Reuters:

Bank of America Corp is preparing to provide critical financing to Remington Outdoor Co, which makes assault-type rifles, just weeks after the U.S. bank said it would stop financing “military-style” firearms for civilians.

The bank is contributing $43.2 million to a $193 million lending package funded by seven banks, according to court documents, which will help put Remington back on stable footing as it emerges from bankruptcy later this month into an uncertain environment for gun makers.

The package replaces a similar credit facility the banks committed to providing Remington. Both were agreed in late March, before Bank of America, the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, changed its policy to stop financing companies that make military-style guns for civilian use.

Anne Finucane, Bank of America’s vice chair, said in April that the bank had decided on its pledge to help reduce mass shootings, saying in an interview with Bloomberg TV that “it is not our intent to underwrite or finance military-style firearms on a go-forward basis.”

[ … ]

But withdrawing from the deal would hurt the bank’s reputation for standing by its lending agreements and could undermine Remington’s survival, according to one person familiar with the bank’s thinking.

Surely BoA knew about this loan package before it’s stupid announcement on other firearms manufacturers.

That means one of two things.  Either BoA is full of liars and crooks who were only trying to make an appearance of cooperating with the gun controllers, or Remington has been strong armed and is preparing to jettison its Bushmaster line of guns.

If the first is true, it doesn’t mean BoA will lend in the future to firearms manufacturers.  It just means that they are liars.  If the second is true, this is the end for Remington.  There will be no recovery.  Tikka can easily supplant the Remington 700 because it’s a better gun.

Bloomberg:

Remington Outdoor Co. has only been in bankruptcy for a month, but creditors are already planning an out.

The U.S. firearms and ammunition juggernaut will likely go up for sale directly following its bankruptcy, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Certain stakeholders, some of whom haven’t been publicly identified, have already started putting out feelers for potential strategic buyers, these people said.

Rather than hold the collection of 13 brands that includes a 200-year-old rifle maker, ammunition manufacturers, silencer companies and traditional firearms manufacturers, the lenders will be trying to offload at a particularly fraught time.

You can say that again.  This isn’t a good time for Remington to be doing anything like this, and I don’t expect them to last long.

From several readers.

ILION, N.Y. (WSYR-TV) – One of the largest U.S. makers of firearms made in Upstate New York has filed for bankruptcy, according to a report from Reuters.

Remington Outdoor Company Inc., of Ilion, has reached out to banks and other agencies to seek financing to file for bankruptcy, according to Reuters.

The company is working with an investment bank to restructure its $950 million in debt.

Remington has not officially filed for bankruptcy yet.

There have been no immediate plans to shut down, Reuters says.

Congresswoman Claudia Tenney, who represents Herkimer County, issued the following statement:

“Remington Arms is an iconic business in our region that has employed generations of families for over two hundred years. Remington is one of our nation’s longest continuously operating manufacturing facilities. Unfortunately, economic downturns in the firearms industry and outstanding debt have forced Remington’s parent company to seek new credit options and financing through bankruptcy protection. In addition to volatility, Governor Cuomo’s anti-Second Amendment policies have negatively impacted Remington’s Ilion production facility. I have been a strong supporter of Remington Arms and its hardworking employees. My office will continue to offer support to Remington and the families impacted during this difficult time.”

This is tough.  It’s difficult to see how Remington pulls out of this.  $950M is an awful lot of money for a firearms manufacturer.

I don’t know what the future holds for Remington, but it would have been better to have dealt with the issues that were the possible root causes of this long ago: [1] reliance on government contracts, [2] ensconcing in an anti-gun state, [3] reliance on union labor, and [4] lethargy in dealing with the Walker fire control system problems.

Move South, dear people.  Move South.  But leave the progressive politics behind.

Philly.com:

Remington Outdoor, the second-largest U.S. gunmaker has suffered a “rapid” and “sharp” deterioration in sales and a similar drop in profits since January, and faces “continued softness in consumer demand for firearms,” credit analysts at Standard & Poor’s Global Ratings said in a report today.

S&P as a result has cut the company’s corporate credit rating — already at a junk-bond-level CCC+ — two full notches, to CCC-, a move likely to make the company’s high-yield debt less attractive to investors and lenders, and force Remington to pay more in interest. The company could face a change in control, bankruptcy, or default on its debt by next year.

