Gun Manufacturers Are Not the Problem

By Kevin D. Williamson

Wednesday, August 17, 2022

The Democrats’ effort to make storied American manufacturer Smith & Wesson the villain du jour in their jihad against the Second Amendment is stupid for any number of reasons, one of which is that the campaign is targeted specifically at AR-style rifles — and “Smith & Wesson” is hardly the first name that leaps to mind when one thinks of such firearms, although the firm, like almost every other firearms maker interested in turning a profit, manufactures the “modern sporting rifles” that are by far the most popular style of long gun sold in the United States. Instead, Smith & Wesson is best known for old-fashioned revolvers, like the Model 29 that I just happen to have right here.

As I will document in an upcoming magazine piece for National Review, Smith & Wesson — along with traditional rivals such as Ruger and dozens of less-famous companies around the country — is one of those rare birds for which politicians of both parties pray so fervently: an American manufacturing success story. Old domestic companies such as Smith & Wesson now compete for skilled workers with European firms that have shifted their manufacturing to the United States — these manufacturers are not coming here in search of cheap labor — as well as with dozens of innovative new U.S. companies. The market does indeed produce surprising results — at this year’s National Rifle Association meeting in Houston, I was tickled to see a sign reading: “Kalashnikov—Proudly Made in the USA!” Somewhere, the ghost of John Rambo is having a good laugh at that.

Smith & Wesson’s executives, bless them, have decided to stand up for themselves. Democrats demanded to know what the company was doing to track violence caused by its firearms, and Smith & Wesson’s management responded that it isn’t doing anything of the kind, because there is no violence caused by its firearms. “[A] Smith & Wesson firearm has never broken into a home,” said CEO Mark Smith. “[A] Smith & Wesson firearm has never assaulted a woman out for a late-night run in the city; a Smith & Wesson firearm has never carjacked an unsuspecting driver stopped at a traffic light. Instead, Smith & Wesson provides these citizens with the means to protect themselves and their families.”

Democrats and their media amplifiers accuse Smith & Wesson of relying on “fear-based marketing.” Most firearms marketing is, at some level, fear-based: Ruger sells a revolver that is mainly intended to be used for defense against bears and other dangerous animals; Kimber makes a nifty 10mm automatic for the same purpose. For many hunters, fishermen, campers, hikers, and such, the fear of big snarly hungry things is entirely rational. But Democrats aren’t talking about that kind of fear: They should say what they mean.

And what they mean, of course, is the fear of criminal violence, particularly in big cities that have long been controlled almost exclusively by Democrats. That is a reasonable fear, too: Violent crime is up steeply in many of these cities and has been rising across the country. It is possible to exaggerate this trend, but it also is possible to understate it. For context, consider that Marseille is one of the most dangerous cities in Europe when it comes to violent crime — and the murder rate in St. Louis is 20 times that in Marseille.

The really dumb thing about all this is that while Smith & Wesson may not be eager to share private business information with the demagogues in Congress, that information is, as a practical matter, entirely irrelevant to the issue of violent crime. But we do not want for relevant information — in fact, we know more about the population of people who commit most of our murders and other violent crimes — prior offenders — than we know about almost any other demographic group.

You won’t find very many Smith & Wesson modern sporting rifles being used in murders — because you won’t find very many such rifles by any maker used in murders, because you won’t find very many rifles of any sort being used in murders: Rifles typically show up in something on the order of 2 percent of homicides. This means that Americans are, statistically speaking (and aren’t we all supposed to be evidence-based?) more likely to be beaten to death with fists or bludgeoned to death with a blunt object — or stabbed, or strangled — than they are to be murdered by means of an AR-style rifle.

Of all the currently incarcerated criminals who were in possession of a firearm at the time of their crime (about half were and half weren’t) around 2 percent got that gun from a gun store — but, for some reason, federally licensed retailers and those who do business with them are the focus of Democratic gun-control efforts.

We do almost nothing to enforce the gun laws we already have on the books, and we do shockingly little to prosecute violent crimes short of homicide. I rehearse these figures all the time, but nobody seems to be taking them to heart: More than 80 percent of murders in New York City are committed by people with prior arrest records, most of them with violent-crime convictions already on their CVs; 87 percent of the murders in Chicago are committed by prior offenders, and the average Chicago murder suspect has twelve arrests on his record by the time he is arrested for homicide; in Baltimore, the average murder suspect has 9.3 prior arrests, and a third of them of such suspects are on probation or parole at the time of the murder for which they are arrested.

When an American is murdered, chances are pretty good that the police already have the killer’s fingerprints and photo on file, and that he’s already on parole or probation; i.e., subject to correctional oversight.

Yet nobody gives a damn. The NYPD brought in 4,456 people on gun charges in 2021, which resulted in one — one! — conviction at trial. There were only 710 plea deals, while prosecutors threw out the charges against another 1,200 suspects. In 2016, Philadelphia was simply throwing out a shocking 30 percent of gun cases — and now, it is throwing out 60 percent of them. In 2016, more than half of those charged with gun crimes in Philadelphia went to jail — today, more than two-thirds walk away. When Barack Obama’s terrorist buddy Bill Ayers was acquitted, he mocked the system: “Guilty as sin — free as a bird! What a country, America.” Back then, that was scandalous; today, in many Democratic jurisdictions, it is standard operating procedure.

Fear-based marketing? It is reality-based marketing.

American manufacturers are not the problem. Marketing campaigns are not the problem. Retailers are not the problem. The problem is the cascading failures of our schools, police departments, prosecutors, mental-health systems, and correctional systems, which are built upon still larger failures: of our cities, of our families, of our civil society.

We have so many “usual suspects” that we don’t know what to do with them all. But it is no mystery where violent crime comes from or what needs to be done about it — and you won’t find the answers you are looking for in Smith & Wesson’s quarterly statements.