I think I am losing my mind. For a little while, I was thinking this was Wednesday and not Friday. When I do my planning, usually before I start writing, I was thinking about what I wanted to write in this segment (tomorrow) and I realized that I wrote my book review on Thursday. Whoops.

So, the big news of the week in industry is the Remington Outdoors bankruptcy and subsequent liquidation of assets, effective immediately. The details and some analysis of the liquidation are all over the internet. One could ask themselves in this time of record breaking firearms and related industry sales what could have possibly gone wrong? At this point, my attitude as a consumer is does it really matter? What is done is done and a two hundred year old company is now history.

Real (really) briefly, Remington Arms Co. was acquired by Cerberus Capitol Management in April of 2007. That was really the day the company ceased to exist alone. If you remember the post election buying of 2009-2010 and the post Sandy Hook buying of 2013-2016 and definitely the Covid buying this industry has money making potential. Cerberus was a company that already owned Mervyn’s and one month later bought Chrysler. Through hearsay, debt was moved from some of the other weaker ventures to Remington to the point where it became financially crushing. It was also rumored that Cerberus had been trying to sell Remington since the Sandy Hook incident because they didn’t want that image in their portfolio.

What does all this really mean for the shooter. Well, I don’t really know. I know that Vista Outdoors (Federal) bought the ammunition business. Presumably this will keep going and that is good news. I know that the intent from some of the other buyers is to keep manufacturing Remington and Marlin. It would seem that smaller buyers got DPMS, H&R, Bushmaster and given their positions in the market place I see them continuing and not just acquiring the names. I suppose that it is a time will tell situation.

I guess for me personally, it is a sad day. I own more than one Remington, in fact it is the predominant brand in my collection. My first rifle was a Remington 722, my first shotgun was an 870 and my first 22 was a Marlin. I had plans to get a 7600 and a Versamax some day. I also have some OEM accessories that I would like to add. I guess the good news is that there are so many made that likely everything is out there, it is more a matter of how much will I have to pay.

I suppose it is just like H&R and Marlin getting purchased and nearly mothballed. Or Winchester ceasing to be independent, times change. Gone is one of the oldest companies in the US.