Posted on 04/11/2006 10:19:42 PM PDT by neverdem
I've always liked my Rugers. Their autos are very lefthanded friendly, unlike S&W.
That is all they are asking from firearm enthusiasts.
God, what a biased and factually inaccurate piece of dung.
1. "...equipped US Soldiers from the Civil War to Vietnam..." is a lede that took profound ignorance to write. During the Civil War, Smith made feeble pocket pistols chambered for rimfire cartridges, not military weapons. The only Smith weapon issued during Vietnam were WWII vintage revolvers to some aircrews and, after 1973, to female military police. Smith revolvers were substitute standard in the World Wars and were sometimes bought by soldiers or officers as private purchase weapons, but they have never been first-line US military weapons -- ever. (Actually, I'm not sure about the period between 1890-something and 1911, when a Colt .38 revolver was standard... the Smith may have been a first-line issue weapon too, but who cares as these guns were combat failures?)
2. US troops do not carry "Italian-made" Berettas. They're designed in Italy, but every single one is made in Accokeek, Maryland.
3. Springfield Mass is in the western quarter of the state, on the Connecticut River, and it's near Hartford. Yet this Times bimbo refers to "Nearby New Haven." Maybe two, three hours of hard driving. I understand that for a typical Times Manhattanite snob, everything north of the Tappan Zee is Indian country or maybe Canada, but this reporter was too lazy to look at a map.
4. I note that they pull up an anti-gun stealth group guy as their "industry spokesman." Ricker's "American Hunters and Shooters Association" is a Soros- and Lewis-funded anti group that just wants "reasonable" gun laws -- like banning handguns and "assault weapons".
5. Smith's sad fortunes date from its knuckling under to the Clinton Administration, as noted in the article: "But Smith & Wesson fell more drastically than the others, mainly because of its agreement in 2000 to adopt gun safety measures to settle lawsuits brought by state and federal agencies. That Clinton-era accord resulted in a boycott by the National Rifle Association and made Smith & Wesson an industry outcast." Even there she cannot get her facts straight. The NRA did not organise any boycott, did they? What killed Smith's consumer sales (just when they'd fixed decadeslong quality problems) was consumer revulsion.
6. Smith has never repudiated the Clinton agreement. If you ever buy a Smith or have dealings with the company, your data is not safe or secure, period.
7. Smith's recovery is not due to consumer respect returning (among informed consumers, it hasn't), but (as the article makes clear) by funnelling money to crooked lobbyists (including Abramoff), who in turn kick it back to crooked Congressmen, who push Smith's crummy products.
What we have here is the Times swooning over a company that has decided that its future is in selling exclusively to Big Brother. Hey, it's a business model and one that works: "faced with market rejection, the company turned to bribing a corrupt Congress for corporate welfare."
Note that the NY Times thinks that's just dandy.
Most of Smith's top-selling guns today are so-so copies of other firms' weapons, notably Glock and Colt. If this is the rebirth of an American legend, let it die.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Show us morons where Smith's new management from the toilet industry has repudiated the old agreement. They're just not talking about it and pretending it doesn't exist.
In any event, the products are unreliable (M39, 59 and subsequent) or derivative (Swocks). Smith made good revolvers through the first two-thirds of the 20th Century. Compare a 1955 Smith to a 1995 one (if you can find a 1995 one) and it's night and day.
Kind of like comparing a Swock to the Glock it's reverse-engineered from. Nobody buys those but big-city PDs, and they do it because their chiefs are usually empty uniforms who illustrate how affirmative action can take a person far beyond his or her Peter Principle level.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Do you own any stock? If you don't have control over more than 50 percent of the eligible voting shares, you can't do much of anything. I can't tell you all of the times that I received ballots for voting my shares of other companies or mutual funds after the deadline for voting had already passed.
I will never buy a handgun with an internal safety lock. I hope S&W goes out of business.
Interesting stuff here- When the company was sold to the Workers, I bought 1000 shares of stock for one dollar a share--it closed today at $6.29 a share--didn't hear that the old agreement was NOT made null and void.Oh well, will keep it till it starts going down and will sell.
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