A backlog of unsold, unwanted firearms will force Remington to operate at a loss and “pressure the company’s sales and profitability at least through early 2018, resulting in insufficient cash flow for debt service and fixed charges,” unless Remington gives up cash to pay for ongoing operations, S&P adds.

S&P expects “a heightened risk of a restructuring” of Remington’s $575 million senior secured loan and asset-based lending facility, which it is supposed to pay back in 2019.

If Remington defaults on its payments, based on the company’s current value, S&P expects first-lien creditors may receive around 35 cents back from every dollar they have lent or invested. Lower-rated creditors would get back less, or nothing.

Default is not yet “a virtual certainty,” the report added.

And yet I know firearms manufacturers who can’t keep up with the demand.  I currently have one on backorder that no one is able to find, anywhere.  As they say, if you make things that people want, at a high quality, for a good price, the people will come.  If not, they won’t.

WKTV:

Ilion Mayor Terry Leonard tells us he received word Wednesday from the plant manager that Remington will enact involuntary furloughs due to market conditions and high inventory levels. Leonard says days will be taken out of the production schedule.

It’s hard to see how Remington pulls out of this slump.  Many manufacturers are hurting at the moment, but Remington is dealing with (a) declining quality [so I am told, I have no Remington firearms], (b) the Walker Fire Control System, and (c) union labor.

The best thing I could recommend is to close up shop in New York, move the entirety of their operations South, and focus on quality.

Oh, and as for that ridiculous Sandy Hook lawsuit that just won’t go away, fight it, but rather than expend legal fees, stay out of the state and never sell another product in Connecticut, which is what they want anyway.  Hell, I wish every firearms manufacturer would refuse to sell in Connecticut, starting with the police.

By the way, we’ve yet to see even a single death certificate for any alleged Sandy Hook shooting victims.  Remember that.

Guns.com:

A federal judged ruled against Remington Arms in a personal injury case despite arguments that the gun maker is protected under Louisiana law.

Judge Ivan Lemelle ruled that the case has merit under the Louisiana Products Liability Act, saying the law protects gun makers from lawsuits except in cases involving a defective firearm. He awarded $500,000 to the plaintiff, Precious Seguin, for her claim holding Remington liable for producing a defective product.

According to court documents, Seguin was injured during a hunting excursion in October 2013. As she tracked the blood trail of a wounded deer with her father, brother and a family friend, her father’s Remington 710 bolt-action rifle discharged as they made their way through the brush. The bullet struck her right buttock, traveled through her hip and exited through her right elbow.

The lawsuit argues the rifle’s trigger design, the infamous Walker Fire Control, a mechanism that has been linked to almost a dozen deaths and numerous injuries, allowed the gun to discharge without the pull of a trigger. In Seguin’s case, her father had the rifle strapped over his shoulder and pointed upward until a branch knocked it up and backward, at which time the safety moved to the fire position and unintentionally discharged. Before Seguin was injured, they had not experienced an unintentional discharge with the rifle.

So this is more on the Walker Fire Control System.  Good grief, people.  I was among the most vocal critics of Remington on the gun blogs, using my engineering credentials to advocate that Remington had misled their constituency and gun buyers, and in fact they’re still lying.  The Remington 700 has indeed been tested to fire when the trigger isn’t being pulled.  Their own test data shows it.  Good Lord!  Their own test data shows it.

But how far do we take this?  Now that Remington has settled the issue in court, it’s finished.  Let it go.  Everyone who knows anything about guns – and you shouldn’t be a hunter if you don’t know anything about guns – knows what Remington has been charged with, and knows that Remington settled.

Legal settlements mean something or they don’t.  Besides, I don’t know what really happened on that day Seguin was injured since I wasn’t there, and neither do any of my readers, and neither does the idiot judge who ordered this payout.

It’s time to put this to bed.  It’s finished.  Buy Remington, or don’t.  It matters not to me.  But this issue is closed as far as I’m concerned.  I hope Remington’s lawyers end this swiftly and surely.  If they don’t, let me make it clear.  At this point I have no compassion left for people who want to sue Remington for damages from a trigger system that has been recalled.  Do your homework, people.

Newstimes:

NEWTOWN – The 10 families whose lawsuit against the world’s largest dealer of AR-15 rifles was dismissed last year say their case should be reinstated, arguing that the Sandy Hook massacre was no accident.

