BOSTON – Saf-T-Hammer, the small trigger lock company that bought Smith & Wesson this week, inherits the critical dilemma facing the nation’s oldest gun maker: How to fend off potentially crippling lawsuits while regaining the trust of gun owners.

Smith & Wesson infuriated many gun owners last year when it agreed with the federal government and the city of Boston to wide-reaching safety measures in exchange for the promise of being dropped from lawsuits against the industry.

The company that armed Dirty Harry with his .44-caliber Magnum and manufactured sidearms for U.S. soldiers was accused of selling out.

Some gun owners called for boycotts. One company executive reportedly was forced to hire bodyguards and wear a bulletproof vest. Sales fell by half, company spokesman Ken Jorgensen said, and 125 people were laid off.

The question now is what the new ownership means for the safety agreements, and whether – or some say when – Smith & Wesson will try to get back into the good graces of gun owners.

Cameron Hopkins, editor in chief of Firearms Marketing Group, thinks it will, and soon. In fact, he predicts that Robert Scott, president of Saf-T-Hammer and a former Smith & Wesson vice president, will appear at this week’s National Rifle Association convention in Kansas City, Mo., and beg the forgiveness of gun owners.

“The loss of business is entirely attributable to their signing the agreement in what was perceived by firearms consumers as a traitorous act,” Hopkins said Tuesday. “They must distance themselves from that agreement.”

Mitchell Saltz, founder and chief executive of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Saf-T-Hammer, said the company still was reviewing the obligations it had inherited from former owner Tomkins Corp., but would respect any agreements it had signed.

“As long as we signed an agreement, we’ll live up to it,” he said. “We just want to make sure we understand what’s in it.”

Saltz declined to comment on whether the company planned overtures to gun owners and referred questions to Scott, who was in meetings at Smith & Wesson’s Springfield headquarters Tuesday and did not return a phone message left by The Associated Press.

Before the sale was announced Monday, there were signs that Smith & Wesson was losing enthusiasm for the compromise strategy.

Ed Shultz, the CEO when the agreements were made, has left the company. Recently, Jorgensen called the federal agreement signed in March 2000 “a framework,” causing some gun safety advocates to worry the company was backing away from its promise.

But that could backfire too, and other analysts say while Smith & Wesson must return to the gun owners’ fold, it can’t sacrifice its reputation as “the good gun company.”

Compared to the federal agreement, the agreement with the city of Boston is more likely to bind the company because it has been approved by a judge and entered into court.

The Boston agreement calls for the company to set aside revenues to develop safety technology and for external safety locks and internal locks on handguns – a possible tie-in with the locks Saf-T-Hammer makes – within two years, among other measures.