Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy
wsj.com
wsj.com
1. More information. The iconning brands like Harley or Marlboro are from pre-internet era and heavily relied on freedom image. It was just accepted as an expression of culture. This doesn't really work when wages are not rising with GDP. In other words, people care less about brand and more about utility and price.
2. Better and more accessible competition from around the world.
3. Influencers. I know it is cool to hate them, but there are many building a brand around "one of us". As an example, one of the most popular female youtubers is doing shopping "hauls" in regular shops. You probably don't know that, why would HN watch beauty youtubers. But consider this. Linus Tech Tips is also influence marketing and you can see him talking about Linux, cheap peripherals, bashing Intel. Every category has its Linus. These people have tremendous pull, especially since younger people don't watch TV at all.
4. COVID-19. I speculate that the pandemic exposed how many companies have no reserves (either to low profits or simple because the executives are draining profits).
5. ...and many more, feel free to add.
I only buy major brand-named items on Amazon, and only with Amazon as the seller. The one indispensable characteristic of branding, reputation, is more important than ever even though most brands' reputations are in the dumpster. Knock-offs of unknown or unreliable provenance just happen to be even worse. And even when you find a good non-branded item, reputation is still worse as non-branded items seem to change suppliers more regularly than the branded versions, and supply chain integrity is less trustworthy.
In brick & mortar stores I always reach for the generic, in-house brand (assuming the price is lower) knowing that invariably they're made by the same manufacturer as one of the major brands. But contrast that with Amazon's in-house brands, where it's unlikely they source from the same manufacturer as the major brands, and also seem to change suppliers more regularly.
American gun manufacturers have been outsourcing production for years. But that doesn't mean people no longer care about brands. Rather, many of those suppliers have made a name for themselves outright, or improved upon their previously lackluster reputation; those are the brands you often hear about today when people give recommendations.
It's also a factor that so many companies nowadays see their brand built over decades by previous generations of workers and management as just another resource to suck dry. Shareholders are blinded to this but they ought to be angry, that is the long-term value of their investment being burnt to paper over management's lack of strategic vision.
$8k will buy you a used one (not new), but there is a damn good reason there are used Harleys with essentially zero miles avaliable everywhere. I have fun riding my antique crap, but the new ones are such crappy bikes for the money. A new BMW is the same money, for a more comfortable bike that is less maintenance cost. However, I used to live on the route to Sturgis for most of Colorado, Arizona, and western Texas, and I saw probably 80% trailers vs bikes. People don't buy them to ride them, they buy them to fulfill their midlife crisis.
To further derail, I would argue Jack Daniel's, Levis, and REI are in the same boat- they are grossly overpriced compared to superior competitors and mostly trade on name brand and perception of past quality.
Genuinely curious, since I still shop there. Prices aren't the best but I like the selection and the return policy. Plus the salesdroids actually seem familiar with the gear.
My last REI hiking frame was a huge disappointment, it started to have welds cracking after 40 fairly easy miles. They do still have a decent warranty policy, but if I'm up in the wilderness that doesn't do me any good, I just want the same quality as they used to have (I.E. I have inherited gear that is still good after years of abuse, but have bought gear that has worn out in 3 years).
As far as superior competitors, unfortunately they are hard to find. I've had the best luck just searching for army-surplus equipment on ebay, as all the army surplus stores seem to have disappeared. But for apparel, definitely look for vintage Woolrich or wool milsurp. It's scratchy, but that's what undergarments are for, and when you accidentally slide down 200' of snow and get covered it's absolutely the best, none of the more modern gear I've tried even compares.
I also grew up backpacking with external frame packs, PMS boots, and scratchy wool shirts. My current outfit is nowhere near as durable, but it's 5-10 lbs lighter. Thinner nylons, smaller zippers, internal frames, synthetic boot materials, lightweight fabrics, etc... the weight has to come from somewhere.
I still have my old Kelty external frame pack. I haven't used it in 20 years and I probably never will again. It's just more fun traveling with less weight. If that means I have to replace gear more often... it's worth it.
I remember balking at the $110 price tag on a Craft long sleeve running shirt about three years ago. I bought it anyway. I wear it 4x a week from October through March, and it goes through the washer after every use. It's as good as the day I bought it. Best $110 I ever spent.
If you must buy American, everything Indian makes except the FTR1200 has a great classic look. (The FTR is cool too but very modernized).
First, they fought to protect their market with tariffs on imported bikes -- okay, fair enough -- but then did absolutely nothing to either grow that market, or innovate on their products at all.
They just kept making the same bike, the same way, for a looooooooong time.
Harley's branding was 100% focused on the "60's Rebel". The Hells Angel, or the dentist that wanted to pretend he was.
The plethora of Japanese manufacturers, instead, worked to bring bikes to the masses. They made more reliable bikes, which were cheaper and easier to own, and marketed them to everybody. Dads. Moms. University students. Normal people, the kind that aren't keen on a Friday-night bar fight.
If Harley had been run by forward-thinking management, they would have worked to create affiliate brands aimed at a variety of different demographics, and really worked to innovate on their reliability and quality. Buell was an attempt at this, but it was too little, too late.
Even the Hell's Angels regret choosing Harley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Barger#2000s
However, it was a trashcan of a bike. I was always fixing weird issues, the HD dealership absolutely sucked in every facet from timeliness of service, to prices, to the guy at the service desk just not being a cunt. I upgraded many parts just to get the damn thing to perform at a reasonable level.
