Another Firearms Manufacturer In The Cross Hairs
BY Herschel Smith
3 years, 3 months ago
Via David Codrea, at TTAG.
Last year, then-New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal subpoenaed Smith & Wesson, trying to force the manufacturer to hand over internal information regarding its marketing practices. The Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex’s is conducting a coordinated effort to try to skirt the PLCAA’s protections by claiming gun makers are engaging in allegedly false and deceptive advertising.
Smith & Wesson refused to cough up the documents and sued the Garden State to block them. That suit was tossed out and the state filed their own suit to enforce the subpoena. This week, the New Jersey Supreme Court denied Smith & Wesson’s request to stay a lower court’s order to produce the documents, in effect ruling the manufacturer has to produce the documents.
Said the NJ AG, “Getting access to Smith & Wesson’s internal documents was a way “to hold manufacturers liable.”
The problem here is that this is still just about money to the manufacturers, rather than an existential war for survival. They still want it both ways. They want to sell firearms in communist states like New Jersey, and they still want to outfit the police state with weaponry, but they don’t like what follows.
When you dance with the devil …
The solution is to refuse to do business in any state like that, whether New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, or wherever. Not even selling weapons to the police.
Manufacturers are going to have to stay out of such states, and the longer they wait, the better the chance that they end up like Remington.
They have been warned.
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On August 12, 2021 at 1:33 am, skybill said:
Hi Herschel!!!,
“10-4!!!!!!!!”
skybill
On August 12, 2021 at 7:55 am, Fred said:
Firearms manufacturers sell to distributers. They have no idea where the weapons go. This applies to base models of course. Special order mods for po po and other government commies may differ.
One local unit here, for example, got outfitted by a retail store.
On August 12, 2021 at 8:04 am, Jsf said:
Corporate Greed + Corporate Common Sense = Nonsense/ 0 = E R R O R “0”
A predictable outcome!
On August 12, 2021 at 8:06 am, Herschel Smith said:
@Fred,
This is true, but they can stipulate the terms.
On August 12, 2021 at 10:49 am, George 1 said:
A few firearms manufactures have stopped selling to states, to include police, that are non-2A friendly. La Rue Tactical out of Texas is one such company. La Rue makes premium AR products and has/had military and police contracts. But they do not sell products in states that do not allow all lawful citizens to buy their guns.
Too bad more companies don’t do the same thing.
On August 12, 2021 at 11:11 am, divide by zero said:
@ jsf,
the zeroth power of zero
Did they shelf the $300+ for a box of ammo plan that has been around since Long March fellow travelers Slick Willie and Cruella Pantsuit?
Stupid smart guns are another laugh out loud from the derp state and S&W was one of the early adapter prototypes with the key to lock/unlock revolvers and semis but I think they were owned by a Englandstan company back then.
On August 12, 2021 at 1:12 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Re: “The problem here is that this is still just about money to the manufacturers, rather than an existential war for survival. They still want it both ways. They want to sell firearms in communist states like New Jersey, and they still want to outfit the police state with weaponry, but they don’t like what follows.”
“When you dance with the devil …”
Well-said, Herschel, well-said. You will hear certain people say that it is the fiduciary responsibility of private-sector companies to make money – and that this priority should rule over all others. Yet, this mantra – “greed is good” – which has been popular in so-called “conservative” circles for the last forty years, is a perversion of virtually all of the principles by which upstanding, morally-virtuous people used to live.
“Self-interest” misinterpreted as greed is most-certainly not the same thing as “enlightened self-interest,”which balances other needs and values in the moral-ethical equation, and not just the making of money.
This is not to suggest that traditional Americans make the mistake of turning themselves or their businesses into vehicles for social justice – whatever the heck that is – as the political left has done. We are called to embody values higher than the mere making of money. It is called having moral principles and living by them. We used to do that in this country, and one of the reasons we are now in such unfortunate shape is because of our abandonment of that precept.
as garb everything I can get and to heck with the rest of it,
On August 12, 2021 at 1:13 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
Oopps, sorry for the poor editing: Forgot to delete the sentence fragment at the bottom…
On August 12, 2021 at 1:44 pm, MTHead said:
I hope NJ takes S&W for everything they have. Down to bare concrete. Maybe then the rest of the firearms industry will get the message?
