Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy • Hacker News Board

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#141

Post by tharne » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

Shared404 wrote: post #19

WC3w6pXxgGd wrote: post #7

Surprising, since lockdowns and "protests" have greatly increased the rate of gun purchasing. In my state, all firearms were out of stock at the local shops for months.

> "protests" Pretty sure there are in fact protests. Regardless of your view on them, which I won't get into because this is HN and not Reddit.

I've participated in countless protests when I was younger. Not one them involved a police station getting set on fire. There are peaceful protests and there are riots. We've seen both this year.

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#142

Post by mattbrewsbytes » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:25 PM UTC

jonahbenton wrote: post #128

Am sure this will be downvoted but just commenting that I find discussion in these threads fascinating, terrifying, fundamentally foreign. Having lived in large cities all my life I cannot conceive of owning a gun, or of other nearby city dwellers owning guns, or even being allowed to in a non law enforcement capacity. There are apartments in NYC with working fireplaces- seems almost equally insane to me, though gun…

If we are talking about practicality, you could expand this to all suburbs (towns bordering cities) as well. The practical use case is marginal for them, same for wood fireplaces and horses.

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#143

Post by jm4 » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

srmatto wrote: post #135

saas_sam wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those of us who grew up around guns, your abject horror at an object is as puzzling as someone being terrified of knives or slingshots. Would be nice if cops were all good and could teleport to your location in time of need. Drive an hour outside your city of choice and that ain't gonna happen. Just sharing my own experience, cheers.

Is your direct experience that you have actually held/brandished/used a firearm during an event when you were physically threatened? Or is this strictly theoretical?

I have. A couple guys came into the house late at night while I was in bed. I was upstairs and they were downstairs. I didn't have a means to escape. Cops can't help in that situation.

I confronted them at the stairs and the whole thing de-escalated very quickly. Nobody got hurt. As far as someone sneaking into your house while you sleep, it was pretty much a best case scenario.

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#144

Post by chipotle_coyote » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:31 PM UTC

wahern wrote: post #46

lebaux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of factors are helping humans to move on from brand worship: 1. More information. The iconning brands like Harley or Marlboro are from pre-internet era and heavily relied on freedom image. It was just accepted as an expression of culture. This doesn't really work when wages are not rising with GDP. In other words, people care less about brand and more about utility and price. 2. Better and more accessible comp…

> Plenty of factors are helping humans to move on from brand worship I only buy major brand-named items on Amazon, and only with Amazon as the seller. The one indispensable characteristic of branding, reputation, is more important than ever even though most brands' reputations are in the dumpster. Knock-offs of unknown or unreliable provenance just happen to be even worse . And even when you find a good non-branded i…

This has mostly been my experience (discounting the guns, as I don't have any interest in them). Amazon's actual brands like AmazonBasics seem to be relatively consistent in quality, but they have an awful lot of stuff sold by resellers whose names are clearly random capital letters strung together. During the pandemic, I've shifted more and more of my online shopping to Walmart.com, which -- while it has an increasing share of weird third-party sellers -- doesn't seem to have nearly the same level of out-and-out scams, and to ordering from manufacturers directly. Not only do I feel I'm more likely to get the real thing when I'm ordering that way, it's become surprisingly common for me to find cheaper prices than Amazon's.

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#145

Post by michaelt » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

kls wrote: post #96

nappy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remington levered up and took on a ton of debt at the wrong time. The owners gambled and lost. It's a shame that people will lose their jobs over this.

It was actually strategic by the private equity that bought them. They leveraged Remington to the hilt, extracted all of the value and then bankrupted the shell. Not that I am an advocate of what they do but it was actually brilliant. Gun companies on average don't go bankrupt, so they where able to significantly leverage Remington while hollowing it out and moving the assets to other companies. Leaving the shell for…

> Gun companies on average don't go bankrupt

Maybe I'm biased because everything I know about guns comes from Forgotten Weapons [1], but my impression is the opposite: Very few guns are ever a commercial success, and absolutely loads of gun makers go out of business.

[1] https://www.forgottenweapons.com/

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#146

Post by dleslie » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

saas_sam wrote: post #132

jonahbenton wrote: post #128

Am sure this will be downvoted but just commenting that I find discussion in these threads fascinating, terrifying, fundamentally foreign. Having lived in large cities all my life I cannot conceive of owning a gun, or of other nearby city dwellers owning guns, or even being allowed to in a non law enforcement capacity. There are apartments in NYC with working fireplaces- seems almost equally insane to me, though gun…

For those of us who grew up around guns, your abject horror at an object is as puzzling as someone being terrified of knives or slingshots. Would be nice if cops were all good and could teleport to your location in time of need. Drive an hour outside your city of choice and that ain't gonna happen. Just sharing my own experience, cheers.

