- While the Remington name is unlikely to disappear, the company’s travails highlight the shifting fortunes of the firearms industry and its fraught position in the nation’s economic and political life. The company’s fortunes took a hit after the election of Donald Trump, a self-proclaimed “true friend” of the gun industry, because Hillary Clinton’s defeat erased fears among gun enthusiasts about losing access to weapons. Sales plummeted, and retailers stopped re-ordering as they found themselves stuffed with unsold inventory.
If Donald Trump inadvertently kills or hurts the gun industry, I'm all for that. Fucking l.o.l.
I’m assuming Remington was a zombie company propped up by an unusually hot gun market during the Obama years. Really it’s privately equity that killed them but they kill everything they touch. Also bankruptcy doesn’t mean actual shutdown, it means employees and debt holders get stiffed while private equity continues to loot for a few more cycles until everything valuable is sold off or destroyed
Yeah, it blows my mind how easily manipulated gun buyers are (and this is speaking as a gun owner). And it's not just the stereotypical "super buyers" or whatever: there were gobs of folks buying guns for the first time after the Obama administration said they were looking at tighter restrictions. Still, we may very well have reached Peak Gun. As is always the case, the "wealthy" (in this case those who want to buy the most) aren't enough by themselves to sustain an industry that ramped up for the surge in demand after Sandy Hook. Of course, a private equity firm saddling the company with $1 billion in debt didn't help. But I'm sure they got theirs.