The New York Times doesn’t think left-wing activists should divest themselves of Remington. Why? Because Remington would be better if it were bullied by SJW shareholders.
It’s easy to see why they would want to be done with the whole episode. Selling removes the reputational stain of owning the top American manufacturer of the deadliest consumer product known to man.
I’m pretty sure automobiles are the deadliest consumer product known to man, but lets not let facts get in the way.
Remington’s earnings volatility is not the only factor behind its low valuation. There’s also the stigma associated with owning a gunsmith after Sandy Hook. Cerberus actually tried to sell the business but found no acceptable offers. The situation is somewhat similar to the way tobacco stocks became an investment industry pariah two decades ago.
I’m pretty sure the reason investors don’t want to touch Remington have more to do with the amount of debt it’s carrying versus its earnings, more than what the New York Times thinks.
They could, for instance, insist that Remington ensure all its guns are sold through distributors who conduct more rigorous background checks, or that the company ramps up investments in developing weapons that won’t go off when a child finds them in a negligent parent’s night stand. They might even demand Remington stop supporting the National Rifle Association.
And if they do that, as a community, we will kill Remington. If they don’t believe we can do it, ask the former British owners of Smith & Wesson, F. H. Tomkins P.L.C., after they cut a similar deal with the Clinton Administration. They acquired the brand for 112.5 million dollars. In 2001, Smith & Wesson was sold to Saf-T-Hammer Corporation for $15 million dollars after gun owners boycotted the company.
It’s easy for Social Justice Warriors to delude themselves into thinking people can’t fight back against their bullshit. We can and will, and we’ll bankrupt your investment in the process. They would be wise to divest Remington. Personally, I’m not sure the issue has been done any favors by putting so many gun companies and brands in the hands of New York bankers.
Oh /now/ they mention that every single firearm the ‘gun lobby’ sells already goes through a background check.
Course this already shows a level of delusion “all its guns are sold through distributors who conduct more rigorous background checks”
Yeah, because Remington’s wares are *so* special that an FFL will agree to the hassle of a… what? Who will provide this extra “background check” what will it consist of? How long will it take?
And even if an FFL goes along, a customer will have to be mighty hungry for a new Remington firearm to deal with the extra cost and hassle and delay.
I mean it’s not like the market isn’t full of alternatives. Alternatives that don’t have this “extra background check” hassle.
I know the NYT doesn’t exactly grok consumer choice, but the onus is on Remington to make people, who are interested in purchasing a firearm, /give/ them money.
“…but the onus is on Remington to make people, who are interested in purchasing a firearm, /give/ them money.”
or, they could hold a gun to their heads. :)
Colt is in default over bad bonds.
The New York elite have ways of killing companies, too.
“insist that Remington ensure all its guns are sold through distributors who conduct more rigorous background checks”
What, they want the distributors to do background checks of people who hold FFLs?
How, and what could they possibly find?
(Oh, I know they meant something else, but they’re using well-understood words wrong.
Everywhere but in this piece, “distributor” means “wholesaler”.)
Distributors and wholesaler are the same thing, and no distributor needs to do a background check on a FFL, as the ATF has already done that, including requiring fingerprints and photos of the applicants, and they check much more in depth than any “instant check” could ever do.
debt vs earnings and the simple fact that Remington can’t seem to get it’s $#!^ together with respect to new products, QC or anything else. About the only positive thing they’ve done is GTFO of the NE and moving to a more labor friendly state.
Did people really stop investing in tobacco companies because of the stigma? The percentage of the population that smokes declined pretty dramatically in the ’80s and has fallen gradually but steadily since then. Combine the decrease in customer base with the cost incurred by the absurd lawsuits, and there’s just less profit to be had. That seems like a much more likely reason that investors lost interest.
If find it oddly reassuring that the NYT isn’t just picking on us gun nuts. They’re pretty consistently wrong about everything.
One of the things that irks me about gun-grabbers is their insistence that they see a need for police and soldiers to have guns, but no one else should have one. They then go and attack the Gun Manufacturers, because apparently, they only sell guns to the public, and not to anyone else…
This annoys me for two reasons: there’s no shortage of gun manufacturers that are willing to give discounts to police and military–indeed, there are many manufacturers whose only desire is to provide for these groups (and some who will, but only grudgingly, sell to “civilians”).
