Whether Smith & Wesson can survive the pounding is an open question. Smith has been signaling that it may try to back out if no other gunmaker signs on to the pact. But Shultz remains convinced that he is leading the industry where it has to go. In a reflective, three-hour interview at a corporate office in Nashville, Shultz offered an impassioned defense of the decision that blew a hole in the gun world. Fewer people are buying handguns, and a growing number of voters who don’t shoot want more restrictions. Sooner or later, Shultz says, gun companies that don’t change will be done in by a worried Congress, or an angry jury. More than 25 cities are suing the gunmakers, claiming they make unsafe guns and dump them on city streets. “One $100 million verdict,” Shultz says, “and it’s over.”
So Shultz made compromises that he hopes will ease the pressure. “You can’t just say, ‘I made it, I shipped it, it’s out of my hands’,” Shultz says. “That just doesn’t fly with a reasonable public.” And he now insists that gunmakers have to make so-called smart guns so they can tap a new market of consumers who are afraid of firearms (graphic). “If we say, ‘We only make guns and we’re only going to make them this way forever,’ then Smith & Wesson will not be around for another 150 years,” he says. “You know, Westinghouse was a great company. But today it’s called CBS, and it doesn’t make lightbulbs anymore. You have to change.”
Gun companies haven’t changed much in 100 years, which may be why Smith’s decision stirred powerful emotions. “Some of my associates in the business aren’t speaking to me,” says Kevin Foley, a Smith & Wesson VP. “Or if they are, it’s not in printable terms.” Appealing to patriotism, the gun lobby has accused Shultz of making the deal on orders from his British owner, Tomkins PLC, which has been looking to sell Smith & Wesson. Shultz insists that’s nonsense.
In fact, the 58-year-old Shultz seems to have reached a gradual realization that the world will never be the same as it was when he was 9, brandishing his own handgun on his Iowa farm. Unlike Shultz, a onetime Army sergeant, most people now live in suburban areas, and their attitudes have shifted. “We ate what we killed,” Shultz recalls. “Now my grandchildren don’t even like to step on a spider.” He used to think it wasn’t hard to keep kids from misusing guns. “I always said, ‘All we have to do is train kids and make sure those guns are locked up’,” Shultz says. Then came the Jonesboro school shooting–with a rifle stolen from a locked case. “When Arkansas happened, I changed. I said, ‘OK, we have to find another solution’.”
Shultz once dismissed the lawyers suing the gunmakers as greedy and self-serving. Now the Feds who forged the Smith & Wesson settlement in a series of marathon meetings with Shultz may be the only people who want him to succeed. Asked if he has grown to like Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo and the young lawyers who were once his enemies, Shultz thinks carefully. “My background is completely different from these people,” he says finally. “They probably wouldn’t live where I live [in Tennessee]. Wouldn’t enjoy it.” But Shultz is impressed that when he calls Washington at 8 p.m., the lawyers are still at their desks, too. “They’re not necessarily out to destroy me,” he says. “I’ve come to understand that they believe in what they’re doing.”
In fact, the Feds and some states have been going all out to protect Smith & Wesson. They served a mountain of subpoenas on other gunmakers and distributors, seeking to prove that Smith’s enemies were conspiring to kill the company. And nearly 200 law-enforcement agencies have pledged to buy guns only from companies that sign on to the Smith deal. (That prompted seven gunmakers to bring their own lawsuit accusing Cuomo and some cities of colluding to drive them out of business.) Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, strict new regulations mean that only one company’s new handguns can be sold legally: Smith & Wesson. But even there, the ill will runs so deep that a lot of dealers will refuse to sell Smiths if the deal goes through. The pact would force them to stop selling assault rifles or guns with high-capacity ammunition clips–some of the most profitable firearms on the market.
If that happens, Shultz may try to wriggle free from the deal. Cuomo and the cities might not go for it; they insist the pact is binding as is. But Cuomo admits that unless more companies cave, he may have a hard time enforcing the agreement against Smith & Wesson alone. There’s no sign that other gunmakers are tempted to follow Smith’s lead. Most are waiting until November, in hopes that a new President Bush would make it all go away. That’s wishful thinking, says Glock’s blunt chief, Paul Jannuzzo. “Waiting for him to save our a– is just pie in the sky,” he says. Still, he’d rather take his chances for now than join Ed Shultz. Whack-a-Mole is a lot more fun when you’re not the one getting whacked.
