done so many times with my .22 revolver. My uncle, an accomplished competitive bullseye shooter, had never practiced shooting at ranges farther than 50 yards with a handgun. I had, a lot. When I connected with a floating gallon can at over 100 yards and it filled with water and sank, my uncle swore in surprise. A little while later, when he shot a piece of wood out of the water and threw it some six feet in the air, I hit it at the top of its arc and split it in two in midair. It was partly luck, but the wood was only about fifteen feet away, so it wasn’t all that amazing that I hit it. My uncle, though, was stunned. "Jee-sus Kee-rist! I should have gotten you a .44 a long time ago!"

When I handed the gun back to him he wouldn’t take it. He told me it was my birthday present, and when I protested, he threatened to throw it in the river if I kept arguing with him. I shut my mouth quickly.

After shooting we ate lunch, and my uncle and I discussed the history of the guns we’d been using. The .357 Magnum had been introduced in 1935 by Smith & Wesson as a logical response to the handloaders and experimenters who had been loading their own extra-heavy .38 Special ammunition in Smith & Wesson’s heavy-framed revolvers. S&W brought out a new round 1/10 inch longer (so it wouldn’t fit in small, weak .38 Special guns that were owned by millions of people), loaded it to high pressure, and called it the .357 Magnum, which was the actual bullet diameter of the .38 revolver rounds.

I knew all this from reading books on arms development. What I did not know was that in 1935, some people criticized S&W, saying "no one except the police" needed such a powerful handgun. An editorial in the NRA magazine American Rifleman actually took this stance, and my uncle said it prompted many outdoorsmen to write in protest. The .357 was mainstream in 1971, but in 1935 it had been cutting edge to the general public.

I knew from my reading that handloaders had been souping up not only the .38 Special long before S&W introduced the .357, they had been doing the same thing with the .44 Special in S&W’s strong N-frame guns since at least as far back as 1926*, creating loads much more powerful than the new .357. My uncle told me that the .357 sold very well in 1935, and it had been hard to get one then. The heavy-loaded .44 Special was cheaper and readily available, but you had to assemble your own ammunition to get the most out of it.

Two decades later, history repeated itself, and Smith & Wesson introduced the .44 Magnum, with a case 1/10 inch longer than the Special and loaded by the factories to a pressure of 40,000 PSI. It was about 20% more powerful than the hot .44 Special loads that savvy handloaders had been assembling for over a quarter-century, and the Model 29 was heavily advertised as The World’s Most Powerful Handgun. Of course, as small-minded people are wont to do, some of the public turned up their noses and proclaimed that no one needed such a gun, since they themselves had no use for one.


The gun that I fired that day had been made thirteen years before, in 1958, the third year of production. It had a high polish and the beautiful milk-blue finish that graced many of Smith & Wesson’s magnums of that period. Over the years I would acquire many other Smith .44s, but none were any nicer or noticeably more accurate than my first one. In 1958, Smith & Wesson had been a family-owned company for over a century. In 1965 they were bought by the South American conglomerate Bangor Punta, and quality became a bit problematic. Occasionally a gun with bad build quality would slip through, but in my experience the company would always make it right.

In the ensuing months, when he saw how much I was shooting the one I had, my uncle gave me two more Model 29s, bought three more for himself, and purchased for us a progressive loader capable of producing 600 rounds of ammunition per hour so that we could both shoot our .44s more without me spending all my free time making ammo for them. My uncle died of a heart attack in 1976, five years after I first shot the birthday .44 on the river. By the time of his death we had, between the two of us, fired over 40,000 rounds of ammunition through our big Smith & Wessons. I've kept at it since then, and today my total .44 expenditure is over 110,000 rounds.

The Springfield company came under new ownership again in the early 1980s, and in 1987 was purchased by the British conglomerate Tompkins PLC. Under Tompkins, S&W gradually instituted more modern CNC machining equipment, and in my opinion build quality, if not surface finish, eventually came to rival the best work the company had ever produced.

Nothing bad happened under Tompkins ownership until the United States got an administration that was both Socialist and rabidly anti-freedom. Here is where the story gets interesting.

continued on next post....

