Remington Ilion Plan To Shutter The Doors Forever
BY Herschel Smith
4 months, 3 weeks ago
A gun factory in upstate New York with a history stretching back to the 19th century is scheduled to close in March, according to a letter from the company to union officials.
RemArms, the current version of Remington Arms, will close its facility in the Mohawk Valley village of Ilion around March 4, according to the letter sent Thursday. The letter said the company “did not arrive at this decision lightly,” according to the Observer-Dispatch of Utica.
Remington, the country’s oldest gun maker, began making flintlock rifles in the region in 1816. The factory site in the village dates to 1828, with many of the current buildings constructed early in the 20th century.
More recently, the company faced temporary closures in Ilion, bankruptcy and legal pressure over the Sandy Hook school massacre. The current company no longer makes the Bushmaster AR-15 rifles used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators in the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut in 2012.
Investors doing business as the Roundhill Group purchased the Remington-branded gun-making business, including operations in Ilion and Lenoir City, Tennessee for $13 million. Owners announced plans in 2021 to move the company’s headquarters to Georgia.
Union officials called the news this week disappointing.
“The workers in Ilion enabled RemArms to rise from the ashes of the Remington Arms bankruptcy in 2020-21,” United Mine Workers of America International President Cecil E. Robert said in a prepared statement. “Without these workers and their dedication to producing the best firearms in the world, this company simply would not exist.”
I have a completely different take on things. First, they had bad lawyers for the Sandy Hook lawsuit. Next, they ensconced in a gun control state and left only when it was too late. Third, they didn’t acknowledge and correct the errors and malfunctions of the Remington 700, even when they duplicated weapon discharge in their own labs without anything even being near the trigger. Fourth, they never got a handle on poor QA.
Fifth, and maybe the most significant error, they never left a union state to move to a right-to-work state. The union can blame it on others all they want to. When you extort employers rather than allow the market to set wages, this is the result.
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On December 4, 2023 at 4:55 pm, luke2236 said:
“Without these workers and their dedication to producing the best firearms in the world, this company simply would not exist.”
HAH!!! The union is at least partly responsible for these problems. And dont even try to sell that ‘best firearms in the world’ krap.
Oh, and sandy HOAX is more accurate – all political theatre.
On December 5, 2023 at 4:59 pm, X said:
There’s a lot of blame to go around, not just on the unionized workers. They built the products the management and engineering and marketing departments told them to build. Remington triggers were faulty, and they made some horrible products like the R51 9mm pistol. Management over-leveraged the company by buying up Marlin, H&R, Para-Ord, and Bushmaster just for the brand names and then cheapening the products.
Remington was like Chevrolet, they made some great stuff like Corvettes and some utter junk like the Vega and Chevette. However, for 200 years, they were ubiquitous: Remington arms and ammunition could be found literally anywhere nationwide in every major retailer.
Remington’s bankruptcy left a huge hole in the arms industry — lever actions became scarce, and a major source of ammo and cases and primers dried up.
The fact that their 700 and 870 lines sold for only $13 million at bankruptcy is incredible. The Remington bankruptcy is an indication of just how small and fragile and easily bankrupted the arms industry is. Despite federal protection, the rigged courts allowed the bullshit Sandy Hook “false advertising” suit to proceed, which was the final nail in the coffin.
It’s easy to sneer at Remington as a mismanaged Fudd gunmaker but the fact is that most of the “legacy” gunmakers — Winchester, Colt, Remington –have been in dire financial straits for decades and are now also-rans and has-beens in the market. ALL of the legacy gunmakers were headquartered in Blue states and are now either bankrupt or fleeing to the Southern Red states as their products have become basically illegal in half the country. That is no joke. S&W just moved their headquarters to Tennessee — but look at how the left-wingers in Nashville went apeshit for gun control even there after the tranny shot the Christian schoolchildren.
Even West Coast arms manufacturers are in dire straits. Sierra fled California long ago, and so did Weatherby. Leupold and Nosler remain in occupied territory in Oregon.
We are now two nations, one where the Second Amendment actually exists and one where it does not.