31–40 of 314 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an intriguing trend in the United States where, for the past several decades, the number of gun owners has gone down but the number of guns has gone up.
Do you mean the percentage of owners? I can count on one hand the number of people I know who own a home but don't own a firearm.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. This isn't a unique tale for a firearms manufacturer. This is a common tale for nearly any type of manufacturer that is bought out by private equity firms. They reduce costs and quality, load it with debt, suck it dry, and then dump it on their creditors.
I’ve read about this scenario many times, but I’m curious about why any creditor would lend money to a company that’s poised to do this. Wouldn’t these private equity firms lose the ability to borrow money based on past practices like this?
> When these so-called “leveraged buyouts” worked, investors made a hundred or a thousand times their money.
then it only needs to work a small percentage of times they try it to remain highly profitable.
Not a mystery: Private equity firm bought them out with borrowed money, raided their resources to enrich themselves, then left Remington to rot. It is a common story now. The private equity firm makes a bunch of money and people are jobless.
In what universe is "I borrow a bunch of money, buy a company, then force the company to basically borrow money from me" a value-creating operation? Cuz it sure isn't this one.
I'm curious about this statement. NIC checks are, as the name implies, instant. They happen upon transfer of ownership of a firearm from an FFL dealer. So I'm not sure how they 'foreshadow' sales, more likely they mirror sales. In fact, when you purchase a gun online, the sale occurs before the check...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is an intriguing trend in the United States where, for the past several decades, the number of gun owners has gone down but the number of guns has gone up.
Do you mean the percentage of owners? I can count on one hand the number of people I know who own a home but don't own a firearm.
This doesn't get mentioned often enough when talking about the "1-percenters" and the wealth gap in Western countries, i.e. that most of the capital behind all of the current economic and social system is directly or indirectly held by part of the general populace itself.
The issue is of course that the other part of the populace (generally speaking people under 35 who cannot put money towards their retirement funds or who can only get temp jobs) are not part of this financial arrangement and, as it so happens, are also some of the worst affected by the current economic set-up (those temp jobs I was mentioning are not as great as the normal full-time jobs held by people whose pension funds are managed by the companies investing in Cerberus).
Afaik almost no politician has focused on this social and economical contradiction, if I may call it this way, some of them are putting whole of the blame on the 1-percenters, some of them are choosing to ignore it all together, but almost no-one has actually looked at the real numbers. And the real numbers tell the story of a society divided in two, a part that will manage to enjoy its pension and the other part that has no clue how will pay for its old age.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's also the issue - perhaps - of market saturation. How many guns does one need? My pro-gun friends typically seem to have 2-3 but shy away from any more than that.
As a firearm enthusiast, the answer to "How many guys does one need?" is always "Just one more." It's a fun hobby that I can spend time with my kids. They also make great investments as a quality firearm holds it worth and often increases in value.
"The correct number of $ITEM to own is n+1, where n is the number you own now."
$ITEM can be "mountain bikes", "guitars", "road bikes", "motorcycles", "guns" or pretty much anything.
This is not an uncommon story for firearm manufacturers unfortunately. Tooling costs are high, sales hard to predict, and designs can fail easily. Ian McCollum of Forgotten Weapons has done a lot of videos on this topic.
There's also the issue - perhaps - of market saturation. How many guns does one need? My pro-gun friends typically seem to have 2-3 but shy away from any more than that.
Not a mystery: Private equity firm bought them out with borrowed money, raided their resources to enrich themselves, then left Remington to rot. It is a common story now. The private equity firm makes a bunch of money and people are jobless.
Not a mystery: Private equity firm bought them out with borrowed money, raided their resources to enrich themselves, then left Remington to rot. It is a common story now. The private equity firm makes a bunch of money and people are jobless.