Source.

Liberal activists are preparing to file a lawsuit against the board of one of the largest gun manufacturers in the United States, alleging that the company exposed shareholders to unnecessary liability by selling and promoting AR-15 rifles and thus violating their fiduciary duty.

In a draft of a lawsuit viewed by Fox News Digital expected to be filed this week, liberal activist shareholder plantiffs alleged that the board of Smith & Wesson “knowingly allowed the Company to become exposed to significant liability for intentionally violating federal, state, and local laws through its manufacturing, marketing, and sales of AR-15 style rifles and similar semiautomatic firearms.”

The draft explains that the company’s board has expressed “unwillingness to exercise any oversight whatsoever” when it comes to manufacturing and marketing AR-15s, which the shareholders say has exposed the company to unnecessary liability.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of moves made by liberal activists across the country using the legal system to go after gun manufacturers as a part of a larger movement known as environmental, social, and governance (ESG), which puts pressure on investors to be more “socially conscious.”

[ … ]

Two of the plaintiffs in the case are led by Sister Judy Byron, an anti-gun activist who recently participated in drafting a statement from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, where “investors representing $634 billion in assets” called for pressure on gun manufacturers and companies associated with them “to review their operations, supply chains and policies and take meaningful action on this public safety concern.”

Sisten Judy Byron.  Part of a false and anti-Christian church, pushing a false agenda, destroying the hard work of good men, and ruining the lives of millions.

Here is Jared Yanis on the subject.

S&W will need to play rough in order to turn this threat out before it takes roots or they’ll end up another Remington.  Kill this movement in its infancy inside your group of shareholders.  Hire the best lawyers.  Buy them out.  Boot them out of meetings.  Boot them out of stock ownership if possible.  Amend the rules if needed.

Play rough.  They already are.

Source.

Gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson hosted a grand opening of its new Tennessee headquarters Saturday after moving from its longtime home in Massachusetts to a more gun-friendly state.

The company built a new 650,000-square feet headquarters in Maryville, Tennessee, as part of a $125 million relocation plan announced in 2021. Tours were offered at the new facility on Saturday.

The gunmaker had been located in Springfield, Massachusetts, since the mid-19th century, but company officials have said legislative proposals in that state would prohibit them from manufacturing certain weapons. Massachusetts is known to have some of the country’s strictest gun laws.

Smith & Wesson President and CEO Mark Smith spoke at the event Saturday, which drew a large crowd to the new facility, The Daily Times reported.

“From where I stand, the next 170 years of Smith & Wesson are looking pretty good,” Smith said. “It is something special here in Tennessee.”

He cited a welcoming regulatory environment and close collaboration with the Tennessee state government as a crucial piece of the plan to relocate. The company has said the new facility would create hundreds of jobs.

Well good, but I hope they’re not leaving business folks and engineers in Massachusetts.  Move everything.

Now, leave that stupid Hillary Hole key lock for your revolvers behind.

In celebration, Jerry had some stuff to do.  I suspect it was his 9mm wheel gun he’s so fond of.

Congratulations, NRA World Champion @Jerry_Miculek! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 @Smith_WessonInc pic.twitter.com/AUrB7l2GFp

— NRA (@NRA) October 8, 2023

Smith & Wesson has issued a statement amid unprecedented attacks on the gun industry. Read the whole thing.

Next, Duke University is out with an analysis of lower court decisions in the aftermath of Bruen. You can read their summary.

Since Bruen was issued on June 23, lower courts have begun to apply its new framework to Second Amendment challenges.  As of today there are no major developments in the four cases that the Court GVR’ed shortly after Bruen, which include a challenge to Hawaii’s proper-cause analogue, two magazine-capacity cases, and a challenge to Maryland’s assault weapons ban.  However, in the month following Bruen, some state and lower federal courts have issued decisions invoking Bruen.  This post summarizes a handful of notable decisions.

Bruen is being ignored by a Federal Judge in Minnesota. Nobody is surprised that the Left ignores the law; they are anarchists top to bottom.