Thankfully, I was hit by a car and my bike was totalled. This freed me to purchase a KTM 790 duke which is 160lbs lighter, with double the horsepower, 20% more torque, 80% longer service intervals, all for significantly less than the Iron 883.
Harley-Davidson is literally hemmorhaging cash. Their main demo is aging out of the market and they haven't been able to sell to millenials because millenials aren't stupid and go buy a Yamaha MT-09 or Suzuki, etc for waaay less. And I'm hearing whispers that H-D willl be axing their new forays into ADV, standard, and E-bikes.
At that point they might as well start winding down the company. I read reviews of the Livewire (their e-bike) and most people seemed to like it despite the very high price.
Not young americans, that's for sure. Personally, I can't wait until H-D bites the dust. Hopefully once and for all. They're incredibly overpriced, underpowered, overweight, technologically obsolete bikes (aside from their 1 electric model that sold terribly) with dealerships that suck at customer service (and also charge way too much per hour)
Even if you stay in cruisers- Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and Indian quality compared to Harley is insane. It's as if the bikes were made in a different century.
My buddy has a 1290 SADV S and i've got the 790 and neither of us have had a single issue. We'll see how its long-term reliability pans out, but it's honestly the best naked bike on the market, unless you count the supernakeds like the MT-10 or 1290SDR. Or it was until the 890 R came out.
In general, I've almost always found outdoor equipment from European companies to be superior to American (regardless of where it's actually manufactured). I've always got the impression from their marketing material that the Europeans are selling a product, whereas the Americans are always selling a lifestyle.
A lot of people say the same thing about Harley-Davidson motorcycles. FortNine had a video made the rounds a little while ago:
The big old school companies like Remington or Marlin have become lifestyle brands, for sure, but there are still some US companies making quality products. This is particularly true for more traditional American guns: you'd have a hard time beating a S&W or Ruger revolver, or a Henry lever action, with a foreign brand.
Reminds me of “We Don’t Sell Saddles Here” by Stewart Butterfield around the time Slack launched.
https://medium.com/@stewart/we-dont-sell-saddles-here-4c5952...
For what it's worth, I bought a remington-branded bone saw ~3 years back, and it was absolute garbage. It failed to even finish field dressing an elk, and all that was required was one cut of a few inches. It's a shame, their older products were right up there with the likes of Starrett as the pinnacle of precision manufacturing in the US, but poor management can kill any company regardless of the quality of their products.
It is sort of ironic that, even given the US's crazy gun culture, most of the iconic American brands have been acquired (Winchester->FN) by other firms or been diluted to irrelevance (Marlin->Remington).
FN still makes good stuff, though.
They're also solvent -- no pump-and-dump investing games here -- and supply lots of gear to global militarizes, including the US military, e.g. the SAW is the FN Minimi, which is made under license in South Carolina.
History repeats itself. As if these companies care about the brand reputation over decades, they just want to milk it and then sell it to idiots (public) that recognize the name. People are buying more guns than ever, so it was probably a planned bankruptcy
That goes together like peanut butter and jelly.
Point taken with the downvotes.
This feels very similar to the Intel story, except it seems that Intel is aware and will rectify the problem.
But less gun companies overall is a Good Thing in my opinion.
I suspect you're being downvoted from the "less gun companies is a good thing" comment.
You would be surprised how popular shooting has become in the US, especially, over the last decade or so, and how diverse the gun community has become.
Not to mention how many new brands there are.
Twenty years ago, you'd walk into a gun shop, and it'd be... well, let's be kind and say "massively sketchy", with a lot of graying beards and a not-insignificant inventory of items with confederate branding.
Nowadays, that's not really the case in most places (which is good!). My favorite range has an espresso bar, and reminds me more of an early-stage WeWork than a gun range.
The median age has trended sharply downwards, and although this data isn't tracked, I strongly suspect that there are a lot of first-time gun owners as well.
Anecdotally, I'm sort of the "liberal gun guy" amongst my circle of friends, and people that I never thought would want to purchase a firearm have been reaching out to me for advice. Which usually starts with "don't buy a gun unless you plan to train with it"
Concerns over civil unrest have significantly factored into this, but there's also things like 3Gun[1][2] (think Ninja Warrior plus firearms) and cowboy action[3] (the same, but with old-timey firearms), which are massively popular.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPPIhfD5DF0 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRBcQSLgl20 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPMH5RnTqBg
I need to know where this is, please
Planned? You realize Cerberus would have made a lot more money if it had been a successful turnaround.
They're not "investors", they're predatory vultures. However, given that, their model does work, even if it is immoral and short-sighted.
People describe companies like Cerberus sort of like the undertaker of companies in a capitalist society, but I don't entirely agree with that metaphor.
To be fair it's not just corporate raiders who do this to companies. IBM and HP quite happily did it to themselves.
People often allege malfunction and sue gun manufacturers for accidental discharges resulting in death or injury, when in reality they mishandled a loaded gun and pulled the trigger.
Maybe I'm biased because everything I know about guns comes from Forgotten Weapons [1], but my impression is the opposite: Very few guns are ever a commercial success, and absolutely loads of gun makers go out of business.
