For more than 50 years, George Romanoff's family has been selling Smith & Wessons: .357 revolvers with hardwood handles, sleek pistols forged from blue and stainless steel. Smith's vaunted handgun line was easily the biggest seller at Romanoff's Pittsburgh-area store, Ace Sporting Goods—until last March. That's when the 149-year-old gun-maker signed a stunning agreement with the Feds to get out from under lawsuits, promising to impose strict new rules on all its dealers. Now those who wanted to keep selling Smith guns would have to keep computerized records of every sale and store all their guns—not just Smiths—in some kind of vault. And they'd have to limit their customers to one gun every two weeks.
展开▼