[SkunkApe]

...continued from above

At the end of the millennium, gunmakers across the U.S. were being plagued with ridiculous state-sponsored lawsuits alleging that the makers were responsible for the criminal misuse of guns. This would be like government agencies suing Dell, Compaq, Gateway, and Hewlett-Packard because forgers used their computers to craft false documents, or suing Trojan because rapists were using their product to avoid leaving DNA evidence. In any event, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under the Clintons pressured S&W to sign an agreement stipulating that the company would cave in to a whole laundry list of unconstitutional demands in return for the government backing off on lawsuits. The British owners, spiritual descendants of Neville Chamberlain, and perhaps under orders from Tony Blair, agreed.

Response by American gunowners and other domestic gun companies was overwhelming outrage. Smith & Wesson became the target of the most successful consumer boycott I have ever seen. Most gun buyers absolutely refused to buy any Smith & Wesson product manufactured after the date of the agreement. The appeasement-minded Brits running Tompkins decided to rid themselves of the red-ink-bleeding headache that S&W had become, and let it be known that the company was for sale.

And then a marvelous thing happened. One of the terms of the agreement was that Smith & Wesson had to come up with internal locks on all their guns within 24 months.** Along came a minuscule little Utah-based company called Saf-T-Hammer, which had developed and patented a tiny internal lock that could be incorporated into the manufacture of all S&W handguns with only a minor tooling change. It was small, unobtrusive, worked with a small, tubular key, and best of all, you never had to use the damned thing if you didn’t want to.

Saf-T-Hammer ended up buying Smith & Wesson in 2001 for $15 million in cash and assumed a note of about $30 million, payable in ten years. This was absolute chump change (Tompkins had paid $112 million for S&W in 1987.) The new U.S. owners embarked on an aggressive program of expanding on S&W’s already excellent product line in two ways: First, they used their CNC technology to produce smaller runs of specialized variants of their standard guns: Special length barrels, different finishes, integral mounts for scopes, guns especially set up for different types of competition, etc., at the same or slightly higher prices as the standard models. Second, to address the demands of consumers in the ever-increasing number of Right-To-Carry states, they greatly expanded their state-of-the-art line of guns made from Scandium and Titanium alloys, which weigh a full forty percent(!) less than their steel counterparts, but only cost about 15% more. (Imagine if sports car makers could offer the same size sports car with the same horsepower and cut the weight 40% for only a 15% increase in cost.)

The new owners of Smith & Wesson incorporated their proprietary internal lock into every gun they manufactured. Then, and to their everlasting credit, since the Dogpatch crowd was out of the White House, they completely ignored virtually every other provision of the hated HUD agreement.

Unfortunately, this has not been good enough for a large number of gunowners. These people want Smith & Wesson to publicly renounce the agreement in writing, and stop making guns with the little internal lock that no one ever uses anyway. They claim that only then will the new owners have demonstrated that they’ve seen the error of their predecessors’ ways in trying to appease evil.

Fellows, actions speak louder than words, and the actions of the new owners have been exemplary. There’s also one more action that the new Smith & Wesson has taken, which I've saved for last. They've introduced a new gun firing a new cartridge.

Players in the money business have a term for when a person or a company makes their displeasure with you crystal clear. It’s called "???? you, strong letter to follow." Smith & Wesson's new model introduction is shouting this at every state extortionist that would chill Americans’ freedoms. As in 1935 and 1956, S&W has introduced a new, powerful cartridge, and as in 1935 and 1956, the naysayers are whining that "no one needs it." But unlike the .357 and .44 Magnums that were incremental improvements over existing technology, the new S&W cartridge is something else.