People who care about good tech and value are buying things like CZs, aero precision and Anderson AR10/15 lowers and uppers, etc. Even the canik pistol from turkey is remarkably good quality. Savage offers good value for traditional bolt action rifles that can be used for many purposes.
A lot of the CZ stuff is made in Turkey, such as their over-under shotguns. I own a couple CZ rifles and they're decent.
Never fired any Savage products but heard good things.
Anecdotal, but we needed several workhorse .308 rifles and even considering the previous issues with the Rem 700 triggers, etc., I still chose that model.
In addition to being a simple mechanism and easy to clean and maintain, it has a very high adoption rate which means parts and chassis replacements are readily available.
Those attributes, combined with a very reasonable price, made it easy to select.
If it were a single rifle, just for myself, I may have chosen a Savage model instead. On the other hand, my personal rifle now matches, and parts shares, and has identical maintenance, with all of the rest of them. I find that valuable.
Having lived in large cities all my life I cannot conceive of owning a gun, or of other nearby city dwellers owning guns, or even being allowed to in a non law enforcement capacity. There are apartments in NYC with working fireplaces- seems almost equally insane to me, though gun more so because of the active harm it can induce.
Please- no disrepect intended, and not interested in starting argument/debate. Know all the arguments and the history and not advocating any position. Just sharing experience, my own lack of slots for this very large component of american life. Cheers folks.
I confronted them at the stairs and the whole thing de-escalated very quickly. Nobody got hurt. As far as someone sneaking into your house while you sleep, it was pretty much a best case scenario.
Most common burglars only break into empty houses.
I wouldn't say it's often because car break-ins and empty house burglaries are much more common, but it does happen. Attackers pushing their way in as you open the door, attackers posing as some kind of official or salesperson. When the pandemic started, we had guys going around in lab coats saying they were with the CDC.
Police response times are generally very good where I live, but guns are still very common and so is concealed carry. The thought behind it for many people is sort of the same as keeping a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. You're not the fire department, but you want to be able to control an emergency until they get there or avoid having an emergency become a catastrophe.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-illi...
It's kind of a mark of white privilege to believe that the police will arrive in time to protect you, and that when they arrive they won't harm you.
Even for de-escalating domestic disputes and dealing with petty vandalism and neighbourly feuds they are likely a worse tool than social workers and such.
This is a gross overstated political narrative.
A) Most police response times are well after most conflicts.
B) Poor and targeted neighborhoods often have better response times because of the larger constant police presence.
C) Socioeconomic signals predict treatment better than the color of your skin.
E) The police responses in poor and targeted neighbourhoods often involve harming residents and criminalizing the impoverished and racialized.
F) 911 is a Joke
Also, carrying a gun all the time is extremely uncommon if not forbidden in most European countries if you don't have the proper permits. For example in France, IIRC, you can only get such permit if your professional activity justifies it (Police, Security Guards, etc).
Even for recreational/hunting uses you need to be registered, and maybe have a permit, depending on the type of gun. And that's just for ownership, it doesn't grant you the right to carry the weapon loaded and ready to fire.
Hunting rifles are almost always bolt actions.
The concept of liberty is relatively new, most of the world has lived under monarchs, dictators, etc until relatively recently in the grand scheme of things. The ideas and mechanisms of freedom are still being learned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation
Often that final say is a rubber stamp.
Hell, even Japan allows private ownership; with a marksmanship test and licensing restrictions.
Most countries require masks and seatbelts, so what? It doesn't make it the right choice.
Most countries don't allow to eat dogs, so what? It doesn't make it the right choice.
Most countries don't allow to kill man, so what? It doesn't make it the right choice.
I'm just giving a taste of your own medicine.
There are plenty of good arguments to be made for all of those things, but "everyone else does it" is not one of them.
Look, if every other country legalizes murder tomorrow, does that mean we should, too? No? Then whether everyone else is doing it is clearly irrelevant.
Somebody will probably sic dang on me for saying this, but it is mind boggling to me that I have to explain this.
low effort post.
Also, psychology and theology have nothing to do with any of this, and you clearly have no idea what "woke" and "meta" mean. You can call my post "low effort" but at least it isn't a word salad.
I regret wasting my time talking to you. Have a good night.
There was a police station less than a mile away and it took them 45 minutes to arrive. No doubt they intended to let events play out however they may and then roll in and take statements, which is their only actual legal obligation.
That incident really drove home for me exactly what I'm not getting for my tax dollars.
On the other hand, having an AR-15 in NYC would be a nightmare for obvious reasons.
I think folks on both sides of gun debate forget this - that there are dramatically different living situations across America. In this respect, it really doesn't make sense to talk about gun laws at the federal level (I know, 2nd Amendment), because what makes good sense in New York is ridiculous to someone living in rural Texas and vice-versa. It's not purely political, there's a very real practical element that doesn't often get discussed.
It's not nearly that sensible and straighforward. Drive south of DC to the point where subdivisions give way to farms and you can shoot all day without being bothered.
Drive the same distance outside of Boston or NYC and you've got the same low population density but if you shoot anything in your back yard you'll get a visit from the SWAT team.
This kind of stuff really should depend on population density but we've gutted all legislative capacity at the county level and pushed it to the state level so you get a dumb situation where a state has to go entirely one way or the other which is not very efficient when it comes to making people live under sensible laws for their living situation.