Next, Missouri Sheriffs continue resisting the FBI’s CCW list audit. They want the list; make no mistake. It has nothing to do with crime or public safety; they want you in a database.

Wheatley is among the sheriffs who received an email from Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s office on Aug. 9 in which he reminded law enforcement officers not to comply.

“We’re the highest ranking freely elected law enforcement of the state and it’s up to us to stand up for the rights of Missouri citizens,” Wheatley told the Epoch Times.

“The federal government, they overstep some, and it’s our job to put them in check and stand up for what we know is right.”

Also, the Washington Times has an opinion piece about BATFE’s new NICS denial and delay procedures. Any third grader can see this will eventually lead to every purchase being delayed, the purchaser being investigated, and serial numbers captured. They want to attain their holy grail database, implemented so they can make you turn them in. How do we know this? Because that’s what they’ve done the world over for generations.

Gun owners and constitutionalists at large are growing increasingly concerned by an invasive new policy to be enforced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which will mandate the reporting of background-check delays and denials to local law enforcement when someone tries to purchase a firearm. We can already predict the negative consequences of this poorly designed policy, with innocent individuals trying to buy a gun being inadvertently flagged by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and, shortly after, angrily greeting law enforcement at their front door.

News from Springfield, with some running commentary.

SPRINGFIELD — Smith & Wesson president and CEO Mark Smith says the company doesn’t want to make an enemy of the state of Massachusetts.

But he feels at least some lawmakers have made an enemy of Smith & Wesson with legislation that would ban the manufacture in Massachusetts of firearms that are unlawful to sell here.

The legislation is a response to mass shootings involving semiautomatic rifles made by Smith & Wesson and other companies. Advocates say high-capacity magazines and high rates of fire make the guns too dangerous for civilian hands.

Whether you have enemies is sometimes not up to you.

“We are under attack by the state of Massachusetts,” Smith said Friday.

CEO for two years and operations director for a decade before that, Smith gave a tour of the bustling, half-million-square-foot factory a day after announcing the company would move its headquarters and 550 jobs in production and management to gun-friendly Maryville, Tennessee. It’s not a move the company wanted to make, he said.

It will cost $125 milli million “that I didn’t want to spend,” Smith said.

Riding a wave of brisk gun sales, mostly to first time-buyers, Smith & Wesson said revenue hit $1.1 billion in the most recent fiscal year, up from $529.6 million a year earlier.

“Why would I disrupt that?” he said.

Smith & Wesson said it is relocating a total of 750 jobs to Tennessee from Springfield and its other sites. The company is also closing a plastics factory in Connecticut and a Missouri distribution center it opened in 2019.

Construction in Maryville is expected to begin later in 2021 and be substantially complete by the summer of 2023. No employees will move for two years.

A substantial operation will stay in Springfield, including the forge, machine shop and revolver assembly. There will still be 1,000 jobs here, many of them highly skilled and high-paying, the company said.

I understand the felt need to keep highly skilled revolver mechanics on staff rather than lose them due to a forced move, but this may not be up to S&W.  More on that later.

In just more than three years when the transition is complete, Smith & Wesson’s revolvers will still be manufactured here and stamped “Springfield, Massachusetts.” But the company’s semiautomatic rifles — the industry calls them modern sporting rifles while opponents say assault rifles — and semiautomatic pistols will be made in Tennessee.

News reports from Tennessee said Smith & Wesson may buy the land for only $1. It is part of a larger incentive package that includes seven-year tax abatement that could result in about $8 million in company savings, according to sources The Daily Times granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the deal.

That’s corporate welfare, and in I’m opposed to it.  The move should have been made a very long time ago, and the market should dictate where they move, not incentives.

Smith & Wesson said its move was prompted by legislation proposed earlier this year by Springfield state Rep. Bud L. Williams and others that would outlaw part of its manufacturing business. That includes feeding devices capable of containing 10 or more rounds, trigger pulls requiring pressure less than 10 pounds, threaded barrels that accept silencers and other military-looking hardware.

