Gun Makers Saw No Role in Curbing Improper Sales

[phantom power]

4. It was working for Smith and Wesson. Too well, apparently:

Only one major company, Smith & Wesson, the nation’s largest handgun manufacturer, broke ranks. In 2000, it agreed to settle the litigation, and it adopted a number of far-reaching changes, including promising to design a handgun that could not be operated by children and forbidding its dealers and distributors from selling at gun shows unless background checks were conducted on all sales.

Smith & Wesson’s sales quickly plummeted amid an industry backlash. Documents produced through the discovery process in the municipal suits show other gun makers seeking to isolate the company. A letter from Dwight Van Brunt, an executive at Kimber America, a gun maker, to top officials at a firearms industry trade group urged them to confer with the N.R.A. and “boycott Smith now and forever. Run them out of the country.”

“You guys need to make sure that no one else is going to join the surrender,” Mr. Van Brunt wrote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/us/gun-makers-shun-responsibility-for-sales-suits-show.html?pagewanted=3&hp