“The notion that what happened at Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012, was unimaginable is a lie,” argues the families’ lawyer, Josh Koskoff, in 50-page brief submitted to state Supreme Court this week. “Sandy Hook was simply gratuitous, senseless proof of what was already known: preparation is no match for an AR-15.”

The families’ argument that Remington is liable for the massacre of 26 first-graders and educators by an AR-15-wielding 20-year-old named Adam Lanza was thrown out of Superior Court in October. The judge ruled that Remington is protected by federal law against claims when people misuse firearms.

The families are sticking to their argument that Remington was liable, saying the company ssly marketed the semi-automatic rifle to civilians.

Remington has until May 1 to respond to the brief. A court date to hear both sides of the appeal has not been set.

The families argue that the Remington rifle used by Lanza was developed “as a weapon of war so powerful, so accurate and so destructive to the human body, it vanquished the need for skilled hands or forgiving terrain.”

I’ll bet you didn’t know you were that good at close quarters battle just because you own an AR-15, did you?  Your purchase of an AR-15 has literally “vanquished the need for skilled hands.”  There is no need to go to the range and practice.  Your gun is magic.

Okay, let’s play this game one more time.  Here’s a note to attorney Koskoff.  Let’s start the discovery process by you producing all of the death certificates resulting from the Sandy Hook event.

I’m waiting.

Alloutdoor.com:

From the Remington site, this.

WARNING:

STOP USING YOUR RIFLE. Any unintended discharge has the potential for causing injury or death. Immediately stop using your rifle until Remington can inspect it to determine if the XMP trigger has excess bonding agent used in the assembly process, which could cause an unintentional discharge and, if so, replace the trigger mechanism. If you own a rifle subject to this recall, Remington will provide shipping, inspection, replacement of the trigger mechanism if necessary, and return at no cost to you. DO NOT attempt to diagnose or repair your rifle yourself.

Contact Remington

For the safety of you and those around you, Remington strongly encourages you to STOP USING YOUR RIFLE immediately and contact Remington for inspection and repair. To participate in this recall, visit the Remington Recall Center at xmprecall.remington.com. Or call Remington on its toll-free XMP-Recall Hotline at 1-800-243-9700 (Prompt #3 then Prompt #1) Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT. You will be asked to provide your name, address, telephone number, and the serial number of your rifle.

E-mail: ucamdn28@prodigy.net.mx

We apologize for this inconvenience. We want our customers to enjoy the shooting sports safely. It is imperative that owners of Model 700™ and Model Seven™ rifles subject to this recall do not use their rifles until they have been inspected as part of this recall program.”

So this is the right way to do a recall, unlike what they did with the Walker Fire Control System.  Remington should be commended for accepting responsibility right up front and getting out ahead of this problem, whatever it is.

Speaking of which, what is it?  What can’t Remington get right about their trigger systems?  I just don’t understand why this is a recurring theme with Remington.  Their engineering department needs to do a serious gut check on what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.

I’m not likely to buy a Remington anyway, since they’re owned by Freedom Group, which is owned by Cerberus, which is owned by Steve Feinberg, who owns DynCorp, which – along with the CIA – is involved in nation toppling in North Africa for the purpose of trafficking in money, oil, weapons and children.

My Tikka does just fine.

CNBC:

The Remington Arms Company, which is seeking court approval of a landmark class action settlement involving alleged defects in its most popular rifles, said in a series of court filings that its critics have “ulterior motives” in objecting to the deal.

In one instance, the company claimed, an objector first tried to extract more than $1 million from the company to buy his silence.

Remington has agreed to replace the triggers in millions of guns, including its popular Model 700 bolt-action rifle, to settle allegations that the guns are prone to firing without the trigger being pulled. But the company continues to maintain that the guns are safe, and that the accidents and deaths associated with the alleged defect are the result of user errors. Several gun owners have filed formal objections to the settlement as a result, alleging the company is deliberately downplaying the risks.

Remington reserved its harshest criticism for Richard Barber, a Montana man who says his nine-year-old son was killed when a Remington 700 went off during a family hunting trip in 2000. Barber has been a central figure in multiple CNBC reports about the company since 2010. Remington settled a wrongful death claim by the Barber family for an undisclosed amount in 2002, but Barber went on to amass a huge trove of internal company documents and became a sought-after expert on the alleged defect.