Several companies now make handguns more powerful than the .44 Magnum. Arms chambered for the .50 Action Express, .480 Ruger, .445 SuperMag, .475 Linebaugh and .454 Casull generate between ten and fifty percent more energy than the now-ubiquitous .44 Magnum. Someone at S&W must have decided it was time to be back on top and to quit screwing around with small performance increases. They called up Cor-Bon, an ammo company known for innovation, and explained what they wanted. They set a couple of engineers, one of them a young man named Brett Curry, to designing a new, larger frame size, thicker and stronger everywhere, and made of high-tensile stainless steels. They told the engineers of some future plans they had in mind for the new frame, and to make it with a very long cylinder. The engineers saw where this was leading and gave their new creation a smaller grip frame than the .44 so that a special shock-absorbing synthetic grip that completely covered the back of the frame could be used, to tame the expected recoil without making the grip too large for ordinary hands. Management asked what letter designation the new frame would be called, and since Brett was of Generation X, he suggested "The X-Frame." X-Frame it was. The CNC machines were fired up and the new X-Frame Smith went from idea to finished product in a matter of months. Here’s the fun part: The new S&W .500 Magnum costs about 25% more than their .44 Magnum. But it is a full TWO AND A HALF TIMES AS POWERFUL as the .44. And it carries a lifetime warranty.

Think about that for a moment. Imagine Chevrolet, with their special 400-horsepower ZO6 Corvette, deciding that Dodge’s new 500-horsepower Viper needs a little competition, as do the modified (and very expensive) "tuner cars" packing a little over 600 horsepower. So they keep the Corvette in their lineup since it’s a good seller, and come up with a new sports car that sells for 25% more than the Vette, has a lifetime warranty, and A THOUSAND HORSEPOWER. This is exactly what S&W has done. Go here for a visual comparison of the .44 Magnum and the new .500.

Just as there would be a bunch of whiners bleating that "no one needs" a 1000 HP Chevrolet and making noises about banning it, so have there been complaints about the new Smith & Wesson. The big iron was unveiled to a stunned audience in mid-February at the Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) show in Orlando (along with an amazing 26.5 ounce scandium/titanium .44 Magnum that received less notice but is arguably an even greater engineering accomplishment.)

The wire services picked up the story and instantly there was a legislator making the hilarious proclamation that this new gun would be the "weapon of choice" for inner city gang members (the politicians' code phrase for "young black criminals with gold teeth and their pants falling off.") Memo to Rep. Danny Davis: For years you people in the gun-banning crowd have been telling us we need to ban guns that hold too many rounds of ammunition, fire too many shots too quickly, are too small and light, too easily concealed, or too inexpensive. The S&W .500 holds only five rounds, cannot be fired rapidly by anyone (even an expert), weighs as much as seven of Smith & Wesson’s small revolvers, is only slightly easier to conceal than a bowling ball, and retails for almost a thousand dollars. I personally think this last fact makes the .500 the gun bargain of the decade, but I defy anyone to claim that a $950 gun is "inexpensive." As a final note, Rep. Davis, I would pay good money to see one of your gang members fire the .500 while holding it on its side, as is the fashion among would-be gunsels in the ‘hood. Said gang member would be ready for a lot more of those gold teeth.

In any event, in Orlando with dial calipers and plug gages in hand, I discovered the .500 was even better than I’d hoped. The designers had made the chamber/bore dimensional relationship exactly right for best accuracy, something that some other revolver makers (and sometimes even S&W in the Bangor Punta years) seem to ignore. In addition, the gun had a cylinder that was even longer than I had been led to believe. This would allow longer projectiles to be loaded, of a "bore-riding" design I believed would give exceptional power and accuracy. My mind began sketching drawings for the bullet molds I wanted to have made.

I talked about the .500 with Herb Belin, S&W’s handgun production manager. Herb is a big, powerful man who looks like a retired heavyweight prizefighter. He reminds me not a little of my late uncle. At the S&W booth, Herb had a custom 3"-barreled .500 he’d had made for himself tucked in his waistband at the small of his back. My kind of guy. I found out from another rep that S&W had been hoping to sell a thousand of the .500s a year. I snorted when I heard this. Someone in the company's market research department was woefully out of touch. I told the rep I believed I could move a fifth that number personally, and demand would be many times their prediction. I was right. Four days after the gun was introduced the backorders were at 5000. Last I heard that number has doubled.

When I got back to St. Louis, I sketched out and ordered custom molds to cast bullets for the .500 of dimensions I believed would yield the best power and accuracy, and ordered dies and brass to load my bullets into ammo for the big gun. Production was delayed while the factory made a few minor changes to the .500, and by early June I had a pile of test ammo ready to shoot, but nothing to shoot it in. Then an eerie thing happened. On June 17, my birthday, the phone rang. My gun had arrived five minutes ago and did I want to pick it up? I grabbed my range kit and headed out the door.

