Oh, I forgot the other thing, every time NRA/Republicans scream the democrats will take their guns away.... gun sales go up from the idiots who think democrats will take their guns away so run out to 'stock up'. So the guy who has a couple assault rifles and 3 handguns panics and buys 5 more and 3 years of ammo.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/14/rem...bankruptcy-puts-rifle-settlement-at-risk.html
The last part sums it up pretty well, a while back a company started buying up gun companies, Remington included wanting to turn it into an IPO for a stupid mega gun corporation called Freedom group (lol) . It went bad for many reasons, Remington are being sued massively, Bushmaster were linked to Sandyhook via the guns and basically the group never turned it into an IPO. They leveraged for a takeover of multiple companies hoping to profit from the IPO, without that all they had was debt. Remington is going down because it was mismanaged.
https://d3aya7xwz8momx.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/EconomicImpactofIndustry2017.pdf
page 7, Firearms and ammunition industry was worth 19billion in 2008, it's worth 51billion today. May sales have gone down in 2017 without idiots rushing to arm themselves for a potential democratic removal of guns as a right, sure, probably not much of a dent though, the health of the guns and ammo business is not an issue, Remington being involved in a leveraged take over without the payoff of the public offering is the issue. They also have some huge settlements to deal with, so allowing Remington to go bankrupt, allowing the other companies they bought to buy all the assets would potentially get them out of all their settlements and future settlements... so that could also be a reason for it to happen.
https://shootingindustry.com/u-s-firearms-industry-2017/
This also says if you scroll down to the top producers that the markershare in various brackets in 2015 compared to 2014 showed massive declines for remington, almost 19% down in 2015 while Smith and Wesson were 10% up. Remington is not the average gun most people buy, they are big in rifles and shotguns, shotguns down for the three biggest producers but Remington down 17% in rifle while Savage Arms were up 25%.
Remington is a symbol of a company whose products aren't selling well, who are involved in class action civil suits about their products and who had a leveraged take over sticking debt all over the company. The gun industry is closing in on 2.5x bigger than only a decade ago.