American Derringer
For Immediate Release
March 24, 2000
For More Information:
Elizabeth Saunders - 254-799-9111
On March 17, Smith & Wesson, once a great American company,
signed an agreement with the Clinton Administration and the
mayors that have been illegally suing the firearms industry in a
scheme to subvert our Constitutional system of government and
enact law without lawmakers.
Up until that day, the industry had held firm against this
onslaught and this attack on our Right to Keep and Bear Arms. We
had resolved to not submit to these acts of tyranny.
Sadly, one of us has chosen to surrender their rights, my
rights and, to an extent your rights. We here at American
Derringer will never sign onto any agreement that takes away the
rights of others, and certainly not to an agreement as one-sided
as this on is. What makes this all the sadder is that the company
that surrenderd our rights isn't even an American company. It is
the British firm Tomkins, PLC, desperate to sell S&W, that agreed
with the state-ists on Friday.
"In all the years I have been in business, I have never seen
anything so blatantly un-American as that agreement," reacted
Elizabeth Saunders, American Derringer CEO after reviewing the
entire 24 page document. "The establishment of a government
oversight commission with virtually unlimited authority and no
accountability is in itself a violation of the basic American
concept of free enterprise. No reasonable business person could
possibly sign this thing."
The fact that these politicians have illegally used our
courts as bully-bats to try to force us to either capitulate to
their demands or be driven to bankruptcy is what is most
infuriating. Time and again they have gone to the people's
elected representatives with their false promise of less crime
through the persecution of law abiding gun owners. And each time,
the people's representatives at virtually every level have
rejected their schemes.
So they decided to leave the people out of it. Obviously the
people weren't having any of it. So they pulled their attorneys
out of their bag of tricks and unleashed an unprecedented, and
certainly illegal barrage of frivolous lawsuits at a perfectly
lawful industry blaming us for the acts of criminals. They seek
no money in these lawsuits. They seek exactly what they got from
Smith & Wesson. Regulation with no law behind it.
American Derringer condemns this action, and calls upon all
of those mayors to drop their attorneys and to start picking up
the criminals and putting them in prison and off our streets. The
woeful record of this administration when it comes to prosecuting
federal firearms law violations speaks for itself. And these are
the same laws they demanded and got.
"Now the Clinton administration and these mayors have a plan
to somehow consolidate the purchasing efforts of the thousands of
law enforcement agencies and use that purchasing power as a
bludgeon to try to get more companies to sign on to their
agreement. I call that extortion," Saunders commented. "That is
the depth to which they have sunk in their desperation. They are
willing to sacrifice the safety of law enforcement officers by
forcing them to only buy from signers of the agreement."
We resent the continued implication that we in the firearms
industry and that the lawful firearms owners in this nation are
somehow responsible for the level of violent crime that we face.
We resent the continued vilification of guns and firearms
enthusiasts by the president and his minions. We resent the
manipulated and twisted statistics being doled out and demand
that the real numbers and real facts be presented to the American
people.
Most of all, we are angered by the assault on our
Constitutional rights by these people. Their claim that the
settlement by just one of the many companies in this industry
justifies their actions Their claim does not ring true. No other
company in this industry has even given this agreement a second
look. We certainly won't. American Derringer will always support
and defend the right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear
arms and the right to protect family and home.
E-mail Elizabeth with your questions and comments at
email@amderringer.com
This year is dedicated to our country, remembering prominent
leaders who helped make our country the greatest in the world!
During the War of 1812, the British captured the city of
Washington, setting fire to the capitol building and the White
House. In the blaze of cannon fire, Francis Scott Key, a lawyer
living in Georgetown could still see an American flag waving over
Fort McHenry. When the bombing suddenly stopped during the night
he had no way of knowing if the flag was still there or if the
American stronghold had fallen to the British. But at dawn the
American flag became visible, still intact over the fort.
--A placque hanging over Elizabeth Saunders' desk