Indeed! Though even in non-rural environments their response times are too low to generally be of assistance in life-threatening violent altercations; and that response time is typically lower in predominantly african american neighbourhoods.

It's kind of a mark of white privilege to believe that the police will arrive in time to protect you, and that when they arrive they won't harm you.

Even for de-escalating domestic disputes and dealing with petty vandalism and neighbourly feuds they are likely a worse tool than social workers and such.

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#147

Post by tharne » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:32 PM UTC

badrequest wrote: post #140

tharne wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely framed by where you live. I had a buddy in rural West Texas who had a loaded AR-15 mounted on the wall of his living room. I thought it was some insane gun nut thing, until I asked him about it. He explained that the nearest sheriff was 45 minutes away and he'd also had problems with coyotes attacking his chickens. For him, it would be crazy not have a high-powered weapon at the ready since there was…

Yeah, I can't possibly think of a single method of dealing with coyotes that isn't an AR-15. Until that specific model of firearm was invented, people just sort of let coyotes eat their chickens, as there was nothing they could possibly do. They couldn't use humbler firearms with less capacity for committing mass shootings, they just let their chickens die.

You don't know much about firearms based on your response. An AR-15 is a high-powered rifle that has a lot of stopping power even at long range and is very accurate - that's why my buddy had one. It also doesn't have the spread of a shotgun, which is important if you need to shoot a coyote that's too close to your chickens -- you don't want to fire a round of buckshot and take out a bunch of your chickens in the process. The AR is not materially different from other semi-automatic hunting rifles you can buy.

The AR has become a political symbol because it happened to be used in mass shootings, but there's nothing about it that makes it unique in terms of it's ability to do harm. Even if you live in a state that's banned the AR-15, you can get a gun that's virtually identical that's not an AR. This speaks to the fact that Democrats talking about guns are like Republicans talking about tech. They're trying to control an industry and have made zero effort to understand anything about it.

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#148

Post by umvi » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

jonahbenton wrote: post #128

Am sure this will be downvoted but just commenting that I find discussion in these threads fascinating, terrifying, fundamentally foreign. Having lived in large cities all my life I cannot conceive of owning a gun, or of other nearby city dwellers owning guns, or even being allowed to in a non law enforcement capacity. There are apartments in NYC with working fireplaces- seems almost equally insane to me, though gun…

Foreigners have a lot of fear when the discussion turns to guns in America, but you have to realize that most Americans will never brandish a gun at someone nor have a gun brandished at them.

No more than a foreigner will brandish a knife at someone or have a knife brandished at them.

The media/Hollywood helps augment fears by misrepresenting the lethality of guns and also by cherry picking gun death statistics. Watch a movie and you'd think it was the easiest thing in the world to kill a dozen people with an AK-47 in seconds or take out a helicopter with a handgun. Actually go to a shooting range and you'll see what reality is like.

The chances of getting killed in a school shooting by an AR-15 for example are infintesimal compared to dying by suicide via a handgun.

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#149

Post by indymike » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

jonahbenton wrote: post #128

Am sure this will be downvoted but just commenting that I find discussion in these threads fascinating, terrifying, fundamentally foreign. Having lived in large cities all my life I cannot conceive of owning a gun, or of other nearby city dwellers owning guns, or even being allowed to in a non law enforcement capacity. There are apartments in NYC with working fireplaces- seems almost equally insane to me, though gun…

First, I really like your comment because it is honest and highlights how different Urban and Rural issues are. Lots of guns in the hands of non-law enforcement people is scary in a big city and most of the reasons are really good (i.e. accidents, crime, etc). In the country, not owning a gun is scary because of the inability of law enforcement to respond quickly when called... even suburbs often have slow police compared to dense urban areas.

Re: Remington Arms Declares Bankruptcy

#150

Post by agensaequivocum » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

jonahbenton wrote: post #128

Am sure this will be downvoted but just commenting that I find discussion in these threads fascinating, terrifying, fundamentally foreign. Having lived in large cities all my life I cannot conceive of owning a gun, or of other nearby city dwellers owning guns, or even being allowed to in a non law enforcement capacity. There are apartments in NYC with working fireplaces- seems almost equally insane to me, though gun…

If you ever visit America, I highly encourage you to stop by a gun range and try a few out.