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 these profitable moves made Smith and Wesson "the envy of the industry" according to Business Week. Despite all of these advantages, however, Smith & Wesson's market share began to decline in the 1980s. As the war on drugs intensified in the United States, police departments all across the country replaced their Smith and Wesson revolvers with European semiautomatics (such as Glock, Sig Sauer and Beretta). From 1982 to 1986 profits at the company declined by 41 percent Company ownership changed twice during the decade. In June 1987 Tomkins plc paid $112.5 million to purchase Smith & Wesson. Tomkins modernized the