Barber initially served as a paid consultant to the class action plaintiffs, but resigned in early 2015. Last month, he filed a formal, 40-page objection to the proposed class action settlement citing what he called “deceitful and misleading statements” by Remington and plaintiffs’ attorneys.

But in a scathing response filed on Tuesday, Remington said Barber only objected to the settlement after first demanding that the company pay him $1.5 million, and supply him with two Remington Modular Sniper Rifles—which we found listed for sale online for $21,000 apiece—plus 4,000 rounds of ammunition. In exchange, the company claimed that Barber offered to support any class action settlement, stop making disparaging statements about the company, and destroy all of his research.

“In light of Barber’s vexatious conduct, his objections to the class action settlement should be summarily rejected,” the filing said.

In an interview, Barber acknowledged making the demands but said Remington is mischaracterizing them in an attempt to deflect attention from the real issues in the case. He said the demands were drawn up by attorneys who no longer represent him, and said he ultimately withdrew the demands after concluding that he would be “making a deal with the devil.”

I’m not sure what all of that means.  To be fair, the claim isn’t that the rifle just “went off.”  It’s that it fell to the ground (with the safety on) and discharged.  That’s a little different than has been characterized in the article, and also to be fair, Remington’s own records indicate that the Walker fire control system is defective and has been proven to discharge when the bolt was placed into battery, discharge when the safety was taken off, and so on.

No one wins, no one has won, no one will win.  The only winning scenario was rejected, and that would have been for the engineers at Remington to force Remington to recall the trigger two decades ago.  It’s always a bad thing when corporate executives call the shots in matters like this, and it’s never a good thing when the corporate lawyers get involved.  Lawyers aren’t technically qualified to make these decisions, and corporate executives can only be trusted if they have been proven to be ethical.  In Remington’s issue with the Walker fire control system, that was not the case.  In matters like this, the engineers have to rule.  If my own sense of things down at the gun stores is any indication, Remington has taken a huge hit anyway, with the reliance on military contracts, the union-driven labor force, the Northern states based manufacturing, and so on.  As I said, no one wins, not even Remington.

On the other hand, the request for two modular sniper rifles and ammunition as a part of a multi-million dollar settlement is the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in a long time.  Why on earth would he make this kind of request if he had the money in hand?  It makes no sense unless he intended to test the rifles to see if the design flaw had been modified out of the system.  If that was the case, it would have been more discrete to have a third party purchase and test the rifles.

Again, as I said, no one wins, and it will be better for everyone when this goes away.  This has nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with the dark underbelly of American corporatism.  I say this as one who has staunchly defended Remington from the invasive demands of the Sandy Hook Families lawsuit.  I defend when it’s appropriate, and I criticize when it’s appropriate.

CNBC:

Owners of Remington’s popular Model 700 rifle can now examine for themselves literally millions of pages of internal company documents that have led critics to conclude that the guns are unsafe.

The documents — more than 130,000 files in all — have been assembled in a searchable online database by the advocacy group Public Justice. The organization, which battles against secrecy in the courts, fought successfully last year to make the documents public.

“These documents show the extreme danger of court secrecy,” said Public Justice Chairman Arthur Bryant. “They prove that court secrecy kills. Literally.”

With millions sold since the design first went on the market in the 1940s, Remington claims its Model 700 is the best-selling bolt-action rifle ever made. But lawsuits have alleged that for decades the company covered up a deadly design flaw that allows the guns to fire without the trigger being pulled, resulting in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries. The company has denied the allegations.

The documents show Remington engineers wrestling with what they called a “very dangerous” situation as early as 1947 — before the guns went on sale. Company officials eventually decided that a design change was not worth the added cost, a conclusion they would reach again and again.

We’ve discussed this at length before.  While shooters are responsible for following all of the rules of safety, firearms manufacturers are responsible for designing and producing firearms that don’t discharge a round when the trigger isn’t being pulled.  It’s called “defense in depth.”

Take a look at the incredible cache of documents there.  It’s staggering.  As I’ve said before to firearms manufacturers, when you find problems you’d better admit them and get out in front of the problem, recall it, announce it, and fix it.

Engineers, don’t ever sacrifice your ethical integrity at the behest of corporate lawyers.  You say, “But this pertains to my career and this is a very difficult decision to make, and it could affect my ability to support my family.”  Yes it does, and yes it may.

That’s why it’s call ethics.  It isn’t ethics when it’s easy.  Been there, done that.  I know what it’s like.