I fired the .500 at the same spot on the river where I’d touched off my first .44, exactly thirty-two years earlier to the day. In a few minutes I was sending floating driftwood as far in the air as I ever had with an elephant rifle. This thing is a damn sledgehammer I said to myself more than once. Suddenly I was fourteen again, with the sun on my face, the river in front of me, holding a fine piece of machinery that was doing exactly what I told it to, with the unseen presence of a favorite uncle watching from a distance. The .500 wasn't just a sledgehammer, it was a time machine.

In the last four weeks I’ve fired about 600 rounds through my .500 S&W, testing different loads for velocity, accuracy, and pressure. Of the dozens of magnum revolvers I have owned in the last three decades, this one is the most accurate. It is unbelievably powerful, more so than promised, to the point that I believe it is truly suitable and not marginal for the largest African game. The shock-absorbing rubber grip makes it no more painful to fire than a .44 Magnum with wooden grips. This fact astonishes me. S&W does need to make a version of it available with a more manageable barrel size, and I'm sure they will when production gets caught up. There are a few other changes I would make, but that's what gunsmiths are for.

Auto-Ordnance had the Chicago Typewriter--the Thompson gun. Colt had the Peacemaker .45 Single Action Army revolver. Smith & Wesson is once again American-owned, and now has the Springfield Sledgehammer, the awesome .500.

They're back.

John Ross 7/21/03



* Idaho gun writer, big game guide, and inveterate experimenter Elmer Keith was the guiding force behind almost all such revolver load development during this period.

** The agreement also stipulated that within 36 months, S&W invent and implement a magic new technology that would somehow have the gun identify the owner and let only him fire it. As always, guns made for police use were exempt from this requirement. Police know that such "technology" in a self-defense situation, whether with a human or an animal adversary, is likely to get the owner killed.

[Abenaki]

Bla bla bla. Yada yada yada yada!

Until S&W openly admits that they were wrong for screwing us gun owners over I will never buy any thing from them!

I can just hear it now....You don't understand! It's not S&W that screwd us over, it was the old S&W that did it!

To bad! The "NEW" S&W has the power to come forward and tell us that they will never honor any deal that would destroy our rights!!!!!!
It's funny that they keep double talking and telling us how new and improved that they are. But they refuse to denownce the deal that S&W cut with the Clinton bunch.

Never again!
Abenaki

[Hkmp5sd]

Until S&W openly admits that they were wrong for screwing us gun owners over I will never buy any thing from them!

That same opinion and dedication needs to be applied to voting in reference to politicians, including republicans and especially GWB. They vote a new AW ban, the don't get my vote regardless of who is running against them. We may have to endure 4 years of Hillary, but the next republican president will take note of the consequences for passing any gun control laws.

[Preacherman]

With the greatest of respect, Abenaki, I think you're wrong on this one.

I believe the owners of S&W have done the best they can in terms of the agreement. Don't forget it's an order of court - they CAN'T stand up and denounce it without being guilty of contempt of court, and being subject to judicial sanction. The agreement is horrible, I agree, but the only way of getting rid of it is to have both the Federal government and a couple of cities - all of whom were parties to it - to go into court with S&W, before a judge, and jointly ask the judge to revoke the agreement. Whilst the Feds (under our present leader) would probably do this, the city of Boston is not about to do any such thing!

S&W is lumbered with the agreement, and a future anti-gun administration may well try to enforce it, with disastrous results for the company and for us shooters. I think they're doing the best they can under very difficult circumstances, and I won't punish the present owners for the sins of the previous owners.

[LawDog]

Fellows, actions speak louder than words,

Truer words were never spoken.

Smith and Wesson's actions were to spit in my eye in public. And now their action is to whisper an apology in private?

No, sir, not bloody well good enough by half.

Smith and Wesson tried - intentionally and knowingly tried - to screw over gun owners and the Second Amendment.

Balance is owed.

Smith and Wesson aided and abetted the gun grabbers in attacking the Second Amendment and us on the legal front. They aided and abetted an attack on the Second Amendment and us on the political front. And they did it loudly, proudly and publicly.

