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 production equipment and instituted additional testing which significantly increased product quality. However new gun sales in the United States lagged in the 1990s, some of which was attributed to the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994. Also there were numerous city and state lawsuits against Smith and Wesson. After the success of the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, municipalities thought they might be able to succeed through tort law against the gun industry as well. These political and legal challenges provided a lot of risk and uncertainty for Smith and Wesson's future. On March 17, 2000, Smith & Wesson made an