“They are moving their headquarters. That’s what corporate does. We are trying to save lives,” Williams said this week.

John Rosenthal, a co-founder of Stop Handgun Violence, which backs the bill, said Thursday’s announcement came the same day as the fourth-anniversary of the Las Vegas shooting where a gunman fired on a concert crowd. Fifty-eight people were killed that night, and two others died later. More than 850 were injured.

If that’s what really happened in Las Vegas, then release and honest and true report explaining how the room was spotless after thousands of rounds had been discharged in that room, rather than covered in soot, carbon and powder residue.

Smith said Friday that it was the proposed law that prompted the move. The products the legislation singles out are what consumers want, and they make up 60% percent of Smith & Wesson’s sales, he said. Limiting those products for sale to the military or law enforcement isn’t feasible because Smith & Wesson’s share of those markets is too small.

Be sure to understand that it’s not just the AR-15 suite of products that the communists don’t like in our hands, it’s the M&P pistols too.

Smith — no relation to the company co-founder — said it doesn’t matter that the proposal is just a bill, one of dozens filed each year that often don’t get a hearing, much less a vote on Beacon Hill.

“Honestly, we know we could have defeated it this session,” Smith said. “But it will be back the next session and the session after that.”

It will take years to move the operation, he said. So if the company waited for the bill to pass, it’d be too late.

“I just can’t operate with that big a risk hanging over the company,” he said. “We only started this process once the bill was filed. Then and only then.”

Once Smith and his executives decided they had to move, they found it made sense to close the Missouri and Connecticut plants as well and consolidate some operations in Tennessee.

The plastic parts from Deep River, Connecticut, go into the rifles and pistols, so that needs to be near the assembly lines. The distribution system needed to move from Missouri.

“But it was the need to move from this law that triggered all the other discussions,” Smith said. “We didn’t want to do this.”

The forges, giant steel hammers that shape aluminum or carbon steel, pounding parts out of metal blocks, are hard to move. So are hundreds of computer numerical control milling machines used to shape the metal. That’s why they’ll stay in Springfield.

Revolvers don’t have attributes targeted by the proposed law, so work assembling them will also stay here. It’s painstaking work that takes a great deal of training and experience. Assemblers dry-fire the weapons and adjust them based on the sound of the metallic click until they get it just right. It’s why the jobs that are staying are so highly paid.

You should move everything, excepting nothing at all, not even the heavy equipment.  Oh, and rather than “Revolvers don’t have attributes targeted by the proposed law,” you should have said “Revolvers don’t have attributes targeted by the proposed law at the moment.”  Try, try to understand.  It isn’t just semi-automatics they communists don’t like.  It’s any firearm in the hands of anyone but a state actor.  Semiautomatics are just in line first.  They’ll eventually have the bolt action deer hunting rights locked up tight at a state armory to be checked out only by state-approved hunters for the duration of the hunt.  Anything else that fires a projectile will be anathema in the hands of anyone who isn’t functioning on behalf of the state.

“If I was doing this to save a dime, why would I leave the highest-paid jobs behind?” Smith said. “We love Springfield. We love Mayor (Domenic J.) Sarno. We didn’t want to leave.”

You shouldn’t love him.  He hates you and wants to see you out of business.  And you shouldn’t want to stay in a place like that.

Some workers whose jobs are not moving have asked to relocate anyway. That’ll open up a Springfield position for someone on the relocation list who wants to stay.

“We want to take as many of our workers with us as we can,” he said.

Good.  You should take all of them, and if some don’t want to leave and they happen to be revolver mechanics, then make them understand that they won’t have a job in two years and in the mean time it’s their responsibility to train other revolver mechanics.

“The message is to highlight the area,” he said. “We are going to be talking about what it’s like to raise your family here. We are going to talk about residential prospects, what housing is like.”

Muir said the region sells itself as an outdoor recreation hub close to Knoxville, with the University of Tennessee, and to Nashville.

