REMINGTON AND PRESS, BOTH BANKRUPT

Expecting even a superficial knowledge of subject matter by this generation of journalists is naive.  Reporting on Remington firearms' bankruptcy today is a case in point.  

From the New York Times to FOX news, Remington's fall is universally attributed to public reaction over various school shootings, some carried out with AR15 rifles.  Remington is one of a number of companies making AR15s.  The only proof of this claim is a fall off of Remington sales after school shootings.  No causal connection is established.  Why is this so?

Only Bloomberg came close while missing the underlying dynamic.  Here is their view.

"The bankruptcy is a blow to the private-equity mogul Stephen Feinberg, who has been a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump. Feinberg’s firm, Cerberus Capital Management, acquired Remington in 2007 and subsequently saddled it with almost $1 billion in debt. The Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing will let Remington stay in business while it works out a plan to turn around the company and pay its creditors."
"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-02-12/cerberus-s-remington-will-cede-control-to-lenders-in-bankruptcy"

If the talking heads on TV had done a minimum examination, they would have known that Remington has been a troubled company for some time.  Troubles by the way, entirely self-inflicted.  Remington's problems are well known among the shooting fraternity and have been for some time.  I'll cite a few off the top of my head.

1. Remington introduced a new automatic pistol to the large and burgeoning market of pistols suitable for concealed carry.  It was a disaster.  Even those pistols supplied for review to the shooting press were pathetically unreliable. This forced Remington to do something rare in the firearms industry. They issued a recall. 

2. Under Remington's leadership, both Marlin and H@R firearms saw a steep decline in quality and popularity.  This was particularly sad in the case of Marlin, which was/is an extremely popular moderately priced dear rifle that stood the test of time.  Harrington and Richardson produced good quality firearms for modest budgets and had a following.  

3. Remington's premier bolt action hunting rifle was found to have a serious safety defect.  

4. Among shooters/purchasers, Remington developed a reputation for producing poor quality firearms, especially compared to its previous high-level products.

 5. Remington Isn't even an independent company.  It's was acquired by Cerberus Equity Management, the same hedge fund hipster outfit that ran Chrysler into the ground.  Remington was merged with Harrington and Richardson, and Marlin; both fine old American gun makers. Models were dropped, quality plummeted and shooters, who pay acute attention to the mechanics of products that have the capacity to kill, noticed and talked to each other.

The so-called journalists covering the bankruptcy might have known more if they bothered to make a call or two to legitimate firearms writers or even checked out a few firearms forums.  All they had to do was Google, "Remington + Quality Control Problems," and they could have reviewed some of the two hundred and eighty thousands hits!

I strongly suspect that the constituent parts of Remington will be broken up and will reappear as free-standing companies selling good quality arms to the American public and others.    

Why would anyone believe hysteria over school shootings would depress AR15 sales at Remington while other companies sales continue apace?  Would people open to the idea of buying a so-called assault weapon balk at buying a Remmington one while buying one from Ruger? Plenty did. Only an idiot or a modern journalist would believe that.

NOTE:
After writing the above I came to consider another reason for the lazy deceptive coverage.  Cerberus is the creation of Stephen Feinberg who is identified as a big contributor to both Donald Trump's Presidential campaign and the GOP in general.  He even has former Vice President Dan Quayle on the board.  So perhaps this adds to the left's glee at Remington's bad news.  Note to Stephen.  Next time, invest in something you know about.