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Smith & Wesson M&P-15 semi-automatic rifles of the AR-15 style are displayed during the National Rifle Association annual meeting in Houston, May 28.
Photo:
patrick t. fallon/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Gun-restriction advocates hurt their cause when political point-scoring eclipses public safety. So it is with a House effort to badger
Smith & Wesson
about routine and legal firearm sales. A committee charged with oversight has burst its legal bounds and crossed into character assassination.
The dispute between the House Oversight Committee and Smith & Wesson escalated Monday when the company objected to the committee’s subpoena. Committee Democrats, led by Chair
Carolyn Maloney,
are demanding that the manufacturer produce sales and revenue figures for its AR-15-style sporting rifles. The company says the subpoena squashed months of good-faith efforts to cooperate.
“Congress must clearly spell out with even more specificity why it needs the granular level of information requested by the committee,” wrote the company’s lawyer
Mark Paoletta
in an Aug. 15 letter to the committee. The letter says Smith & Wesson has already provided detailed records of its rifle sales since House Oversight started investigating the industry in May. That wasn’t good enough for Ms. Maloney, yet she hasn’t described a legislative need for more specific data.
Democrats launched the investigation in response to shootings this year, including the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. By the end of June President Biden had signed the largest gun-safety law in decades, making it easier to restrict criminals and unstable people from buying weapons. The prospects of further legislation soon are nil, but the Oversight Committee has continued to blame gun manufacturers for new shootings. “It is long past time for the gun industry to be held accountable for the carnage they enable and profit from,” said Ms. Maloney before a planned hearing with firearm company executives.
The manufacturers complied when the investigation remained in its original scope, including a commitment by Smith & Wesson CEO
Mark Smith
to face questioning. The company balked when the committee issued a formal subpoena, demanding proprietary information on its revenue from AR-15-style guns, despite no clear purpose other than to harass the company and feed an anti-gun narrative.
The Supreme Court has restricted subpoenas of exactly this sort. In Trump v. Mazars (2020), the Justices voted 7-2 to void the demand by several House committees for the former President’s financial records. In addition to affirming the separation of powers, Chief Justice
John Roberts’s
opinion held that congressional subpoenas need a clear legislative purpose.
Ms. Maloney likely understood this when she decided to serve Smith & Wesson, but don’t forget the political context. The New York Congresswoman is in a primary battle against Rep.
Jerrold Nadler
and others after House seats were redrawn last year. Taking on the gun manufacturers could buy her support in the tony neighborhoods of Manhattan, but even politically unpopular companies deserve the protection of limits on Congress’s power.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the August 17, 2022, print edition.
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