There's really no fundamental reason the cities and rural areas shouldn't be able to just do their own thing on this issue. It's just that people insist on having this legislation be at the state level.
The North American headquarters for Sig Sauer is only an hour from Boston.
Do you live in New England? It's not a big deal at all. Not just in NH, but in MA too.
NH is a different state and much more friendly to shooting. Also having a corporate HQ doesn't really mean much.
>It's not a big deal at all. Not just in NH, but in MA too.
There's probably a couple pockets in MA further east but for the most part you need to get to the Western edge of Worcester county (which is definitely more than an hour from Boston) before you can be pretty assured none of your neighbors will call the cops. Even then it's kind of iffy because of the laws. You really don't want to have the cops called on you even if you're just target shooting (unlike in NH where getting the cops called wouldn't be a big deal).
>Do you live in New England?
The crappy half. But I've lived all over the east coast.
Why do American people put up with the authorities breaking the law instead of simply having the law changed? The constitution is not a bible, it can be updated. (Or, perhaps, it is indeed a "bible", in a sense?)
And, incidentally, the constitution says nothing about hunting, sporting, or even self-defense as the "legal" justification for gun ownership.
No more than a foreigner will brandish a knife at someone or have a knife brandished at them.
The media/Hollywood helps augment fears by misrepresenting the lethality of guns and also by cherry picking gun death statistics. Watch a movie and you'd think it was the easiest thing in the world to kill a dozen people with an AK-47 in seconds or take out a helicopter with a handgun. Actually go to a shooting range and you'll see what reality is like.
The chances of getting killed in a school shooting by an AR-15 for example are infintesimal compared to dying by suicide via a handgun.
Which, in turn, is small compared with dying in a car accident (wherever you live and whether you drive a car or not).
My experience here and having travelled much of this country is that I've never felt at risk of violent crime whilst in remote areas and rairly in urban areas when in an area near a pub or "drug" area.
The nearest police station is 15 minutes away if I drive 100mph but writing this post is the first time I've thought about that fact. The bigger problem is animals: we've never once been able to reach our area's animal control or get a call back from them, no matter when we call. Most situations we can handle ourselves like dealing with rattlesnakes but last year a mountain lion ate our neighbor's goat and the only way to get rid of it was to shoot at it (or over it, as I found most people here won't kill rare animals unless absolutely forced to).
We've got several pets and feral cat decided to make herself home in our shed, giving birth to a full litter right before a large group of giant raccoons migrated to our area. If the raccoons in NYC are anything like the ones here, they're huge with the mammalian equivalent of alligator hide. Scaring them doesn't really work without a gun and nothing but a proper firearm will do more than piss it off and wound it, which will just make it more dangerous. The options are a) put your pets at risk every time you let them out at night, b) weapons that will only cause inhumane damage to the animal, or c) a real gun. If you're the kind of individual that values life as an inherent good but prioritizes the safety of family and pets, guns become the only realistic humane option.
Now, the ironic part is that most people I know here should absolutely not be allowed to own a gun if they lived in the city. Some of them have really warped views of human civilization that led them to live further out (rapists and murderers around every corner) and seem to relish the idea of "defending themselves" with a gun. However, the very idea of them getting enough warning to get to their gun fast enough to actually manage to load it and shoot an assailant is just laughable. Most people here use their guns so infrequently outside of LARPing at a shooting range that when it comes time to use the workhorse gun instead of their assault rifle props, they spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how to use it while the animal just stands there, confused.
As far as I know, most countries with strict gun control still leave a loophole for rural residents big enough to drive a train through. However, most of those countries have sane gun cultures where they treat them as dangerous tools and not as religious idols. Now having experienced the damage guns do in inner cities and their necessity further out from civilization, I'm torn on the issue and I don't see a way out.
The primary loophole being the ability and willingness of countries other than the rich ones to enforce laws like that in their rural areas. People having guns (or anything really) they shouldn't per the letter of the law is like bottom of the priority list. The local police in rural South America, Asia and Eastern Europe have much bigger fish to fry.
A sibling comment mentioned the value of an AR15 for shooting at coyotes near a chicken coup without collateral damage which I hadn't even considered so I think this also depends on the geography and community. I'm in a mountainous part of the county with mostly 2-10 acre properties that often butt up against each other with buildings clustered on the largest available pieces of continuous flat land. Shooting a high powered rifle in this environment would be extremely dangerous because we've got half a dozen neighbors' houses well within the range of a rifle, all at weird angles above and below the horizon on one side of the property. Someone who hasn't had proper training in fire arm use - as in training under pressure, not just gun range safety - could easily fire off a shot that kills a neighbor. Everyone here who shoots rifles does it into an unpopulated distant mountain side or into a big hill on their property.
> The concentration on scary black rifles is misguided unless you only focus on mass shootings, which make up a tiny fraction of firearm homicides.
I disagree. The key to understanding the different sides gun control issue is exactly what I've been talking about - understanding different perspectives. The suburban white mom who worries about her child accidentally shooting themselves at a friend's house, the young adult who is worried about getting shot at the mall, and the urban black mom who is mostly worried about her child catching a stray bullet from a street or gang dispute are only ostensibly fighting for the same thing. Those are really three separate issues with their own really complex interactions with constitutional law, mental health, social justice, and community. The three groups are forced under one banner largely because of our two party system, but their views should be analyzed independently.
