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Is S&W legally obligated to make guns with the locks? Other than politicians, who is asking for guns with locks? Here we are on a forum dedicated to these fine firearms and the vast majority of shooters and collectors here don't like the lock. Others just "don't mind" them but few people actually like them. Why doesn't S&W drop the lock from production or just make it a special order option? We are their bread and butter, not the politicos. I understand that when the locks were originally agreed to, the political climate was different and S&W had to do what they did to stay viable, but times have changed. Isn't there some way to petition S&W to produce the guns we want? Would be cheaper for them to make because of fewer parts and less complex design. Maybe I'm nuts, but I think they should cater to us who actually care about the product and history of these fine revolvers.
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Politicians, Hillary, Bill, etc.....are not responsible for Smith and Wesson's having locks. It is great to blame them, get the crowd stirred and rally support for the cause, but it is all false.
No agreement between Smith and Wesson and the US Government was ever fully signed and executed, no matter what the news media would have liked you to believe. No document exists that contains both government and corporate signatures on it.
So what really happened . . . . .
Just prior to the turn of this century, Smith and Wesson was on the precipice of financial collapse. An American Icon that would not have survived the next several years. Sales were in the toilet and dropping. Tompkins, the British Company that owned Smith and Wesson, had already raided any valuable holdings that Smith and Wesson had. Some of you might recall the auctioning off of the Factory Museum Collection in the 90s. All the cash went to the British.
Since Smith and Wesson was a British holding at the time, so the corporation was not overly objectionable to discussions with Government and this is were talks with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began.
Lots of stuff went back and forth over many months even years, however no document that was agreeable to both sides ever came to be.
In the second quarter of 2001 an Arizona based gun lock company called Saf-T-Hammer bought Smith and Wesson back from the British. The deal was so sweet, I would have found the money to do it if it had been offered to me.
It should be no surprise to anyone here that when a Lock company buys a gun company, eventually locks will be incorporated in to the guns.
If Good Year bought Maserati, I would certainly expect that the tires on NEW Maseratis would soon be Good Years and I would expect all the Pirelli fans to complain about it for years to come.
Thanks to Saf-T-Hammer, Smith and Wesson is
AMERICAN once again
In the last 15 years, Saf-T-Hammer has brought greatness back to Smith and Wesson. Smith and Wesson produces around 1,250,000 firearms each year now according to 2015 ATF reports. 989,000 of that was handguns in 2015. That is 5 times their 1999 British Owned firearms production.
The 20,000+ members of this fine forum do not even come close to being "the vast majority" of Smith and buyers. That is presuming that every one of the members here are active in the shooting sports and disciplines, which obviously they are not.
We are the tiny minority of Smith and Wesson purchasers. As much as I would like to believe it as well, we are not even close to being Smith and Wesson's bread and butter.
I do not find the lock aesthetically pleasing, but it is there, it is going to be there so I ignore it.