I wasn’t really “in” to guns until well after college. The AWB went in to effect when I was 14. But I very vividly remember vowing to never, ever, buy a Smith because of this.
So my first gun was a Ruger instead.
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That was done by some ill-informed leadership that has been gone for a long time now. They did almost ruin a great company. The new owners are actually gun people and care about firearms owners. Give them a try.
There’s 5 Smiths in that picture 😀
I think the M&P22 is a licensed Umerex, but yeah.
It was about 5 years ago a S&W rep came and talked to Massachusetts Gun Rights Group GOAL, and right out of the box he expressed his disappointment in those dark AWB days, and pointed out that S&W had since shed the holding company that made that stupid move.
I suspect Ruger feels the same way given all the cool guns they make now, but keep mum because they’d rather not trample on the grave of the late Bill Ruger Sr.
So he kept his vow, he didn’t buy A Smith.
As Larry points out, the backstory on The Agreement is complex. (I was working at an S&W stocking dealer at the time, and we boxed all our stuff up and sent it back to Springfield…)
Tomkins PLC, a British company, was trying to divest itself of acquisitions outside its core businesses and S&W was one it was trying to sell. Business School 101 says you can’t sell a company with lawsuits pending against it, so when the .gov offered them a chance to settle, the Limeys accepted, clueless as to how it would be received by the American customer base.
As it turned out, the result devalued the company so much that it was sold for some stupidly low pocket-change amount, like five million dollars and a draft pick to be named at a later date…
I remember the S&W Delenda Est campaign …
Yea, the limeys had no clue what kind of meatgrinder they has stuck their members in.
I’ll never own a S&W revolver with a lock in the side of it.
I’m more than happy to buy up old used ones 😉
One other thought along this same line…
I can live with Smith now, I’ll even forgive Ruger now that Bill passed on.
Still trying to figure out why Savage seems to want to put HS precision stocks on their stuff… I’ve been looking for a good 308 lately and its kind of annoying, I don’t ever plan on buying something from HS either.
Didn’t the new owners of S&W also renounce the agreement?
Ruger appears to have reversed Bill’s position, but just my making things not by renouncing it.
Savage makes lots of rifles without an HS stock too. I’d understand if you didn’t want to do business with someone who does business with HS though.