They're selling it for the Minimum Advertised Price they agreed to sell it at, which is why they and other retailers like KY Gun Co and Gunprime were also advertising that price.
Very few S&Ws regularly sell for MSRP from the high volume online retailers. The models that do, like the new Mountain Guns tend to have limited supply. S&W can crank out poly semi-autos at a considerably higher rate than any K/L/N frames.
I agree with your comments. Gun makers and their "authorized dealers" often enter into "price support" mechanisms through which authorized dealers are allowed to discount their MSRP and advertise them as markdowns - down to a previously agreed to "real" price. Authorized dealers sell their excess/slow-moving inventory to unauthorized dealers, typically the mom-and-pop shops, who then sell those same weapons at even lower prices.
Why all of this? Authorized dealers receive volume rebates - some based on actual customer sales and others based on dealer purchases from the gun makers. So, an authorized dealer may be willing to re-sell to a mom-and-pop store in order to ring the volume-rebate bell (and possibly to continue to retain the status as an authorized dealer).
Of course, some gun makers "audit" the authorized dealers' sales and disallow mom-and-pop resales from the volume rebate deals.
Car makers do something similar with their dealerships, especially when applied to "hot" vehicles. Chevrolet does this with their Corvettes; in prior years Chrysler did this with Wranglers.
There is another aspect to this game: financing the dealer's inventory. Gun makers accomplish this via "dated terms" on accounts receivable - offering 90-day, 120-day or even longer terms before the dealer must pay the receivable. Car companies are different. Car makers have captive banks that actually finance the dealership's purchases - called "floor plan" loans, that bear interest. Only "fresh" inventory is eligible collateral for a floor-plan loan. The dealerships must provide their own financing for their older unsold (i.e. stale) vehicles - which leads to the occasional "special" sales prices on certain vehicles.
All of these sales arrangements are carefully structured. Why? Car makers, all publicly traded companies, are permitted to report revenues (and profits) only on true sales to their dealerships. Any agreement that, in substance, is not a true sale is viewed as a consignment and is not counted until the car company's customer (the dealership) pays the car company without any further recourse obligation.
Much of the SEC-driven litigation against public companies and their boards of directors relates to companies' misreporting of such consignment arrangements. And it happens with some regularity...I investigated such financial fraud for over 20 years.