Second: there seems to be a weird disconnect with these guys; they seem to think that Government Agents could get guns without the making of guns. They want to go after gun manufacturers, and put them out of business…but they don’t seem to have any proposals for arming the police and military after they achieve this goal. Where do they think that government guns come from? Perhaps the Government Gun Fairy, or maybe they’ll be supplied by all the illegal guns that they want confiscated from the public and destroyed…
So Remington and Colt are in dire straights. What firearms companies _are_ doing well right now?
Sturm Ruger, for one.
O.F. Mossberg doesn’t seem to be doing too badly, either.
And most of the smaller, “boutique” AR/AK-pattern rifle/parts manufacturers seem to be doing OK, though they’re usually not publicly traded so it’s harder to make an apples-to-apples comparison.
Mossberg is doing very well! They’ve surpassed Remington in many ways, IMO! Smith and Wesson, Ruger, FNH, SiG Sauer, Beretta, Glock, and Springfield Armory are doing great as well.
Big Tobacco might be the deadliest consumer product ever.
Big Pharma may be up near the top as well…far ahead of guns and way beyond nutritional supplements.
Big pharma probably saves a lot more lives than it costs. If it wasn’t for big pharma, my mom never would have lived long enough to see me graduate, and one of my cousins would be dead. A lot of us wouldn’t be here because of infections and other childhood diseases that have been eliminated through antibiotics and vaccination.
Sure, modern medicine has arguably resulted in an increase to the life expectancy of the average man. So have a lot of other factors. How much of the increase in life expectancy over the last century do you credit to medical science over factors like cleaner air and water, better food safety, and safer transportation?
Still, preventable errors by medical practitioners account for a significant number of deaths each year.
In other words, just like with comparing the criminal use of firearms to legal defensive use of firearms one is a firm number while the other is merely a nebulous estimate.
It’s like proving/disproving the existence of God: We’re trying to prove that something was prevented from happening by an outside factor.
I think a lot is just basic public health. But a lot is also vaccines and antibiotics. Preventable errors by medical practitioners is doctors killing people, not Pharma companies :) If you say doctors are more dangerous, I agree with you :)
To be clear, I wasn’t disagreeing with your previous post; I was just making a philosophical point.
Specifically, that when it comes to guns the other side is able to draw on decades of FBI reports/statistics that detail deaths resulting from gunshot wounds. in the other direction, the studies that estimate the number of legitimate defense gun uses are just that: Estimates. As such, their numbers vary widely. Furthermore, their authors don’t have the automatic name recognition that the FBI does.
They simply find some blood to dance in, quote the FBI statistics, and then spout off about how the NRA et. al. wants more dead children.
Similarly, it is relatively easy to get a good estimate of the number of people killed due to medical malpractice, but it is NOT easy to get a good estimate of the number of people saved due to advances in medical science.
TLDR, the anti-gun arguments are a lot like anti-vaccine and anti-GMO arguments.
The stupidity which leads someone to be an anti-gunner seems related to the stupidity which prevents understanding the simplest free market forces.
I would think that outside of war, guns are not the deadliest consumer product. I would think automobiles are. But what do I know?
*sigh*. In war mortars/artillery kill more people than guns do. In the past, more people die in the retreat and poor conditions than fighting. One of the reasons the us military is soo much better than other militaries, is we actually shoot our guns at other combatants. People not shoot other people has historical been a problem in war. When Vietnam came around, they had figured the problem out.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought there were laws that prevented shareholders from forcing a business to do things that the shareholders knew would damage the business. You can’t just have some people come in and scuttle a company on purpose.
I have looked into this recently. It’s a very complex area of law, and varies from state-to-state, and federally. But companies are generally free to pursue their own course without activist shareholders demanding this or that. Basically, shareholders can use their influence to put people on the Board, who then can have influence on officers of the companies who the Board hires. Other than that, shareholders don’t have much power, depending on the bylaws of the corporation.
pretty sure Remington problems are due to high debt, bad products (R51), another recall (no, I will absolutely not send my rifle for another bad Remmy trigger), all this and more.