“Our pitch, at least in Blount County, is that we are the peaceful side of the Smokies,” he said. “Get a cabin and enjoy the mountains peacefully. It’s just a way to get away and relax in a calm area.”

Get out of communist areas like Massachusetts, and towards more liberty.  You won’t regret it.

ZeroHedge.

Less than six months after gunmaker Kimber Mfg. moved from New York to Alabama due in part to ‘gun and business-friendly support’ from the red state, Smith & Wesson is moving out of Massachusetts – and will relocate its headquarters to Maryville, Tennessee in 2023, according to Bloomberg.

The nation’s largest gun manufacturer cited restrictive legislation currently under consideration in Mass., which if enacted, would prohibit the company from manufacturing certain guns in the state they’ve called home for nearly 170 years.

“These bills would prevent Smith & Wesson from manufacturing firearms that are legal in almost every state in America and that are safely used by tens of millions of law-abiding citizens every day exercising their Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights, protecting themselves and their families, and enjoying the shooting sports,” said SWBI CEO Mark Smith.

“While we are hopeful that this arbitrary and damaging legislation will be defeated in this session, these products made up over 60% of our revenue last year, and the unfortunate likelihood that such restrictions would be raised again led to a review of the best path forward for Smith & Wesson,” he added.

The move will bring 750 jobs to Maryville, along with a $125 million investment, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing the Tennessee Department of Economic & Community Development.

Lower cost of living was also a factor in the move, according to Smith.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno said in a statement that the move will cost the city 550 job, which he described as ‘devastating’ for the families involved. The city said they would attempt to work with the gunmaker to try and retain 1,000 remaining jobs.

According to a person familiar with the move, the company will keep some production in Springfield.

The good.  S&W is moving.  What took you so long?  You should have made this move a long time ago to grab a part of Gun Valley Moves South (and here is Part II).

The bad.  You should have made this move a long time ago.  You waited too long, just at the time when housing prices are at a peak.

The ugly.  You’re leaving some manufacturing in Massachusetts.  This is a bad move, and you’ll live to regret it, from unionization from one plant to another, to further restrictions on firearms manufacturing.  What – you don’t really think this is the last, do you?  It’s better to get it all done at one time.

News from New Jersey.

New Jersey is asking a judge to force Smith & Wesson Brands Inc. to hand over internal documents, the latest twist in an ongoing legal fight over how the gun manufacturer advertises to residents.

The state first demanded marketing information in October. The Massachusetts-based company sued soon after, arguing that it wasn’t obligated to provide anything.

The gun manufacturer “claims that it is above the law — that it can deceive consumers and potential consumers of its products without consequence,” the state attorney general’s office wrote in court documents filed Friday.

The state’s subpoena was lawful and a court should enforce it, a deputy attorney general wrote.

A spokesman for New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal declined comment. Smith & Wesson representatives did not respond to a request for comment, nor did they comment on their lawsuit earlier.

The subpoena came after Grewal’s office asked outside lawyers to help investigate how gun companies promote their products.

Smith & Wesson said in its lawsuit that this all amounted to an “unconstitutional fishing expedition” designed to weaken the Second Amendment.

Grewal’s office pushed back, saying last week that state law allowed them to dig into anyone advertising within New Jersey.

The review was not about “the product Smith & Wesson sells, but the representations and omissions in its marketing and advertising,” state officials argued in court documents, and the investigation has shown that some ads “may misrepresent the impact owning a firearm has on personal safety.”

Some Smith & Wesson ads also promoted carrying concealed firearms without mentioning that New Jerseyans needed a permit to conceal carry, state officials wrote.

So get this.  The state of New Jersey wants S&W to inform potential buyers that N.J. required a permit to carry a concealed handgun.  Yes, you read that right.

Two things.  First, to S&W, ignore them.

Second, to S&W, get out of the North.  Leave there forever.  Come South.  You won’t be treated like that here.  You should have learned that by now.  There is no reason for you to stay where you are in a unionized state.

