The Middletown, New York Times Herald-Record reported
that the City of Middletown and the Village of New Paltz 
have joined with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer 
in boycotting police purchases of firearms from companies 
that do not adopt "voluntary" safety codes such as those 
promulgated by Smith & Wesson's attorneys.

It may be worth pointing out to all the parties involved,
police-politicians and gun manufacturers alike, the economic 
realities of police buying power versus private consumer 
buying power.

According to the American Firearms Industry, more than one 
million pistols are imported or domestically manufactured 
not for export each year.  The vast majority of those
one million plus pistols are purchased by private citizens.
The total number of police in the United States is about 
500,000.  Assuming a service life of 10 years for police 
sidearms, the yearly market for replacement pistols by 
police is around 50,000 per year.

Who has more economic clout, a group that buys quantity
50,000 per year or a group that buys more than 1 Million
a year?  Police pledges to favor or disfavor certain
vendors based on political considerations, which few 
if any street cops would consider effective or useful 
in preventing crime, are economically insignificant.

For example, if 10% of private consumers chose to boycott 
Smith & Wesson this year, it would take more than 20 years 
of police buying to make up the lost sales volume.

Conversely if every police department decided to withhold 
all pistol purchases entirely from today forward it would 
have less than a 5% effect on domestic new pistol 
consumption.  Even their largest possible buying move
would barely make a blip on sales charts.

Jeff Chan
Mountain View, California

References:

"Police Have No Duty To Protect Individuals" by Peter Kasler

  http://rkba.org/research/kasler/protection

National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers (NAFLFD), 
and the Professional Gun Retailers Association (PGRA) Firearms 
Production Statistics Library

  http://www.amfire.com/afistatistics/menu.html

Middletown and the Village of New Paltz join a boycott of gun 
manufacturers.

  http://www.th-record.com/2000/03/28/onsguns.htm