That the media focuses on the group with the most disposable income and the most visceral imagery shouldn't surprise anyone
It's unfortunate how true that statement is. Every time I've attended a class for a concealed carry permit it seems to be filled with wanna-be vigilantes. Which is ironic because almost every CCP class is a gun advocate instructor saying "do not shoot people! even if you're in the right you'll go bankrupt defending yourself in civil court". And everytime they get asked "But what if...?" "You'll still get sued..." "but what.." repeat ad nausea
I can go out back, set up target(s) and plink away basically anytime I want. Might even do it this evening if the ammo I ordered finally gets delivered today. There's a safe direction to aim in and the distant neighbors don't mind, they do the same!
For longer range, there's various outdoor ranges around, both formal and informal (you may shoot on nearly all large tracts of public land and private land that isn't posted against it, provided you're an appropriate distance from structures and all that).
The occasional sound of gunfire here doesn't alarm anyone. One or two is someone killing a pest or hunting, lots is some target shooting.
If I put my trash outside without it being in something fully bear-proof, it will have a bear into it within a few days. Cook something nice, leave a door/window open to just the screen, and you might have a bear, moose, or something else in your kitchen one day. Police response time is 30 minutes on a good day.
The topography up here has granted plenty of appropriate natural backstops, however. (And some not so natural, the various old gravel pits and quarries are popular for that purpose as well).
For most practical shooting, at a target that's roughly chest level, ranges aren't going to exceed ~500 yards, and are often a moot point with a decent backstop.
From wikipedia: "The acre is related to the square mile, with 640 acres making up one square mile. One mile is 5280 feet (1760 yards)"
I would think that, beyond waking up to find you have an intruder, that having a gun in your house is not going to to you much good if you have a voilent intruder. If somebody decides to bash down your door in a violent range, you are not likely to have the instant access to a weapon that would be required to deal with the situation.
Back to your comment, though, I grew up in the San Francisco suburbs. I have pretty much lived in either metropolitan suburbs or urban center of medium sized cities. I never even shot a gun until my 30's. I guess my feeling on guns was that I was neutral until I moved to the Southern US and some coworkers took me shooting. After actually using them, and being taught safety protocols, I saw guns as what they were - hunks of metal. I didn't feel attaching emotion to inanimate objects was particularly constructive.
Also around that time, I had a few friends that were victims of violent crimes. Two of them were in supposed "safe" areas in the NYC suburbs. Pretty much changed my views on police and personal safety completely.
I'm a little confused, aren't those positions a bit contradictory? I would be interested in reading a bit more of your views here.
> With the equipment a modern military has at it's disposal, I fail to see how the right to own small arms is going to help keep our government in check.
After seeing various militaries (is that the right word?) fight for the last 19 years in Afghanistan (and spending some time there myself), it seems to me that availability of superior weapons and equipment isn't the only factor.
The 2nd amendment is not a right to own a gun. Here is it's text:
> A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
so what I'm arguing is that "small arms" are now basically ineffective arms.
If for some reason the USA Military became Americas enemy there's no way a credible opposition could rise without another military backing it. The point of the 2nd amendment is impossible today, so I think we should either fix it, or abolish it.
Are you sure? Half of the grunts in an US infantry platoon carry only weapons (specifically the M-4) available to civilians.
Civilians' having small arms greatly increases the number of soldiers needed to repress them, and the more soldiers needed, the more likely soldiers will revolt against the repression.
What does the other half of the platoon carry?
The argument here seems to be that civilians do not have an effective counter for an F-35. Or a B-52. Or an M1 Abrams.
M249 light machine guns and M240 medium machine guns, neither of which are available to US civilians.
For all intents and purposes, they are the same. An M4 has a barrel that is 1.5" shorter than most civilian AR15s and it has a 3-round burst setting that is almost never used because it's worthless.
I've spent a considerable amount of time behind both of them and I assure you they are functionally identical in basically every real-world use case.
But to wage war against its citizens into submission without destroying the productive value that makes them useful to the powers that be? No way.
The problem is that these people are missing a lot of information about the world outside and they have opinions and vote missing relevant and sometimes essential information. They are most of the time nice and well intentioned people supporting or voting for what can be very bad things.
For example my country has the largest bear population in EU, but we are not allowed to hunt them even if they come in villages and attack people. Why? Because urban "nature-lovers" are against shooting bears: bears don't come in their large cities, they don't ever meet a bear bare-handed (this is the quotes for), so for them bears are not a problem. For the people with damages ffrom bears, they are not enough to make their voice heard and over-vote the urban people.
I have grown up around firearms but with reason. I have spent the majority of my life living in rural areas, as a kid/teen I lived far out of town with acres of woodlands, swamps, forest, interspersed with occasional pastures for miles in every discretion. I have had multiple encounters with apex predictors in my backyard. I have had mountain lion in my woodshed, a bear wander into my yard, and other smaller predators such as coyotes bobcat, and feral dogs try to eat my pets/animals. I also enjoy many outdoor activities such as fishing camping and hiking in the backwoods, and have encountered more predators there (the above but also various venomous snakes and wolves). I started carrying .22 loaded with snake shot as defense against rattle snakes when fishing around age 12. But before I was allowed near my fathers guns he took me out to the range for safety training. The lesson I learned that day have stuck with me.
