User 171088

Smith & Wesson: Time to Pull the Trigger

Smith and Wesson has an over riding problem- most of their sales are domestic retail , and shooters have a big grudge against them. S+W took a brand revered in the firearms field and trashed it with the Clinton era agreement to put internal locks in it's handguns, as a way to avoid manufacturer liability to lawsuits. The sort of avid shooters who buy lots of guns HATE the locks, as they are perceived to be failure prone. As a consequence, sales of older S+W revolvers are hot, sales of new ones are not. If S+W dropped the worthless lock, the retail sales of it's revolvers would take off again. The lock agreement was also seen as a sellout by S+W by shooters who saw it as one more attack on the right to bear arms. Taken together, S+W will have a hard time wooing the American retail market.