FYI:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Wall Street Journal
Friday, March 24, 2000
By Paul M. Barrett, Staff Reporter of the Wall Street Journal
As fans and foes of guns have a chance to examine the fine print of last week's landmark Smith & Wesson Corp. settlement with the Clinton administration, uncertainty has arisen over the pact's meaning and scope.
The nation's largest handgun manufacturer, Smith & Wesson last Friday agreed to a wide array of restrictions on how it makes and markets weapons.
In exchange, about half of the 29 cities and counties that have sued the gun industry as a whole agreed to drop the company from those court actions. The Clinton administration and the states of New York and Connecticut also agreed not to name Smith & Wesson in suits they have separately threatened to file against the gun industry.
But a week after the settlement's announcement in Washinton, lawyers representing at least 12 municipalities - including Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Wilmington, Del. - are saying that their clients may not sign the pact, raising the prospect of Smith & Wesson still having to defend itself in suits across the country. "Obviously there are positives" in the settlement, "but more can be obtained," Jack Maistros, an outside attorney for Cleveland, says.
The possibility of a significant fraction of dissenting municipalities continuing to litigate against Smith & Wesson makes it unlikely that any other major gun maker would sign onto the agreement. That would severely limit how much the pact could alter the design and marketing of guns generally.
A number of firearm companies, the industry's main trade group and the National Rifle Association, which represents gun owners, all have attacked the agreement as a concession to government extortion during the past several days.
Another question is whether Smith & Wesson's concessions in the settlement may haunt it and other gun companies as they defend themselves in the continuing litigation.
A unit of Britain's Tomkins PLC, Smith & Wesson didn't admit to any wrongdoing or agree to pay any damages in last week's settlement. But it did promise to do things that much of the rest of the industry has insisted are infeasible or impossible. For example, Smith & Wesson said that within three years, it would develop an electronic "smart gun" that allows only an authorized user to fire.
On the marketing side, the company promised to exert broad new authority over retail dealers: curbing the delivery of sales of muliple guns, imposing background-check requirements that go well beyond existing federal law and employing government crime-gun tracing statistics to weed out suspect dealers.
Both developing a reliable smart gun and reining in retailers are demands made in the municipal suits that manufacturers generally have contended are unworkable.
Antigun lawyers are sure to argue that Smith & Wesson's concessions prove that other companies could do more and should be held liable for failing to have done more.
"The largest American handgun maker has said, 'Of course we can do these things, and we're doing them,'" observes Dennis Henigan, the top layer with Handgun Control, Inc., a Washington advocacy group. "You can be sure we will use that against other companies," adds Mr. Henigan, whose organization represents some municipalities that have signed the agreement and others that so far haven't.
Its concessions in the settlement may even be used against Smith & Wesson itself in those cases where it remains a defendant. Chief Executive Ed Shultz says Smith & Wesson will continue aggressively to defend pending suits.
Another huge area of doubt is how the settlement itself would work. One example:
The pact requires Smith & Wesson to have its guns sold at retail only by dealers that agree to a long list of restrictions. One of these limits is that dealers may "not complete any transfer of a firearm" to a buyer who hasn't passed the federal background check. That sounds like a mere restatement of existing law. But it isn't.
Under current law, if the government hasn't completed a background check within 72 hours, the buyer may obtain the gun. Most background checks are done relatively quickly, using the national computer network. But the Smith & Wesson agreement creates an open-ended waiting period in those instances when the government isn't prepared to approve or disapprove of a gun purchase swiftly.
What isn't clear from the settlement language is whether this new indefinite waiting period would apply to a dealer's sale of only Smith & Wesson guns, or to all of its sales. If the broader version applies, many retailer might stop selling Smith & Wesson reather than impose open-ended waiting periods on customers, dealers say.
[/quote]
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Bulldawg: NRA, GOA, TSRA, Shiner Bock Connoisseur.
Bulldawg's Firearms Page
[This message has been edited by Bulldog (edited March 24, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Bulldog (edited March 24, 2000).]
