Smith & Wesson NRA and NSSF over the issue of smart guns, thousands of retailers and tens of thousands of firearms consumers boycotted Smith & Wesson. CEO Ed Shultz, who negotiated the deal, was forced out in September of that year. By December 2000, the company's stock price was 19 cents per share. Smith & Wesson dropped its smart gun plans after nearly being driven out of business. On May 11, 2001, Saf-T-Hammer Corporation acquired Smith & Wesson Corp. from Tomkins plc for US$15 million, a fraction of the US$112 million originally paid by Tomkins. Saf-T-Hammer assumed US$30 million in debt, bringing the
Smith & Wesson a new facility and began experimenting with a new cartridge design more suitable than the .22 Short that it had been using. At the same time, the company's design was being infringed upon by other manufacturers which led to numerous lawsuits filed by Rollin White. In many of these instances part of the restitution came in the form of the offender being forced to stamp "Manufactured for Smith & Wesson" on the revolvers in question. White's vigorous defense of his patent caused a problem for armsmakers in the United States at the time as they could not manufacture cartridge revolvers.