Apart from its bad politics and its disregard for the civil rights of its own customers, the main problem I see at S&W is that quality control has not kept up with engineering and metallurgy. As an example, the other day I looked at two new Mountain Lites (titanium cylinder, L-frame, .44 Special). Designwise they are neat guns: innovative and interesting. But even if S&W had not signed its diabolical pact, I personally wouldn't buy one.
The first Mountain Lite I saw had a long bur along the right inner edge of the rear barrel face, IOW, sticking into the forcing cone. Also, the barrel-cylinder gap was larger on the left than on the right, the cylinder hit the side of the barrel as it swung closed, and there was a timing problem (the cylinder did not rotate far enough to lock by the time the hammer fell on two of the chambers). In fact, IMHO the rear barrel face of this gun was just shy of a mess. In addition to the bur in the forcing cone, there was another, bigger bur outside the rear barrel face on the left. So the rear of the barrel had the look of being crudely sawn from right to left.
On the second Mountain Lite the barrel (or, actually, barrel shroud) was not aligned with the frame, and so the front sight blade and ramp leaned to the right. The barrel-cylinder gap was larger on the right than on the left, and the thumbpiece engagement was rough and hard.
Granted, this is a sample of just two guns. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the use of materials like titanium and scandium, while fine and innovative in itself, is just a gimmick if quality control is lacking when the guns are assembled.
My $0.02.
what are you hinting about