It is in legal and political matters that Smith and Wesson owes us redress.

I have seen no legal, nor political actions on the part of Smith and Wesson which even faintly come close to correcting this situation.

So. I will purchase no S&W handcuffs, nor will I suggest buying S&W handcuffs, leg-irons nor bellychains to replace my agency's worn sets.

I shall not purchase Smith and Wesson firearms, nor will I suggest S&W products to my agency.

When Smith and Wesson does as much legally, politically and publicly to help the Second Amendment as they did legally, politically and publicly to hurt the Second Amendment, then we shall see.

When Smith and Wesson does as much legally, politically and publicly to help gun owners as they did legally, potically and publicly to hurt gun owners, then we shall talk.

That is final.

LawDog

[Abenaki]

Hey Preacherman.

I understand what you mean.
They may not be able to get out from under the areement.
But instead of white washing it and hoping that every one will forget it, they could be do some thing to show the gun owners that the "new" S&W will not be doing anything but taking a strong stand for our rights.

[Triad]

Preacherman, I don't think it matters that they probably can't get out of the agreement, because to the best of my knowledge they haven't bothered to try to get out of it.

Edited for typo.

[Standing Wolf]

If Smith & Wesson wanted my dollars, it would have rescinded the deal it made with the Snopes Clinton-Liar Gore régime and offered me revolvers without internal locks.

What I bought this week instead of a new Smith & Wesson was a 1951 Smith & Wesson K-22 with five screws and one of the sweetest triggers I've ever pulled. I carry a pre-agreement Smith & Wesson model 60. I'm in the market for a model 57 or 657 .41 magnum revolver—pre-agreement and without lock, of course.

[Mike Irwin]

"Fellows, actions speak louder than words, and the actions of the new owners have been exemplary. There’s also one more action that the new Smith & Wesson has taken, which I've saved for last. They've introduced a new gun firing a new cartridge."

Uh, what actions?

The writer has obviously been blinded by the shiny carrot that's been dangled in front of him, and has completely missed the point that to this point S&W hasn't done jack ???? towards ending the agreement with the federal government.

With a pro-gun attorney general in office, no one can say that they don't have a golden opportunity to obtain, in writing, a rescindation.

And Preacherman, you're wrong.

While it is a contract and court order, both parties can enter into an agreement to break the contract and void the court order.

You'll kindly remember that S&W has already taken this step with the City of Boston, so please don't tell me that it can't be done.

Introducing a new cartridge and handgun is fine...

For Smith & Wesson.

But it doesn't do anything to relieve American gunowners of the dangers posed by the agreeemnt.

Obviously the smoke and mirrors are enough for some people.

And that's not just sad. It's simply terrifying in its implications.

[Wildalaska]

What I bought this week instead of a new Smith & Wesson was a 1951 Smith & Wesson K-22 with five screws and one of the sweetest triggers I've ever pulled

Well heck I would do that silly boycott or no silly boycott..

WildnothingbeatsanoldoneAlaska

[rock jock]

Uh, what actions?
The action of inaction. IOW, not fully complying with the agreement. By doing so, they are thumbing their nose at the original partnership forged in h***. Maybe someday they will be fully released from the agreement and who knows that they haven't already tried. As for me, I have ended my boycott.

[Mike Irwin]

Inaction is generally no defense before the law.

The same is true of ignorance of the law.

I truthfully see a time in the not-too-distant future when the Democrats have recaptured all three seats of Federal government, and the gloves coming off BIG TIME regarding gun control measures in this country.

The easiest, and most symbolic to enact/enforce, is S&W's strict compliance with the agreement.

I imagine the wailing and teeth gnashing among gunowners will be profound, with lots of screaming about THEM THEM THEM being responsible, when in truth those truly responsible will be starting back from the mirror in the morning.

[citizen]

Haven't been able to buy a new S&W for several years now; maybe never will again.......:fire: .....and I KNOW I am NOT alone.....:neener: :cuss:

[AR-10]

I am weary of the argument that the new owners would happily be rid of the agreement "if only they could".

They bought the agreement along with the SW logo. It was a concious decision on their part to purchase the whole enchilada. They have done nothing of substance since then to negate it, other than ignore it and complaints about it.

