Targeting a Gunmaker

By John Cloud

Those who can't understand how the U.S. government can get OPEC members to increase oil supplies but can't nudge the firearms industry into accepting reasonable gun controls should talk to Garey Hindman. He runs Ace Custom 45's in Kerrville, Texas, and he and many dealers like him have vowed to stop selling Smith & Wessons. They are angry that the gunmaker, based in Springfield, Mass., signed an agreement with the government to make and sell guns under tighter regulations. "To us it is really simple," says Hindman. "You are either with the firearms industry or not. There is no middle ground."

Americans have come to expect blood-on-the-floor rhetoric from hard-liners on gun control, but now more is escalating than rhetoric. The Gun Owners of America, described on its website as a "no-compromise gun lobby," has called for a boycott of Smith & Wesson, and one wholesaler has said it will stop buying the company's guns. This has prompted the attorneys general in three states--New York, Connecticut and Maryland--to launch an antitrust investigation into whether the gun industry is colluding to punish Smith & Wesson.

Are members of the industry really scheming to destroy a competitor? Gunmakers used all the scatological synonyms for hogwash last week to dispute that charge. Even if they wanted to collude, they say, they couldn't persuade the nation's thousands of individual gun sellers to follow. "This is a very simple industry, believe it or not, and it just doesn't work that way," says Beatriz Atorresagasti, marketing manager for the RSR Group, based in Winter Park, Fla., the wholesaler that will stop selling Smith & Wessons once its current stock is depleted.

Rather, local dealers say, the Smith & Wesson agreement is unfair to them. They are upset less about the deal's most publicized element--to require safety locks on all handguns--than about other regulations in the 24-page agreement. For instance, to sell Smith & Wessons, dealers must require all employees to pass a written test on firearm safety. And they must agree to secure the guns in fireproof safes at night. "This store is a windowless block that hasn't had a robbery in 50 years," says Kay Miculek, owner of Clark Custom Guns in Princeton, La. "I'd have to buy another vault to meet the restrictions. I won't do it."

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo, Clinton's man behind the Smith & Wesson agreement, must fight for the deal's survival by fighting for Smith & Wesson's survival. Last week he took part in a meeting of officials to get police departments to buy from the firm. State officials, meanwhile, began issuing subpoenas against other gun companies in search of evidence of collusion. To the gun lobby, this is merely the latest episode in the government's long campaign against its industry. Says Bill Powers, National Rifle Association spokesman: "They just want to sue everybody out of business."

--By John Cloud. With reporting by Edward Barnes

With reporting by EDWARD BARNES