To expand on Mike and Bart's comments, Smith and Wesson was owned by a British company called Tomkins PLC. They'd purchased S&W mostly for the trademark. It was under them that the company failed to follow the changing civilian gun market in favor of making handcuffs and bicycles for law enforcement contracts.
Then Glock came along and pushed them out of the very market that was the core of their business. Word on the street was that Tomkins wanted out of the gun business. They had underestimated the controversial nature of the gun industry and they couldn't compete.
Then the Mayors of Chicago and Bridgeport decided to sue gun manufacturers for the damage inflicted by the criminal misuse of their products.
The underlying concept was to take the template they'd used to sue the tobacco industry and use it to cripple the gun industry.
The secretary of HUD at the time was one Andrew Cuomo (yep, one and the same), who crowed that targeted lawsuits would subject the gun industry to "death by a thousand cuts." The whole idea was to sue gun manufacturers not for breaking any law, but simply because they
made guns. That drivel is why we have the PLCAA.
The Clinton administration threatened to sue just about everybody. Glock, Beretta, and several others lawyered up and told them where to go. But not S&W. Tomkins didn't want a costly and public legal fight, so they folded like a wet newspaper and let the administration dictate terms.
To say it was a public relations disaster is like saying the burning of Carthage was a setback. One of the provisions was that all S&W guns be manufactured with an integral lock. The company contracted to make the locks was Saf-T-Hammer. While in negotiation with Tomkins, the story goes that one of the Saf-T-Hammer folks asked one of the Tomkins folks how much they'd just sell S&W for. I'm told it was around $17 million.
Saf-T-Hammer bought the company, fired the board of directors, and refocused on the civilian market. They also announced they have absolutely no intention of following the Clinton agreement. As it is, the enforcing agency was not the DOJ but HUD, and it turns out nobody at HUD seems to know who's supposed to do
that.