[Monte Harrison]

I realize they would be taking a great risk if they burned their copy of The Agreement on national TV. If they don't have the balls to do that, the very least they could do is issue a public apology in the newspapers and gun rags, something to the effect of "we inherited a heinous court-ordered agreement we don't have the balls to defy," or maybe "defying this agreement would be illegal, and we don't do illegal things." What they are doing is simply hoping everyone will forget.

Apparently, they are right.

This agreement WILL come back to bite us all in the bum some day. Guaranteed.

S&W can rot in hell until they grow a set, and do the dangerous but right thing.

[buzz_knox]

The action of inaction. IOW, not fully complying with the agreement. By doing so, they are thumbing their nose at the original partnership forged in h***.

The new owners stated openly that they would abide by the contract. The only thing stopping them is that HUD isn't pushing the contract at this time. But the "new S&W" is on record as willing to do their part when called. So, screw 'em.

[dandean316]

He lost me when he started to shoot at the wood on the water.

[Jack T.]

Maybe I am in the minority. Bought 2 Smiths this year, fixing to buy at least one more.

As much as the anits enjoyed the S&W/HUD agreement, they would rather see a quality, extablished maker go out of business.

[another okie]

"I believe the owners of S&W have done the best they can in terms of the agreement. Don't forget it's an order of court - they CAN'T stand up and denounce it without being guilty of contempt of court, and being subject to judicial sanction."

Wishful thinking.

Hey, if you want a new revolver badly enough to forget that this agreement is still in force and the restrictions it places on our freedom, I guess nothing anyone can say will convince you otherwise. But the parties to an agreement, even a court-approved one, can always rescind it. If S & W and the feds went to court together, it would be a done deal. I've broken plenty of trusts this way.

Your comment also implies they can't say anything bad about it. Guess again. The first amendment still exists in this country. It is not contempt of court to say I made a bad deal, which the court approved. It is contempt of court to fail to abide by the agreement. The agreement does not require S & W to talk nice all the time.

[buzz_knox]

It's also not contempt of court to move to have the contract voided as illegal, which it is.

[.45Ruger]

If Smith & Wesson wanted my dollars, it would have rescinded the deal it made with the Snopes Clinton-Liar Gore régime and offered me revolvers without internal locks.

I will grant rescinding he deal as a precondition o getting business back, but the integrated locks are made by Safe-T-Hammer, the parent compan of S@W. THey aren't going to give up their big new account to a wholly owned subsisiary. The locks are unobtrusive and if the agreement is trashed will give the people of MD at least something to buy.

[HankB]

S&W had been hoping to sell a thousand of the .500s a year. . . I told the rep I believed I could move a fifth that number personally . . . So the author is both a writer and a dealer . . . hmmm, I wonder if S&W offered any, ummm, special considerations to a dealer who said he could move 1/5 of their planned production? :scrutiny:

[Greg L]

Did you guys even see who wrote it? Ask him yourself, he hangs out here.

Greg

[PeteyPete]

What would the punishment be to S&W if they defied the agreement?

[Augustwest]

He lost me when he started to shoot at the wood on the water.

What dandean316 said.

[John Ross]

There seems to be some misunderstanding here concerning the HUD suit and the "agreement."

The suit never went to court. The new owners' actions combined with the new administration caused HUD etc. to drop the suit.

There is *no legal contract* for the next hostile administration to demand be enforced. Get it? THERE IS NO LEGALLY ENFORCEABLE CONTRACT. Hillary & Co. would have to file a new suit, and start negotiations all over again (with, I predict, a very different reaction from S&W.)

The only reason for S&W to "burn the (now irrelevant) agreement in public" and retool to eliminate the internal lock would be to thumb their noses at (and therefore energize) the anti-gunners. It might give you a warm fuzzy to watch them do it, but motivating your enemies to strengthen their forces and re-attack you after you have beaten them is not a great warfare strategy. Read your Sun Tzu.

Do not email me trying to convince me I'm wrong on this. You remind me of a pilot I knew once who flew his Cessna 172 into Lambert International just because he could legally do it, and wanted to show that General Aviation had rights. Controllers had to vector jumbo jets out of the way to comply with his demand to land. He infuriated hundreds of people, and predisposed them to hating General Aviation.

