—–Original Message—–
From: L. Neil Smith <[email protected]>
To: 000 L. Neil Smith <[email protected]>
Date: Monday, April 03, 2000 9:46 AM
Subject: S&W MUST DIE!

>SMITH & WESSON MUST DIE
>
>By L. Neil Smith <mailto:[email protected]>
>
>See it soon in _The Libertarian Enterprise_
>http://www.webleyweb.com/tle
>
> Over the past couple of weeks, a third of my e-mail has concerned
>a decision of the Smith & Wesson company to sign an “agreement” with
>the Clinton Administration — supposedly in order to avoid massive
>state lawsuits — to act as if the Second Amendment had never been
>written.
>
> What began as a depressing event — foreshadowing, many feared,
>the end of private gun ownership — has suddenly turned into something
>else. Gun Owners of America announced what promises to be an effective
>boycott against S&W. One by one, other companies told the Clintonistas
>where to shove their “agreement”. When everybody said the Austrians
>would geek, they didn’t, and neither did the Belgians — although
>Ruger and Beretta are lying low — and distributors and dealers have
>started sending S&W products back to Springfield, where they came
>from.
>
> Most recently, S&W’s Chicago lawfirm has quit them.
>
> Even Utah Senator Orrin Hatch — arguably the most evil individual
>in politics today — could see which way the wind was blowing and has
>introduced legislation in the Senate to forbid any further federal
>participation in lawsuits against gun companies. And a credible move
>is now underway in the congress to render the S&W “agreement” null and
>void.
>
> It’s sad to think that S&W, which predates the War between the
>States, introduced the self-contained metallic cartridge, and in the
>1980s gave us the wonderful “Ladysmith” program — encouraging women
>to learn to defend themselves by redesigning weapons specifically to
>fit the female hand — has sunk to the low, crawling, yellow-bellied
>pusillanimity that signing Clinton’s “agreement” required. But the
>fact is, S&W never did make managerial decisions particularly well,
>whether it involved Second Amendment politics or merchandising of
>weapons.
>
> Just in my lifetime, S&W has come up with bonnet-bees — or some
>focus panel has, or some overly-blonde vice president’s wife — so
>stultifyingly imbecilic that it’s embarrassing even thinking about
>them. Back in the 60s, when they were owned by something called Bangor
>Punta (which always sounded to me like one of Tarzan’s animal friends)
>they called publicly for handgun registration. This latest display of
>the white feather is hardly unprecedented. They’ve always been Second
>Amendment weaklings, likely due to their location in the only state
>carried by George McGovern, and the fact that — despite their actual
>sales numbers — they’ve always seen themselves primarily as a police
>outfitter.
>
> Managerial decisions? If ever there was a “suicidal corporation”,
>S&W is it. Their .41 Magnum Model 58 Military and Police — featured
>prominently in my first novel, _The Probability Broach — is a slick,
>no-nonsense fighting instrument that, employing two cartridge power
>levels, can take a man down or stop a car with only a little added
>weight or bulk compared to the traditional (and woefully inadequate)
>police .38 Special. One of the finest combat revolvers ever conceived,
>S&W discontinued it, rather than producing it in stainless steel –
>and in .44 Magnum and .45 Colt — as anyone with any brains would have
>done.
>
> Managerial decisions? In the 1990s S&W had somebody working for
>them who created what we all ended up calling the “gun of the week”
>program, under which S&W came out with more innovative concepts over
>the short span of a year than they’d introduced in the 50 preceding
>years. Of course the man responsible was run out of the ancient outfit
>with extreme prejudice and to this day they’re ashamed to talk about
>him.
>
> Managerial decisions? In my capacity as a competitive shooter and
>retired gunsmith, S&W’s Model 610 was technologically and historically
>the best revolver ever produced anywhere by anyone. Naturally, after
>only a year or two of production and almost no attempt to promote it
>to gun buyers or any other part of the public, they discontinued its
>manufacture.
>
> Managerial decisions? There are those who may disagree, but again,
>in my opinion as a competitor and a gunsmith, S&W never could make
>decent semiautomatic pistols, although they’ve wasted several fortunes
>trying to get it right — and failing every time. Their incompetence
>may even account, at least in part, for the remarkable longevity of
>Colt’s 1911A1. Having shot (and repaired) many S&W autos and listened
>to the lamentations of their owners, I have never been moved to buy
>one.
>
> S&W revolvers are something else altogether. Magnificent “engines
>of destruction” made legendary (most recently) by Clint Eastwood’s
>”Dirty Harry”, they occupy a different plane of existence. I love them
>all. My collection includes a .38, a .357 Magnum with an adjustable
>front sight, a 10mm auto (that’s the M610 I mentioned above, a sixgun
>chambered for the 10mm autopistol cartridge — it also shoots .40
>S&W), a .41 Magnum, a .44 Magnum, and a .45 ACP that works the same as
>the 10mm. Once again, as a shooter and gunsmith, I agree they’re a
>trifle antiquated, designwise, fragile compared with Ruger’s output.
>But nothing can match their eye-pleasing elegance and hand-pleasing
>grace.