Maybe if they were operating out of Idaho for the last 15 years they might have grown a back-bone?
Them keeping a headquarters in Mass. of all places, tells one everything you need to know.
(Wonder if their corporate board is pissed they didn’t get invited to Obama’s birthday bash?)
On August 12, 2021 at 2:04 pm, ROFuher said:
There was a case years back where a town sued either Ford or GM over the maintenance contract for their police cruiser fleet.
They were shortly surprised when the manufacturer declined to sell them more police cars, citing the ongoing litigation.
Guess what happened to the lawsuit?
On August 12, 2021 at 3:09 pm, Fred said:
@gb,
The problem with your statement is that it assumes a free and competitive market. America is classic fascism. If anybody could design, build, and sell arms, S&W would have been bankrupt long ago. Morality is only (mostly) solved when the barriers to entry are near nill. The greatest enlightenment to business self interest is what’s coming up from behind in the rear view mirror.
Of course libertarians fall down by claiming full morality outside of Christ, but they’re mostly right about wide open markets being a very decisive factor in both quality and fair practices.
On August 12, 2021 at 11:37 pm, Georgiaboy61 said:
@ Fred
Re: “The problem with your statement is that it assumes a free and competitive market.”
I’m not sure I agree with that, as I made no such statement about markets. I am very well-aware that we haven’t had anything approaching free markets in this country in a long time, probably more than a century…and certainly not since FDR and the 1930s.
We do agree, insofar as the classical definition of fascism is something akin to crony capitalism. Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, acknowledged by most historians as the inventor of modern fascism, later stated that he wished his creation had instead been termed “corporatism,” for the seamless manner in which the state and the corporation are merged in a fascist society.
Many people, perhaps most, especially in mainstream society, equate “fascism” and “Nazism” as being equivalent, but Mussolini’s variant is arguably the more-important variant of the two, at least in the present day. Fascism comes in many guises besides storm troopers in Nazi regalia goose-stepping down the street.
There is an ideological progression which occurs amongst businesses as they are founded and formed, grow and mature into successful companies, and eventually become large or even multi-national firms, provided that they make it that far.
Small businesses and small businessmen tend to favor free markets and wide-open competition. May the best product, good or service – and company – win, and so forth. But as companies and their owners and senior managers become established and successful, a transformation begins to occur. They begin to get more-comfortable with artificial limits on the market-place, rules, regulations, and so forth. Parenthetically-speaking, the founders of these firms pull up the ladder of success behind them. This process really kicks in when a company is large, profitable and well-established.
The American Big Three Automakers (when they were still U.S.-owned) never said so explicitly for obvious reasons, but their senior management – initially deeply hostile to more safety and environmental regulations beginning in the 1970s – changed their minds once they saw how well this arrangement kept smaller, more-innovative and nimble upstarts and competitors out of the automotive marketplace. From free markets to an oligopoly, in about three-fourths of a century.
Crony capitalism is rife at old-money firms like Smith and Wesson. It has to be, since they have been around so long and so many big players own stock in them and the other old-line firearms manufacturers originally founded in the NE United States. Still, with all of the jobs and tax revenue at stake, you’d think that Democrat-controlled cities and states would be at least in passingly good terms with these companies, but as their rhetoric gets more and more anti-2A and anti-gun, it is difficult to see how they can continue to survive and thrive in their present locations.
There is a cautionary tale here, too, which is that firearms manufacturers who court government business and contracts to the long-term exclusion of the civilian side of the house, are running a real risk. Colt learned that the hard way. Colt got fat-and-happy supplying the armed forces of the U.S. with AR-pattern firearms such as the M16 and M4 series of rifles and carbines, and everything was going along famously…. until Colt lost their contract to competitor Fabrique National de Herstal of Liege, Belgium – one of the finest firearms manufacturers on earth.
Colt nearly went broke, in fact they went into bankruptcy – and only emerged a short while back. Their long-term viability and survival is by no means assured.
Complacency will bite a company hard that way.