BTW I shoot pistols and rifles over water (or at aerial targets, for that matter)any time there's a good backstop, and will continue to do so until I'm too weak to hold a gun.

Yes, I'm a dealer, almost 100% NFA weapons. I said I could move 200 of the new .500s because I could, just as I could move 200 Corvettes a year if they had 1000 horsepower, a lifetime warranty, and a sub-$60,000 price tag.

Boycott the present S&W all you want, just don't try to get me to join in.

JR

[buzz_knox]

There is *no legal contract* for the next hostile administration to demand be enforced. Get it? THERE IS NO LEGALLY ENFORCEABLE CONTRACT. Hillary & Co. would have to file a new suit, and start negotiations all over again (with, I predict, a very different reaction from S&W.)

Excuse me? There is no contract? HUD threatened to file suit; HUD offered not to file suit in return for the agreement; S&W agreed.

There was an offer.
There was acceptance.
There was valid consideration (HUD got the agreement and did not sue). There is a contract.

[Futo Inu]

1. No they're not back. More of the same substance-void apologist BS. Until the publicly repudiate the agreement (breach it) in writing, delivered to the gov't, the boycott will continue. There most certainly IS a contract. It's "enforceable" by the gov't if S&W breaches by the gov't doing that which they have contracted/promised not to do, to-wit, sue S&W as previously threatened. It IS enforceable in that sense, and IF there is no threat of enforcement in the event of breach, the why in the heck wouldn't S&W just breach/repudiate the darn thing??? You could not be more wrong about that. You've been listening to the apologists.

2. Is this the same John Ross who wrote "Unintended Consequences"? If so, I'm sorely disappointed in him.

3. Unlike the .357 and .44 mag, there is virtually no use for a handgun in that caliber - extemely mininal utility, if any, in most any circumstance. (I'm not knocking it in the sense that it shouldn't be made - make a .50 BMG CCW handgun for all I care - but it's nothing more than a "whose got the biggest" pissing match since Ruger made its .480). In a rifle, the cartridge may have merit, though doesn't the .50 Alaskan already cover this ground? Don't get me wrong, I want one myself (by Freedom Arms, of course) for spits & giggles, and masochistic range sessions - might even develop arm and shoulder strength in multi-shot sessions as a benefit, but why o why? :)

4. Jack T : ahhh, you've fallen victim to ye ole "antis want S&W out of business" fallacy. That's utter nonsense. S&W already DID go out of business once when Thompkins dumped them to Saf T Hammer. What could have happened at that time, but which didn't happen, but which now apparently must happen, is that we continue the boycott until sales suck bad enough to force them to sell the ASSETS only, and not the whole she-bang - the name, factories, patents, etc., without the liabilities - a liquidation, and of course without the agreement (or if they choose not to go down with the ship, repudiate the agreement instead). Forget what the antis want or don't want. That's irrelevant. There will be "x" supply and $$ going to revolvers and other guns that S&W currently makes. So any loss of sales to them will be made up for by $$ going to a competitor (like Taurus), so it's a zero-sum game in terms of our (and the industry's ) economic strength. Likewise, nothing's going to happen to the Smith design's - someone will always buy and own the patents/tooling/etc., and they will be available (preferably as a subdivision of Taurus :) ). But question is, will you give money to a management team of a company that helps take away gun rights? I submit that now that you're informed, if you continue to do so, then you're a traitor, no better than Chuck Schumer - worse, really, because you're a wolf in sheep's clothing, purporting to be the friend of gun owners. Same goes to anyone who buys S&W, of course.

"That's a .44 magnum, the most mediocre-powered handgun in the world. So, ask yourself, do you feel lucky, punk?" -Dirty Harry
:) :rolleyes:

[Futo Inu]

John R., the premises of the arguments leading to your conclusions are just flat wrong, and you are therfore embarrassing yourself:

"The suit never went to court. The new owners' actions combined with the new administration caused HUD etc. to drop the suit." [TRUE - the suit was dropped BECAUSE of the fact that a legally-binding settlement contract was entered into.]