>
> I risk boring the non-gunners (and non-wheelgunners) among my
>readers because I want them to understand fully — in technicolor and
>3D — how painful it is for me to write the next few paragraphs. The
>proposed boycott of S&W and other measures are good as far as they go.
>I support them all wholeheartedly. However they don’t go nearly far
>enough.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> I’m not saying that they don’t go nearly far enough to satisfy our
>purely emotional desire for justice, retribution, even revenge. I’m
>saying that they don’t go nearly far enough to guarantee our continued
>_survival_.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> Smith & Wesson must be amputated from the American social body
>like the gangrenous excrescence it has become and thrown out with the
>rest of the medical/political waste. Otherwise the infection will
>spread.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> Understand that it’s going to take more than a boycott; S&W was
>prepared for that or they’d never have signed Clinton’s “agreement”.
>Being owned by an English holding company, it’s more than likely that
>their “surrender” was a put-up job to begin with, a gift from Tony
>Blair, intended to give Clinton what he needs to destroy an entire
>industry — exactly as he’s promised his comrades under international
>agreements he’s made to eliminate every personally owned weapon in the
>world.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> I’ve heard that the S&W CEO — in a manner foully reminiscent of
>the late Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater — has
>been confiding to the media that his customers are “a little crazy
>just now, but they’ll be back”. What that tells me is that this time
>– unlike many similar moments over the past 50 years — we can’t be
>satisfied to fend off the latest attack and survive with minimal
>losses.
>
> This time it has to cost them something. Have no qualms about it.
>A corporation isn’t private property — it’s only an extension of the
>state. Yes, that’s what I said. In applying to the state for special
>powers and immunities, a corporation becomes an _extension_ of the
>state.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> A boycott is not enough. Our goal must be to make life completely
>impossible for S&W — in exactly the same way anti-nuclear activists
>made life impossible for the nuclear power industry in the 1960s and
>1970s. We must interdict S&W’s sales to government agencies at every
>level, starve the company, and kill it. For those who have the means,
>we must find judges who will issue injunctions against city, county,
>or state purchases — especially preferential purchases — of S&W
>products.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> For those who don’t, picketing public buildings is an alternative,
>as is attending the meetings of your local city council or county
>commission. Remind them that they’ve taken what’s supposed to be a
>sacred oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Tell them that, in
>choosing to do business with a foreign corporation savaging the Bill
>of Rights, they’re violating both the letter and the spirit of that
>oath.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> Get every one of your gunny friends to help. If you see a S&W auto
>or revolver in a cop’s holster, don’t bother him — in these post-Waco
>days he’ll probably kill you if you do, and cook you, and eat you, and
>get a commendation for it — but find out if your city has a contract
>with S&W and demand that it be terminated immediately on the grounds
>(if all else fails) that the company falls short of Bill of Rights
>compliance.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> Lawyers among us need to injoin HUD and other government agencies
>prepared to reward S&W for its cowardly behavior. One of the goodies
>Clinton promised S&W (and anybody else who signs on) is preferential
>treatment in the purchase of weapons by the the Department of Housing
>and Urban Development and similar agencies. (I was unaware that HUD is
>a major weapons buyer — that’s something, in itself, that should be
>looked into.) I could be mistaken, but doesn’t that sound illegal to
>you?
>
> Whatever happened to competitive bidding?
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> Choke off S&W’s sales for six months while the courts muddle the
>whole thing, and S&W will miraculously find the grounds they need to
>abrogate the deal. It’s either that or be thrown onto the cliche-heap
>of hisory. As New York’s nasty attorney general can attest — he’s the
>disappointed little creep whose cherished plans have backfired and
>who’s now trying to argue that a boycott is a violation of antitrust
>laws — it was signed under extreme duress that he himself helped
>apply.
>
> (This is the pocket Nazi who warned gun companies to comply with
>his demands or prepare to greet their bankruptcy attorneys at their
>door. What they need to tell him is that times change and regimes
>change with them. He _will_ learn to obey the highest law of the land
>or prepare to greet federal marshals at his door with a big, noisy
>collection of manacles, leg-irons, and belly-chains, and TV cameras to
>record the moment as they shove him into the Black Maria and haul him
>away.)
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> In the long run, this war will be won in the court of popular
>opinion. We’ve always known — and now, thanks to Gary Kleck and John
>Lott, we can prove — that guns and gun ownership save lives. Which
>means that anything or anybody who interferes with unencumbered
>ownership of and free access to guns endangers lives. In today’s
>battle of sound bites and slogans, that translates as “S&W kills
>kids”.
>
> We need to talk publicly about S&W’s “Kid Killer Kontrakt”.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>
> If you ever hope to live in a civilization where you can walk into
>a hardware store, put your cash on the counter, and walk out with the
>weapon of your choice — without ever having produced identification
>or signing even a single piece of paper — then Smith & Wesson must
>die.
>
> Maybe once they’re bankrupt, no more than a name, and in the hands
>of pro-gun Americans again, we can go back to buying their beautiful
>revolvers.
>
> Smith & Wesson must die.
>–
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>