He placed a watermelon out on the range. He then shot the melon. Next he walked out with me to its pieces and told me to put it back together. I stared at him like he was insane, He then got down at eye level with me and told me that it would do that same to a person and to never point it at anyone, that it would kill them, that guns were deadly weapons not toys. We spent the rest of the day going over gun use and safety.
While today I don't live out in the country I still own firearms mostly used for sport shooting and defense when in the wilderness. But I take gun safety very seriously. My firearms are kept in a locked gunsafe bolted to the floor, inside the case they are all kept unloaded and all have a trigger lock of are kept in a locked case inside the safe.
(I guess I don't know how many of the people rushing to the store are actually buying the kind of expensive guns Remington sells, though. I'd believe a story where it's few to none.)
Same playbook as every other one.
Buy a brand. Cut costs and ship all work to the cheapest labor market. Count on brand loyalty and reputation to carry sales as the quality goes down. Eventually the brand will no longer be worth much due to the lower quality product, but by then the private equity firm has made solid returns on its investment. At that point they sell off the last scraps and find another quality brand with quality products and good jobs to destroy.
Maybe it's just another old company that once had a good reputation but has lost its way. PE probably involved.
Or maybe there is some market shift. Like, fewer hunters purchasing lever actions and more urbanites buying semi-auto pistols.
Edit:. Touchy subject but it's a fact the average American doesn't own a gun. The political influence is substantial on the other hand. I'm not anti gun because it should be an inconsequential topic. It's like vegans had the big seat at the table.
The same way in some town in Maryland you can't feed ducks on Sunday. Its a law that is left on the book, completely ignored and largely forgotten about
Vegans, in contrast, make up around 0.4-3% of Americans depending on the poll [3].
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...
[2] https://today.ku.edu/2018/08/21/gun-owners-are-more-active-p...
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country
Living in a household is completely irrelevant.
And yes it is irrelevant. I do not control, perhaps do not even know what a roommate owns and vice versa. And that only pushed the needle up a but, to still being in the minority. You mention minorities? Gun owners are a minority
Not incorrect? Yes that was directly disputed btw.
Gun ownership and gun influence in the US is vastly overstated.
Households with "roommates" are a small minority of all households. About 40 million of 250 million adults live in a household with other people that they're not related to or romantically involved with. The vast majority of households that aren't individuals living alone are are families or unmarried couples. In those contexts, it would be typical for one member of the household to own the firearms as a legal matter, but others might use it or rely on it. For example, Breonna Taylor was living with her boyfriend, who was licensed to own a firearm. If the couple bought a gun for self-defense, it seems fair to attribute the gun to the whole household, not just the individual who purchased it. Or in another example, a parent might purchase a firearm that other adult family members in the household use for hunting or target practice.
You're also forgetting about voting. Gun owners are much more likely to be older, married, and live outside the city. (Many people who don't own a gun when they're young and living in the city purchase one when they move out to the 'burbs and start af family!) The same groups of people are also more likely to vote.
In my case if I would own a gun there would be 7 voters supporting it. Quite a multiplier.
Remington's owners have stripped away many of the skilled gunsmiths they used to have. A new Remington is not a very well machined firearm, and enthusiasts have found this out and no longer buy their products.
A range friend of mine is on his 3rd new Remington 700. He sent the original new unit back and they shipped him a new one. It was defective, he sent it back. They sent him another one. This was in the last 6 months. These were all issues with the machining of the chamber that should never have been shipped in the first place. A simple check with a flashlight would have revealed the problems that were plainly visible to the naked eye.
Conversely, I have 7 Remington products that I purchased new as late as 2005 and they have all been perfect.
It's interesting because removing people who inspect shotguns is quick, easy and relatively reversible, while declining product quality and loss of design and production skills are normally gradual trends with an eventful story of bad decisions.
There are other manufacturers that still make them to a high standard. I'm not sure whether they're licensed copies or just clones, but I recently heard someone joke that "these days everyone makes a great Remington 700 except Remington".
Or Craftsman and tools
Once known as industry leaders then moves in production and cost savings meant an inferior product. Eventually people caught on and the brand was done.
Far from struggling. COVID, the looming election, and the riots have made it a boom time for gun sales.
Remington, unfortunately is like Harley, expensive, low quality, and trading on previous legacy.
Problem is that modern manufacturing has gotten cheaper and more effective, and offerings from China, Turkey, Japan, and other brands in the US are only getting better, while Remington stayed the same (or even declined). I think the trigger thing was more hype than reality, but why risk getting a bad one when there are so many good choices on the market that are at or below the Remington price?
I hate the whole "PE is evil" attitude from people who don't understand it. Often there are headlines about how a PE firm has taken a firm over and fired hundreds or thousands of people, and the connotation is very much that they are evil and greedy for profit at the expense of people's livelihoods, while the reality is the business in its current form was going to fail and take everyone's job with it, and it was necessary to cut jobs in order to save the business (and thus save the jobs that remain).
I know the industry is an easy target because it's a bunch of rich guys and some of them are definitely greedy profiteers, but it's just unhelpful to label the whole industry based on those. If you go by that logic then the whole tech industry is very much evil because it exploits cheap labor (Uber, DoorDash, etc.).
I mean, a lot of the tech industry really is just focused on extracting value from other people's labour, or replacing them altogether.
