WSJ says Smith & Wesson subpoena crosses the line   By Cam Edwards | Aug 17, 2022

The House Oversight Commmittee’s subpoena of Smith & Wesson demanding “granular” details about its sales of modern sporting rifles isn’t just an attempt at “character assassination”, according to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, it’s likely to be laughed out of court.

My colleague Tom Knighton wrote about Smith & Wesson’s response to the subpoena earlier today, but on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co we’re taking a closer look at the support the gun company is getting from the editorial page of one of the biggest papers in the country. The WSJ editors pull no punches in their takedown of House Oversight chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney’s subpoena of the gun company, describing it as character assassination as well as a legally dubious move.

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.

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