There is *no legal contract* for the next hostile administration to demand be enforced." [UNTRUE- there is a legally binding contract, the method for enforcement of which is described in my previous post]. ".....THERE IS NO LEGALLY ENFORCEABLE CONTRACT." [Again, UNTRUE. Saying it in allcaps repeatedly doesn't make it true]. "Hillary & Co. would have to file a new suit, and start negotiations all over again" [YES, the gov't would have to "enforce" the agreement, the meaning of enforce being doing that which that had agreed to that, which is forego their lawsuit, which promise to not sue it's excused from, in the event of a breach/repudiation by the other party] "(with, I predict, a very different reaction from S&W.)" [Absolutely UNTRUE. There won't be ANY reaction because they WON'T be sued the next time the intimidation process starts with the courts by a Dem admin., because they're still COMPLYING WITH the agreement. You see? They're complying with the agreement in order to NOT BE sued the next time around, during the next wave of bogus lawsuits, and they're laughing at YOU for buying into their BS charade about how they can't repudiate, or whatever argument they have. It's all smoke and mirrors by them - if there were no consequences legally, then why not just repudiate it???] If you choose to bury your head, then fine - after all, you said, don't try to convince me. If you want to be like the idiot anti-gunners who refuse to listen to compelling logic, then that's your choice. But if you DO choose to listen to facts and logics, and also care about gun rights, then you'll boycott S&W. Having said that, I understand, it's difficult when it's part of making your living, as in your case, so it's somewhat understandable. Buying a S&W pesonally isn't though.

P.S. Shooting at wood floating on a river is safe IF there is a high bank on the far side, acting as a berm, and one can see all the places where a ricochet may go into said bank.

[John Ross]

I do not and never have earned my living selling Title I guns, so that is a non-issue. I make ZERO dollars selling S&Ws, because I don't sell any.

I have been told by people with more legal knowledge than I will ever have that "The Agreement" is not now a valid contract. Perhaps I am dead wrong for relaying what lawyers (completely unrelated to S&W) have told me. Won't be the first time.

I think you're expending your gun-rights energy in the wrong direction, but that's your priviledge.

In any event, I'm outta here.

JR

[twoblink]

I think it's a "good faith" issue.

When I'm at a restaurant, and I get bad service, or bad food.. There are things that the manager can do (without admitting they are wrong) to rectify the situation...

I don't think SW has done those things (yet). So until they do..

[buzz_knox]

I have been told by people with more legal knowledge than I will ever have that "The Agreement" is not now a valid contract. Perhaps I am dead wrong for relaying what lawyers (completely unrelated to S&W) have told me.

The people "with more legal knowledge" must not have passed the bar or were (to be generous) misinformed as to the facts and thought this was a settlement agreement dependent on court approval (a somewhat rare affair), not a contract.

[C.R.Sam]

Quicky pickies.

Not just the handloaders n experimenters soupin the .38 Special. The 38-44 was a production cartridge and hot nuff to be high risk in some .38 Special guns.

S&W was bleeding red ink before the agreement. The boycott just intensified the situation. Giving the potential customers yet another reason to put pressure on the company. High price to quality ratio, AND the selling out to the government.

The trigger lock seems to be a design of S&W (under Tompkins owernership) and not the design of Saf T Hammer.

I have no problem with shooting water born targets and aerials IF backstop and land beyond is appropriate.

Smith was not alone in being pressured by the government to sign the agreement. Smith was the only one in the industry to give in tho.

"When I'm at a restaurant, and I get bad service, or bad food.. There are things that the manager can do (without admitting they are wrong) to rectify the situation..."....Twoblink

I agree that it is a , amongst other things, a "Good Faith" issue.
Screw me over and be notified of it. Then if an effort to correct the situation is made; I will keep track. If the situation is corrected, I will be back. If the situation is not corrected and no appearant effort is made to do so; I will not only not be back, I will attempt to educate others re the transgression.

Sam

[Greg L]

:o

Wow, I think Sam just used up a week's worth of responses right there :D .

[citizen]

A WEEK????!!!!!!!!!!:what:

Bullets to bagels that was MORE than a month's worth; and perhaps the
LONGEST post from TFL and THR combined!!!!!!!:neener: