NEW REPORT: How Smith & Wesson Almost Lost its License to Make Guns

WASHINGTON — Today, The Smoking Gun, an Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund resource dedicated to exposing the gun industry’s role in our gun violence epidemic, released a new report detailing how Smith & Wesson, one of the country’s largest gun makers, almost had its manufacturing and import licenses revoked after Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) inspectors discovered missing and unaccounted for firearms, poor record-keeping systems, unregistered grenade launchers, and other serious violations at the company’s headquarters. The report was written using previously unreleased ATF documents provided as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.

“All too often, gun manufacturers fail to comply with federal regulations — and the lack of accountability makes us all less safe,” said Nick Suplina, SVP of Law & Policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. “Instead of setting an example for other gun makers, Smith & Wesson spent years shirking its responsibilities and allowing guns to go missing while simultaneously making it harder for the ATF to trace crime guns, a fact made exponentially worse considering how many weapons it produces — and how many fall into the wrong hands.”

Read the full report here.

Key Points

• A 2007 ATF inspection grew into a monthslong investigation after agents discovered firearms were missing from Smith & Wesson’s Springfield, Massachusetts, headquarters.

• According to the ATF, Smith & Wesson failed to serialize firearms, keep track of its inventory, respond to crime gun tracing requests, and register multiple National Firearms Act weapons, including at least a dozen grenade launchers.

• The inspectors noted that Smith & Wesson had a “practice” of leaving its “main vault unlocked” and that employees kept guns in their offices, even in filing cabinets, and had no system for notifying the ATF of missing guns.

• ATF inspectors asked Smith & Wesson employees to freeze all shipments to conduct a full inventory, but the workers kept sending out firearms and repeatedly ignored requests from the investigators.

• Smith & Wesson employees also had “off book” firearms that left the factory without any record of where they went.

• The ATF inspection records uncovered by Everytown even include a photo of the unregistered grenade launchers discovered at the Smith & Wesson factory.

• Employees told the ATF that “financial concerns have governed all else at S&W for the last few years and that ATF compliance was not at the forefront or even thought of in some of their processes, even for missing firearms.”

• The ATF considered revoking Smith & Wesson’s licenses but ultimately settled with the company, which agreed to pay $500,000 — a mere fraction of its annual revenue — and implement new compliance measures.

• Smith & Wesson briefly mentioned the ATF inspections in SEC filings available to shareholders at the time, but did not describe how close it came to losing its licenses.

• To this day, the company has never published any ATF inspection results.

• Years later, in 2013, the ATF inspected Smith & Wesson again and found more violations related to record-keeping and imported firearms, including one repeat violation from the previous inspection.

• Had the inspections taken place under the Biden administration’s “zero tolerance” policy — which the Trump administration recently rescinded — Smith & Wesson may have actually lost its licenses.