And if that court presses the issue, then inform all law enforcement agencies in N.J. that you will no longer be selling any of your products to them.

Global News.

Two of the victims who were injured during a mass shooting in Toronto’s Danforth neighbourhood in 2018 are looking to proceed with a $150-million class-action lawsuit against United States gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson Corp.

Lawyers for Samantha Price and Skye McLeod, along with their family members, filed a statement of claim with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on Monday.

“The handgun is an ‘ultra-hazardous product specifically designed to injure or kill people. The handgun was negligently designed and manufactured in that Smith & Wesson failed to incorporate ‘authorized user’ (or ‘smart gun’) technology into the weapon,” the claim said, noting “smart gun” technology “prevents unauthorized users … from firing the weapon.”

I don’t have a feel for whether a judgment in Canada would actually affect S&W here in America, but when the supreme tyrants decided to let the Remington lawsuit go forward, they doomed the legal process to ridiculous claims like this.

Congratulations to the tyrants.  I guess you won this round.  And S&W will doubtless have to look for ways to cut costs because of the legal fees coming their way.  I’m sure this won’t affect the customer.

Uh oh.  There is war between the manufacturers.

I don’t have a dog in this fight.

I guess ultimately it depends upon exactly how the patent paperwork reads and exactly what they took credit for.  I know a patent and copyright attorney.  It gets really complicated, very quickly.

Nasdaq:

Proxy service firms Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis are calling for American Outdoor Brands (NASDAQ: AOBC) investors to follow the lead of those at Sturm, Ruger (NYSE: RGR) and force management to draft a report stating that management is monitoring acts of gun violence in the country and the risks they represent to the company.

American Outdoor Brands — the former Smith & Wesson — is hosting its annual meeting on Sept. 25, and a number of activist healthcare and religious groups have jointly submitted a shareholder question for approval. Earlier this year, a similar effort succeeded at Ruger.

The ballot question asks the company to do three things:

• Monitor violent events in which Smith & Wesson products are used.
• Prove the gunmaker is working to produce safer firearms and related products.
• Assess the risks to the gunmaker’s reputation and financial well-being from gun violence in the U.S.

In a report issued by ISS, the corporate governance outfit endorsed the proposal as a way to prove American Outdoor Brands’ board of directors is keeping the long-term risks of gun violence in mind.

Reuters reported that ISS concluded, “There is reason to believe that smart gun technology could be employed to make guns safer in the U.S. and that any engineering problems could be overcome if there was a market for the product.” So-called smart guns use technology to make sure the weapon is in the hands of its owner before it fires.

[ … ]

Sturm, Ruger CEO Chris Killoy accepted the vote by investors, saying, “shareholders have spoken,” but he also went on to point out, “What the proposal does not and cannot do is to force us to change our business, which is lawful and constitutionally protected.”

While American Outdoor Brands undoubtedly feels the same way, it’s possible it will have a very different result than Sturm, Ruger did.

First, Ruger’s meeting was held at a hotel and an activist representative appeared and made an appeal to shareholders; American Outdoor’s meeting is an online-only event. (It’s the second year the gunmaker has conducted the annual meeting this way.) And as noted above, institutional investors own a smaller proportion of American Outdoor stock, making it a little more difficult to compile enough votes in favor. The meeting is also further removed from the Parkland school shooting, while Ruger’s event was more contemporaneous with it and emotions were more raw.

As I’ve said before, if you open your stock to investors (go public) and you’re subject to the political whims of money-people, you’d better make sure your employees own a majority of the stock and can reject things like this.

I see both Ruger and Smith & Wesson as vulnerable.

Reuters:

Funds run by BlackRock Inc and Vanguard Group backed all directors at gunmaker Sturm Ruger & Co Inc despite the company’s rare rejection of talks with the world’s top asset managers, disclosures to regulators on Thursday showed.

The votes by the gunmaker’s largest investors stood in contrast to support BlackRock and Vanguard gave to a measure calling on Sturm Ruger to report on the safety of its products, which passed over the board’s objections at the company’s annual meeting on May 9.

