Redemption
This blog post is just an excuse to link to an excellent article by Jim Zumbo. The guy may have said some ignorant shit, and he surely got a mighty backlash, but he could have either quietly faded away, perhaps become a ghost writer, or even gone turncoat and made a nice paycheck by being a shill for the Joyce Foundation. Instead, he’s learning from his mistakes and is working to support the 90% of gun owners who don’t hunt.
For those of you who swallowed the swill straight from the Washington Post, who thought the NRA was the taskmaster who gave marching orders to a band of zealots instead of the more accurate, amazing grassroots response by firearms enthusiasts, you probably believe his career was forever over. I think you need to take a quick look at the stock price of Smith and Wesson.
On May 11, 2001 Smith and Wesson was purchased by the Saf-T-Hammer Corporation. I could easily explain why this was a turning point in the company’s history, and how this example is relevant to the Zumbo incident, but instead I’d like to encourage you to do your own research for a change. (Oh alright, here.)
On the next day of trading, (May 14, 2001), S&W (NASDAQ:SWHC) closed with a price of $1.15 per share. As of last Friday the closing price was $12.31.
That means that if you would have dropped $1,000 on Smith and Wesson back in ‘01, you would have stock valued at $10,704 today.
Smith and Wesson made a huge mistake in the past that deeply offended their core citizen customers, their bread and butter revenue. Yet it’s very hard to make the case that S&W would still be alive, much less having thrived as a company without the support of gun enthusiasts, collectors, hunters, sportsmen, and self-protection focused individuals.