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Wall Street Journal
Friday, March 24, 2000
By Paul M. Barrett, Staff Reporter of the Wall Street Journal
As fans and foes of guns have a chance to examine the fine print of last week's landmark Smith & Wesson Corp. settlement with the Clinton administration, uncertainty has arisen over the pact's meaning and scope.
The nation's largest handgun manufacturer, Smith & Wesson last Friday agreed to a wide array of restrictions on how it makes and markets weapons.
In exchange, about half of the 29 cities and counties that have sued the gun industry as a whole agreed to drop the company from those court actions. The Clinton administration and the states of New York and Connecticut also agreed not to name Smith & Wesson in suits they have separately threatened to file against the gun industry.
But a week after the settlement's announcement in Washinton, lawyers representing at least 12 municipalities - including Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Wilmington, Del. - are saying that their clients may not sign the pact, raising the prospect of Smith & Wesson still having to defend itself in suits across the country. "Obviously there are positives" in the settlement, "but more can be obtained," Jack Maistros, an outside attorney for Cleveland, says.
The possibility of a significant fraction of dissenting municipalities continuing to litigate against Smith & Wesson makes it unlikely that any other major gun maker would sign onto the agreement. That would severely limit how much the pact could alter the design and marketing of guns generally.
A number of firearm companies, the industry's main trade group and the National Rifle Association, which represents gun owners, all have attacked the agreement as a concession to government extortion during the past several days.
Another question is whether Smith & Wesson's concessions in the settlement may haunt it and other gun companies as they defend themselves in the continuing litigation.
A unit of Britain's Tomkins PLC, Smith & Wesson didn't admit to any wrongdoing or agree to pay any damages in last week's settlement. But it did promise to do things that much of the rest of the industry has insisted are infeasible or impossible. For example, Smith & Wesson said that within three years, it would develop an electronic "smart gun" that allows only an authorized user to fire.
On the marketing side, the company promised to exert broad new authority over retail dealers: curbing the delivery of sales of muliple guns, imposing background-check requirements that go well beyond existing federal law and employing government crime-gun tracing statistics to weed out suspect dealers.
Both developing a reliable smart gun and reining in retailers are demands made in the municipal suits that manufacturers generally have contended are unworkable.
Antigun lawyers are sure to argue that Smith & Wesson's concessions prove that other companies could do more and should be held liable for failing to have done more.
"The largest American handgun maker has said, 'Of course we can do these things, and we're doing them,'" observes Dennis Henigan, the top layer with Handgun Control, Inc., a Washington advocacy group. "You can be sure we will use that against other companies," adds Mr. Henigan, whose organization represents some municipalities that have signed the agreement and others that so far haven't.
Its concessions in the settlement may even be used against Smith & Wesson itself in those cases where it remains a defendant. Chief Executive Ed Shultz says Smith & Wesson will continue aggressively to defend pending suits.
Another huge area of doubt is how the settlement itself would work. One example:
The pact requires Smith & Wesson to have its guns sold at retail only by dealers that agree to a long list of restrictions. One of these limits is that dealers may "not complete any transfer of a firearm" to a buyer who hasn't passed the federal background check. That sounds like a mere restatement of existing law. But it isn't.
Under current law, if the government hasn't completed a background check within 72 hours, the buyer may obtain the gun. Most background checks are done relatively quickly, using the national computer network. But the Smith & Wesson agreement creates an open-ended waiting period in those instances when the government isn't prepared to approve or disapprove of a gun purchase swiftly.
What isn't clear from the settlement language is whether this new indefinite waiting period would apply to a dealer's sale of only Smith & Wesson guns, or to all of its sales. If the broader version applies, many retailer might stop selling Smith & Wesson reather than impose open-ended waiting periods on customers, dealers say.
[/quote]
------------------
Bulldawg: NRA, GOA, TSRA, Shiner Bock Connoisseur.
Bulldawg's Firearms Page
[This message has been edited by Bulldog (edited March 24, 2000).]
[This message has been edited by Bulldog (edited March 24, 2000).]