Neither BlackRock nor Vanguard would discuss in detail their votes at the meeting …

Sturm Ruger declined to comment on the filings by the funds with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. BlackRock holds about 18 percent of shares outstanding, followed by Vanguard, with about 10 percent.

Both fund firms rarely vote against directors, and say critical votes may come only after companies fail to respond to shareholder concerns …

Investors and activists with a range of views about gun control said the asset managers’ split tickets seemed to reflect an approach designed to appeal to young investors concerned with social issues, without alienating clients who own guns or pushing Sturm Ruger’s board too quickly.

[ … ]

BlackRock spokeswoman Tara McDonnell said via email it takes a case-by-case approach to its engagement and voting “because doing so encourages change over time and promotes responsible business practices that align with the financial interests of our clients.”

Next up, Beth Baumann at Townhall.

A group of 11 Catholic groups came together to purchase stock in Smith & Wesson. The group purchased 200 shares, the minimum number required to for shareholders to demand reports from the company. Now, they want the gun manufacturer to provide a report that details what the company is doing to promote “gun safety measures” and “produce safer gun and gun products.”

According to an SEC filing, which is submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), here’s what the group wants to see from Smith & Wesson:

Shareholders request the Board of Directors issue a report by February 8, 2019, at reasonable expense and excluding proprietary information, on the company’s activities related to gun safety measures and the mitigation of harm associated with gun products, including the following (emphasis mine):

Shareholders request the Board of Directors issue a report by February 8, 2019, at reasonable expense and excluding proprietary information, on the company’s activities related to gun safety measures and the mitigation of harm associated with gun products, including the following:

• Evidence of monitoring of violent events associated with products produced by the company.
• Efforts underway to research and produce safer guns and gun products.
• Assessment of the corporate reputational and financial risks related to gun violence in the U.S.

The resolution asks American Outdoor Brands Company (AOBC) to report on activities underway to mitigate the risks that its products may be misused in criminal acts of gun violence. Contrary to what the company suggests, AOBC has both the responsibility and capacity to play a more active role in how its products are used; the requested assessment and reporting are the first steps towards acceptance of this responsibility.  As a result of several high profile mass shootings in the past year, most recently the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, gun violence is increasingly being seen as a public health crisis with extraordinary human and financial costs.

Importantly, events of gun violence have led to mounting public backlash against gun makers and retailers including calls for boycotts, divestment and demands for gun safety regulation at both the federal and state levels. This environment presents serious business risks which demand a meaningful response from AOBC. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights make clear the corporate responsibility to seek to prevent or mitigate adverse human rights impacts that are directly linked to their operations, products or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those impacts.

AOBC has a responsibility to mitigate potential impacts through improved monitoring of its distribution and retail sales channels and enhanced reporting on research and development efforts to improve the safety features of its consumer products. The resolution does not request that AOBC produce smart guns or other specific products; nor does it call for the company to endorse a gun control regulatory or policy agenda. The resolution does, however, ask for reporting because existing disclosures of current risk mitigation measures are seen as insufficient for investors to assess their effectiveness.

BlackRock and Vanguard haven’t given up.  They’re playing the long game with Ruger.  Smith & Wesson has now been introduced to social justice warrioring 2.0  Version 1.0 saw them agree to Bill Clinton’s gun control and almost go out of business.

This updated version is smarter than that.  It’s an attack from the inside.  I’ve said before that any firearms manufacturer who goes public with its stock is vulnerable to this kind of pressure, unless the board of directors and employees own a majority of the stock and the corporation rules and bylaws are constructed to suppress this kind of pressure.

Ruger isn’t in the clear, no matter what the CEO says.  Smith & Wesson are at the very beginning of this new grand experiment in gun control.  The board of directors and financial folks had better get busy buying stock and amending the bylaws.

Of course, there are smaller firearms manufacturers who can build and sell firearms, but it would be a shame to see Ruger and Smith & Wesson go out of business.