Beretta Takes Aim at Maryland ‘Smart Guns’ Plan

By Daniel LeDuc
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday , February 7, 2000 ; B1

Tucked off a side road in southernmost Prince George’s County, a squat,
gray factory sits behind a tall, discreet wrought-iron fence. Security
is tight and unusual: Visitors go through a metal detector on the way
out.

It is the headquarters of Beretta USA, one the nation’s leading firearms
companies and the only gun manufacturer in Maryland. At the Accokeek
factory, the company makes the U.S. military’s standard side arm and
supplies pistols to 2,000 police agencies in North America, including
the Maryland State Police.

A marquee name in the gun business, Beretta brought hundreds of jobs to
the region when it located here in 1977. But now it finds itself fending
off a high-stakes gun control initiative in its own back yard. The
company has become the leading opponent of Gov. Parris N. Glendening’s
proposal to mandate that only so-called personalized, “smart” guns be
sold in the state after 2003.

Those guns require that some sort of electronic lock be disabled before
they can be fired. Some prototypes have used radio transmitters; others
have employed fingerprint scanners. Even as Beretta officials
acknowledge researching how to make a smart gun, they say the technology
isn’t feasible.

“It is something that doesn’t exist in the market today,” company owner
Ugo Gussalli Beretta said in an interview. “We worry about the new
legislation.”

Once a quiet company whose main involvement in politics was seeking the
lucrative 1985 military contract for its now-ubiquitous 9mm pistol,
Beretta has pulled out all the stops in the fight against the governor’s
proposal, lobbying lawmakers and making campaign contributions.

Glendening (D), who supported Beretta’s expansion when he was Prince
George’s County executive, has made the gun bill a centerpiece of his
agenda during the current General Assembly session, declaring that
firearms manufacturers would move forward to design smart guns only if
government forced them.

“It is very disturbing to us not only to see the legislation but to hear
the rhetoric,” said Jeffrey K. Reh, Beretta’s general counsel. “The
governor saying in his State of the State address that the gun industry
was not going to do what is right until we make them do it was very
offensive to us.”

In an interview, Glendening said: “I’m sorry if any manufacturer is
offended, but I and most Marylanders are offended deeply by the carnage
going on in our communities.”

The political fight over smart guns comes as Beretta also is consumed
with a series of legal battles across the country. It is named in each
of the 30 lawsuits filed by cities, including the District, seeking
damages from weapons manufacturers for medical and law enforcement costs
associated with gun violence.

“They make firearms that are of good quality, but they’re very much part
of the problem” of allowing too many handguns that have caused too much
violence in America, said Tom Diaz, a senior policy analyst with the
Violence Policy Center, which is calling for a ban on handgun
manufacturing and importation.

As Beretta is gearing up its legal defenses, it also is moving
aggressively on the legislative front in Annapolis. The company’s
president contributed $1,000 to Glendening’s 1998 reelection campaign
even though the governor campaigned for smart guns. After the election,
the company formed a political action committee, which has since
contributed $9,500 to seven members–more than a majority–of the Senate
Judicial Proceedings Committee, which is expected to be the main
battleground for Glendening’s proposal.

The company has two important allies: The factory sits in the district
represented by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. and House
Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph F. Vallario Jr., both Democrats.

Asked if having such powerful friends would affect the debate on smart
guns, Miller said, “I would hope so.” He said he agreed that the
technology for smart guns isn’t yet viable and predicted that a
less-stringent version of Glendening’s proposal was all that would pass.
It might include mandating that trigger locks be supplied with handguns
when they are sold, which Beretta has voluntarily done for the past
year.

For his part, Vallario noted that Beretta employs 400 people at Accokeek
and a smaller facility in Pocomoke City on the Eastern Shore: “They’re a
large employer. It always has an effect. They usually don’t get involved
in political issues, and they are concerned.”

Last Monday, Ugo Gussalli Beretta traveled to Annapolis from Italy,
where his family has been making guns since 1526, to host his first
reception for key Maryland lawmakers. Miller was there, as was House
Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr. (D-Allegany); even Glendening dropped by
the private dining room at the Marriott Hotel.

“I’m not their enemy. Our police and our military need good protection
and good armaments, and I’m glad they’re made in Maryland,” the governor
said. “I want them to make sure they’re safe for civilian use.”

The governor has proposed offering $3 million in research grants to
Maryland companies for smart guns in the next three years. With Beretta
the state’s only gun manufacturer, it could easily seek that money. Reh,
however, said that the company wasn’t interested if the grants were part
of legislation requiring a mandate on selling smart guns.

Other gun manufacturers, such as Colt’s Manufacturing Co. and Smith &
Wesson, have publicly discussed their prototypes for employing new
electronics to lock their handguns, though they said the technology was
far from ready and may never be.

Beretta has never discussed details of its research, insisting in
testimony to government panels and in public position papers that the
technology isn’t possible.

At Accokeek, tight security is intended to prevent anyone from smuggling
guns out of the facility. Behind the spiked fences, gunsmiths and
machine operators craft the steel parts of Beretta handguns with
microscopic precision, Reh said during a recent tour.

“You’re basically exploding a small bomb inside this device [when a
bullet is fired], and everything has to work perfectly and instantly,”
he said.

He said Beretta is convinced that the electronics necessary for smart
guns could not survive the repeated stress of a gun being fired.

Beretta also is concerned that gun owners would become lax about gun
safety if they could purchase smart guns. People “might believe that
their weapon is now childproof and could leave their guns loaded and
accessible to children, trusting the ‘smart gun’ feature to prevent an
accident,” according to the company’s position paper on the new
technology.

Still another concern is cost, Reh said. He estimated that smart gun
technology would add as much as $300 to the price of a handgun–though
advocates say it would likely be far less. “That is going to make
handguns unaffordable to everybody in this state,” Reh said. “You create
a de facto gun ban.”