A brief monograph on the Models 1000, 1500 and 3000 S&W long guns…
Smith and Wesson did at one time market both shotguns and rifles under the S&W brand.
'Struth, Doc… they were manufactured in Japan by Howa, and marketed by the Lear-Siegler edition of S&W, the shotguns as the Models 1000 and 3000 to directly compete, respectively, with Remington's Models 1100 and 870. When Tomkins came in back in '87, they discontinued everything under the S&W label save the handguns and 'cuffs. Mossberg immediately picked up the Howa shotguns 'til Alan Mossberg, rocket-scientist that he is, figured out that he was cutting his own corporate throat, and they were de-catalogued after just one year.
I owned a really neat 28" Model 1000 for about ten years, then gifted it to a lady friend who was getting interested in backlot trap. It was in all respects an excellent sporting arm.
The Models 3000 were actually an improvement over the contemporary Model 870 (whose lifter design was subsequently changed to reflect the Howa advancement) and were very much "serious social shotguns." CHP had contracted for a bunch of them with 18" inch tubes, a side-folder and a phosphate finish, some of which still show up on the refurb market… excellent values! The President of our sandpit combat club found a bunch of contract overruns back in '84, NIB and with a nifty black cordura case, being blown out by Edelman's (the Long Island retail subsidiary of the now defunct Nationwide distributor) at $139.95 a copy, and cracked his plastic to glom onto the last of them, graciously making them available at cost to whoever in the club wanted one. To my eternal regret, I passed… they made an excellent "go gun" for your vehicle.
The rifles were pretty good the shotguns so-so, at least from the onse I've seen.
Absolutely right on the rifles… "Japanese Mausers," we called them… which are still available, BTW. Interarms brought them in, as is someone else now… the Models 1500 designation is still utilized. You can get a barrelled action for under $250, drop it in a RamLine synthetic stock, and you've got a helluva gun!
But I demur on your assessment of the shotguns, for the above reasons.
BTW, to the best of my knowledge, the S&W shotguns were not social. All of them wore long hunting tubes.
As I noted, you're probably right on the semi-autos… at least I never saw an "entry gun" configuration among the Models 1000, just as I never saw a "sporting" version of the Models 3000; all were either 18-inchers with that side-folder, or a full-stocked 20-inch slug-gun version, always "bad-arse black," rather than in a pattern.
Memo to Romulus: try prunes!