Originally posted by dahermit
The responses to the article amaze me. Central to the author's thesis is that S&W has (or had) quality control issues for which he gives five examples he lists as "examples", and several more in the body of the text. Respondents however, choose to ignore the many examples and either respond with baseless accusations, terse and seeming emotionally based retorts, or in one case took the weakest example (they copy other makers) to attack. None, disputed his examples (poor quality control, problematic products), as being false or outright lies...they just do not like that kind of talk about a product they are fond of, it would seem.
As a person with an advanced degree who has studied the logic required of scholarly writings, I maintain that he made a logical case with examples, his attackers however...
The problem with his "examples" are that he's presented five anecdotes which cannot be verified as evidence that S&W, on the whole, is no good. Now, I think most every gun company would have to admit to having lapses in QC now and again. The Ruger Redhawks with barrels that spontaneously broke off are fairly well known and one of the Mods here has mentioned examining a Colt revolver with no hole in the end of the barrel, but neither of those examples means that Ruger or Colt, on the whole, is a bad company. Honestly, the fact that Hawks could only come up with five "examples" for a company that's been in business for over a century and a half speaks pretty well for S&W.
As to attacking Hawk's claim that S&W "copies" other makers' products because it was the "weakest" part of his argument, I'm sorry but other than his anecdotes that's pretty much all of his argument and it's a specious one at that. Allow me, if I may, to address his claims point-by-point:
He claims that their I-Bolt rifle was a knockoff of the Remington 700. What he ignores is that there's really only so many ways to make a bolt action rifle. The S&W I-Bolt is no more a "knockoff" of the Remington 700 than the Remington 700, Winchester Model 70, Ruger M77, or Savage 110 is of the Mauser 98.
He claims that the Combat Magnum was a poorly executed product because it could not stand up to a steady diet of .357 Magnum ammunition and cites a "recommendation" that .357 ammo be used sparingly as proof of this. The problem herin lies that I've never been able to find the original source of this "recommendation," only second and third hand accounts of which many are attributed to Bill Jordan. The fact of the matter is that the primary culprit of durability issues with K-Frame Magnums was 125 gr and 110 gr .357 ammunition. This ammunition did not exist in the 1950's when the Combat Magnum made its debut. I find it a bit unfair to judge a gun on its ability to digest ammunition for which it was never designed.
He cites the L-Frame as a "knockoff" of the Colt Python, yet anyone familiar with the lockwork of S&W and Colt revolvers knows that, internally, they are very different. He says that the L-Frame's full underlug was a copy of Colt's styling cues but ignores that until the introduction of the Python, Colts had no underlug at all while S&W had introduced that feature in 1908.
He touts Glock's lawsuit against S&W over the Sigma as an example of a "cheap knockoff" but ignores that nearly every feature of the Glock pistol from the polymer frame to polygonal rifling to the trigger dingus was lifted from someone else's previous design.
He says that their .22 semi-autos were "cheesy High Standard clones" but fails to mention that, like a bolt-action rifle, there's really only so many ways to make a blowback .22 autoloader.
He says that the Chief's special was a "low cost knockoff" of the Colt Detective Special and that's probably one of his biggest stretches of logic. Besides the fact that the workings of a Colt D-Frame and S&W J-Frame are completely different, he ignores the fact that the J-Frame Chief's Special was nothing more than a redesign of the I-Frame Terrier which had been in production since 1936. He also ignores the fact that the Chief's Special was not the first or only .38 Special snub that S&W ever produced, the .38 M&P (later the Model 10) was available with a 2" barrel since the 1940's. He further ignores that the Detective Special wasn't all that innovative on Colt's part: they simply shortened the barrel of the Police Positive Special.
His "proof" that the Chief's Special was a substandard design is that S&W wouldn't rate them for +P ammunition until the 1990's. Never mind that many of today's premier gunsmiths recommend against +P ammunition in Colt D-Frames and that, even though Colt rated them for +P (albeit in limited amounts), they won't service any DA revolver for any reason these days. It says a lot to me that S&W J-Frames are still in production and selling well (they're some of S&W's best sellers) while Colt D-Frames have gone the way of the Do-Do.
Hawk's cites S&W's 1911 as a Colt "ripoff" but chooses to ignore Springfield, Para Ordinance, Kimber, and many other companies who's business has based largely, if not entirely on making 1911's since long before S&W introduced theirs.
Almost predictably, Hawks dredges up the tired old bantering about the S&W/Clinton agreement. While he does manage to mention that S&W's management changed after this agreement, he conveniently omits the fact that the owners who entered into the agreement took a huge financial loss, the new owners almost immediately disavowed the whole thing, and that S&W has never honored their end of the bargain. I also find it interesting that Hawk's doesn't decry Ruger in spite of Bill Ruger's infamous "no honest man needs more than ten rounds" comment or Colt over their nearly complete abandonment of the civilian market due in no small part to the same political pressure that caused the S&W/Clinton agreement.
He cites the "widely-known" unreliability of S&W semi-autos but then attempts to make that claim irrefutable by saying it's seldom mentioned in the press (apparently only enlightened gun magi like himself discussed it in riddles and secret handshakes among themselves
). What's funny is that S&W 3rd generation semi-autos have become quite sought after and are regarded by many outside the press (including many on this very forum) as extremely reliable.
Finally, he cites the recall of the S&W-made Walther PPK "knockoff" (despite the fact that they're made under license from Walther because PPK's aren't importable under the 1968 GCA) as his final example of S&W's failings. He conveniently omits that the condition which prompted the recall was the pistol being able to fire when the hammer was lowered with the safety
disengaged and that this practice is not the manner in which the pistol was designed to be manipulated. He also ignores that, in today's litigous society, even a very remote possibility of a gun malfunctioning is sufficient to prompt a recall.
Basically, it's pretty obvious to me that Hawks has some sort of axe to grind with S&W. Pretty much every "failing" that he accuses them of applies equally to many other companies whose products he speaks favorably of. The half-truths, convenient omissions, and unsubstantiated accusations he makes in this article and a couple others published on his site have lead me to take pretty much anything Chuck Hawks says with a large grain of salt.