The whole VC-backed tech industry, yes.
As a rate, how many business are actually "saved" by PE firms?
> (and thus save the jobs that remain)
Wouldn't that be simpler with a general bankruptcy? What is gained when a third party, often encumbered with leverage, gets involved?
> but it's just unhelpful to label the whole industry based on those
It's equally unhelpful to expect the minority players in an industry to define that industry.
> the whole tech industry is very much evil because it exploits cheap labor (Uber, DoorDash, etc.).
To engage the hyperbole, the current iteration of it may well be. I expected flying cars and trips to the moon, not face recognition surveillance, deep fakes and manipulative social networks.
Realistically... PE on it's own, and tech on it's own may be neutral concepts, but our current lack of regulation of their specific markets really shows.
A bankruptcy is getting a third party (a court) involved to redistribute ownership or sell off assets and redistribute the proceeds and to decide how the company will be run while all of that is happening.
That is a good deal more complicated than simply selling the company to someone who wants to run it differently.
There have been so many chances to sell. The Navajo Nation offered almost a billion in 2014 or so, couple years later a friend of mine in that industry was on a team that looked into buying with another capital company that everyone here would know, and the books showed that the 250 million they were asking was extremely optimistic for their sales and debt.
I have no doubt someone will pick it up now, but at dirt cheap, for name and maybe 20 IP designs that will keep getting made. The 870 and some Marlins will stay, all of DPMS is probably gone, dumb things like the R51 will finally see the garbage pale. The military contracts are worth something, but they largely weren’t suppling much to US mil, except some precision rifle components, and suppressors, their M4 carbines were going overseas.
So... IDK. Left and right and all over just the wrong way to run a gun company.
An analysis of "17,171 worldwide leveraged buyout transactions that include every transaction with a financial sponsor in the CapitalIQ database announced between 1/1/1970 and 6/30/2007" found bankruptcy rates around 6% [1]. This isn't exceptionally high.
[1] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.23.1.121 Table 2
Gun stores, which have largely stayed open during the Covid-19 pandemic, are selling to many first-time buyers worried about personal safety over the civil unrest that followed the killing of George Floyd in police custody and the ensuing movement to reduce police funding.
And, I agree with your comment on the ammo. Have gone through many green and yellow boxes of Remington ammo. Good stuff.
> Firearms maker Remington Arms Co. filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time since 2018, weighed down by more debt than it can repay even as fearful Americans buy more guns than ever.
Gibson Guitars was founded in 1894, but a lot of the guitars they make today don't work, and are way overpriced also.
KKR renamed them to "Gibson Brands", so I guess some MBA with a PowerPoint thought related merchandise was more important than, you know, making guitars.
[EDIT] that is, I could play a large number of tunes such that they were recognizable and even pleasant-sounding on an ordinary cheap (say, $300-400 used or dent & ding) guitar, but was unable to do so at all on the First Act, which probably needed at least couple hundred dollars of work and parts replacement by a luthier to render it even minimally playable, let alone good-sounding. The neck definitely needed some adjustment, the frets probably needed attention (filing down, perhaps) and the tuners just needed to be replaced with ones that worked. I'm am quite certain almost no otherwise-well-motivated kid could have learned to play on that instrument. It simply did not work.
[1]https://www.ft.com/content/141a70c4-1608-4013-9188-f89600679...
>With bankruptcy, Remington means to halt the Sandy Hook litigation from continuing in Connecticut state court.Notable timing, it comes after a series of decisions by the trial judge refusing to let Remington dodge discovery.
The mom -- not the shooter -- bought the guns, so the advertising aspect is dumb in that regard let alone that the reputation of the weapon isn't set by Remington in any significant way.
Next, Remington sells to dealers. If anyone was "selling" someone on a Remington, it was the gun dealer (if you're already going to the store, you've already been sold on the idea of a gun and are just negotiating the details).
There has to be better ways to use a judges time (even better cases involving guns and gun manufacturers).
Working as intended, but still sued was quite the bizarre position to be supported by a judge.
Economics dont happen in a vacuum
These are bolt action deer-getters, not Pantsir S1's. And outside of a handful of countries, no one is buying Pantsirs except Algeria (and maybe Iraq, which means half of them are going to end up as NATO playthings).
Pretty sure there are in fact protests. Regardless of your view on them, which I won't get into because this is HN and not Reddit.
Edit: realized I accidentally typed "non-violent" as opposed to "violent".
Most of the protests could be considered as violent, due to the police shooting tear gas etc. into crowds of peaceful protest.
Protests where the protesters get violent would in my mind involve
A) Actual retaliation vs police, not just water bottles.
or
B) Destruction of government property.
or
C) Both.
Protests where it devolves into looting private property are not protests, they are riots -- that have at least partially been caused by people who _definitely_ do not agree with the protesters.
Edit: Just noticed your edit, no worries. I understood your intent fine.
I am a long standing democrat for many years and it is becoming really difficult to stand behind the message when the activists have no agenda, want to continue doing this and there is no end in sight.
I absolutely resent federal forces defending the courthouse. If protestors want to burn it down (there are many videos of them trying to), what do you do? May be we just allow these people to burn it down if that means it is going to bring change.
Then there is this: How do you defend protestors who want to overthrow the United States?
Proof: https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/128451275993426739...
