The Patriot Post® · Smith & Wesson Fires Back at Gun-Grabbing Dems

One of the weapons Donald Trump brought to bear against the incessant attacks from the Left and their media fellow-travelers was a willingness to push back hard against unfair accusations — in other words, to counterpunch.

Legendary firearms manufacturer Smith & Wesson seems to have been taking notes.

Indeed, the company and its president and CEO, Mark Smith, took to Twitter recently with a forceful statement that fired back at Democrats and the media for suggesting that the firearms industry was responsible for rising crime rates nationwide, rather than the soft-on-crime policies enacted by lawmakers themselves. As Fox Business reports:

The company said politicians and the media have “vilified and undermined” law enforcement, supported prosecutors with policies some label soft on crime, and have generally promoted a culture of lawlessness, yet have the “audacity” to blame Smith & Wesson and other firearm manufacturers “for the crime wave that has predictably resulted from these destructive policies.”

“But,” says Smith, “they are the ones to blame for the surge in violence and lawlessness, and they seek to avoid any responsibility for the crisis of violence they have created by attempting to shift the blame to Smith & Wesson, other firearm manufacturers and law-abiding gun owners.”

The document itself is a one-pager, and it’s well worth the read. It was prompted after CEOs from several major gun manufacturers appeared before the House Oversight Committee — and were promptly bullied by Democrats.

Things heated up Monday when the company objected to the issuance of a subpoena from the Democrat-led committee, which demanded that Smith & Wesson produce sales and revenue figures for its AR-15-style sporting rifles. As The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editors note , “The company says the subpoena squashed months of good-faith efforts to cooperate.”

It’s campaign season, so politicians are even more apt to grandstand, but that doesn’t excuse the behavior of the gun-grabbing Democrats. “Congress must clearly spell out with even more specificity why it needs the granular level of information requested by the committee,” wrote S&W lawyer Mark Paoletta in an August 15 letter to the committee. The Supreme Court has ruled against this sort of congressional intrusion and overreach, so we’ll have to see if the company wants to call the bluff of these anti-2A House Democrats.

“Gun-restriction advocates hurt their cause when political point-scoring eclipses public safety.” So say the Journal’s editors. They continue: “So it is with a House effort to badger Smith & Wesson about routine and legal firearm sales. A committee charged with oversight has burst its legal bounds and crossed into character assassination.”

What sort of character assassination might that be? Take the words of Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, for example: “It is long past time,” she said, “for the gun industry to be held accountable for the carnage they enable and profit from.”

CEO Smith wasn’t having any of it. He wrote:

To be clear, a Smith & Wesson firearm has never broken into a home; 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.

Good for Smith, and good for Smith & Wesson. The right of self-defense is understood to be the first civil right, for without it there can be no civilized society.

Smith also reaffirmed his company’s desire for a safer society. “We will continue to work alongside law enforcement, community leaders and lawmakers who are genuinely interested in creating safe neighborhoods,” he wrote. “We will engage those who genuinely seek productive discussions, not a means of scoring political points. We will continue informing law-abiding citizens that they have a constitutionally protected right to defend themselves and their families.”

But, Smith concluded, “We will never back down in our defense of the 2nd Amendment.”

Boom.