Had to create throwaway account just to hide my identity - I am kind of terrified of everything right now. Both left and right are going insane, truth is smeared and it is difficult to have a level headed, HN-like conversion which is what makes this place wonderful.
We need to be extremely vigilant. Please I beg every one of you. I know it is pretty taboo to even be centrist around here, my plea is to fact check everything. What I am seeing as a 10 year subscriber to NYT is simply no coverage of extreme violence and absurdity of demands these protestors are creating. I have and stand by a lot majority of protestors that are actually peaceful - like the NY City march and SF protests, but Portland is on another level. I no longer support it.
I personally believe that there need to be large changes across the structure of gov, but to the direction of less, and not more.
I have not followed the protests in Portland in depth, just enough to know that in at least portions (block? blocks?) the fed has completely reignited brutality in response to protests. Is there more info you have to available to share, or a good place to find unbiased info? I lurk Reddit, but that is very biased in either direction at any given thread.
Quoting NYTimes:
> hurled an open pocketknife at the officers guarding the courthouse; they have used power tools, crowbars and bolt cutters to yank down a fence
Yep, this is going on definitely. And now we have some level of coverage.
Edit: removed the link to that twitter account, I checked the messages he is posting, totally insane. "Unknown liquid" hurled at cops, it's just water. Then the guy is talking about how masks are harmful to lungs. I am sorry.
The pocketknife attack appears to be according to the Portland Police Bureau. As this is a non-neutral party, I'm not sure what to believe barring video evidence.
I could lean either way on that incident, or violence in general. What it comes down to in my mind is which side is the aggressor. In this particular instance, the protesters appear to be the initial aggressors, attacking the building (Which I don't really care about) while people were still inside (Which I do care about).
That being said, most of the violence that I have seen from these protests has been firmly instigated by police, so if you take that into consideration, the police could (should?) be considered to be the initial aggressors.
In short, it's a mixed up situation with no good answers I can see. Thoughts?
Edit: Also this --
> bricks were lobbed at firefighters who were attempting to extinguish the blaze. He said he suspected that white supremacists were behind the violence.
Context for above quote: Protesters/"Protesters" set a dump truck on fire in Richmond VA.
Any thoughts on something similar to this happening in Portland to discredit protests?
Second edit: Going offline now. Will read/continue any further discussion tomorrow, if anyone wishes to.
It is incredibly hard to be a centrist - both sides hate you and downvote your messages. It's constantly demoralizing and makes you question yourself.
But then you go out in the real world and see that most of the actual humans on the planet are centrist, and you feel better.
“Burn the courthouse for change” isn’t centrist, it’s delusional.
The protesters were attacked. They did not escalate before this. After being attacked, their options are to continue being attacked with no recourse, or counterattack.
I personally have 0 issue with burning the courthouse. As with the previous violent protests, my issue comes with damage to civilian property.
I have major issues with burning a courthouse - the nexus of polite functioning society, the recourse of civilian peace. Burn that, and the recourse for civilian property damage is vigilante violence - don’t go there.
What we see is outright insurrection, from mob to mayor, attempting to break our lawful government for an admitted imposition of communism. Don’t go there.
All of the protests started peacefully, including Portland. It was police violence that escalated things in the beginning. I recognize that they were not attacked _at that site_, but they were definitely attacked.
> They have a well established process of “peaceful” used as a shield for provocateurs
If you are breaking laws you will get hit with the laws. I'm not denying that. No one with their head on straight is calling violent protest peaceful.
In addition, there is evidence for PD's/alt-right inciting violence at protests to discredit them. I don't know if this is happening at Portland however.
> I have major issues with burning a courthouse ... the recourse of civilian peace.
The whole point of the protests is that this recourse has already failed.
> What we see is outright insurrection ... for an admitted imposition of communism.
While individuals may feel that way, I don't and I'm pretty sure most protesters don't. The fact that some of the leaders have talked about socialized health care
A) Doesn't mean that's the point of the protests.
B) Isn't communism.
By this logic, Trumps support of the white power movement [1] displays on the entire Republican party.
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-tweets-deletes-protest...
Edit: I'm not looking for confrontation here, I'd really like to get a better understanding of the situation. Right now, it really does look to me like the protesters -- not rioters attacking private property -- are in the right.
If you’re part of a violent siege, you’re part if a violent siege. Retreat or be targeted.
Exactly! ACAB :)
Sarcasm aside, I do think it varies by PD. My local department had zero issues when protests went on, even going so far as to take part, and then _not_ turn right around and start beating people.
Seems kinda like a bare minimum, but at least they hit that.
I offered several refutations(edit:and discussion) about that, which if you'd actually like to respond to I'd be happy to read.
If you just want to troll, I don't think we'll be getting much done here.
I would say, that if there are large scale protests which are interrupted with brutality from government entities, burning down government buildings is not a wise action, but also not an unreasonable one -- from an ethical point of view.
It doesn't help Remington that the quality guns they made for decades still exist on the secondary market and work just fine. So they are not only competing against their counterparts on the new gun market like Mossberg, but against their past, generally agreed to be better, output.
There hasn't been anything new, tech-wise, in guns for the past 40 years, so you can't beat the old guns with features like how a new phone has a faster processor and better camera. You have to stay on par in terms of quality and hope that people will prefer to buy new for the customer service, parts availability, and aftermarket support.
And what are they, if I may ask?