How Freedom Group Became the Big Shot

[Logical]

LINED up in a gun rack beneath mounted deer heads is a Bushmaster Carbon 15, a matte-black semiautomatic rifle that looks as if it belongs to a SWAT team. On another rack rests a Teflon-coated Prairie Panther from DPMS Firearms, a supplier to the United States Border Patrol and security agencies in Iraq. On a third is a Remington 750 Woodsmaster, a popular hunting rifle.

The variety of rifles and shotguns on sale here at Cabela’s, the national sporting goods chain, is a testament to America’s enduring gun culture. But, to a surprising degree, it is also a testament to something else: Wall Street deal-making.

In recent years, many top-selling brands — including the 195-year-old Remington Arms, as well as Bushmaster Firearms and DPMS, leading makers of military-style semiautomatics — have quietly passed into the hands of a single private company. It is called the Freedom Group — and it is the most powerful and mysterious force in the American commercial gun industry today.

Never heard of it?

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/business/how-freedom-group-became-the-gun-industrys-giant.html

[jpak]

1. #Occupy Cabelas!!!111

:rofl:

[DrDan]

2. the Freedom Group . . . . patriots all

[ProgressiveProfessor]

3. Firearms and ammunition companies were undervalued, mostly for political reasons

Not surprised someone started to scoop them up

[burf]

4. I heard of the Freedom Group a couple of months ago.

There was a big hubbub about George Soros owning Ceribus and how he was gonna implement gun control by putting all the manufactures out of business. I am surprised to see the NY Times doing an article on the Freedom Group. Maybe they are just stirring up the pot a little.

[ileus]

5. I got a spam e-mail claiming that Freedom Group was soros gun grab.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/guns/freedom.asp

[SteveM]

6. Someone who has overly-active conspiracy theory glands...

I don't really see how someone -- even if they owned controlling interest -- could somehow dictate the end of firearms manufacturing/ development at the corporate level. Seems far-fetched, but good for a cheap beer HH.

The NYT doesn't seem to have any notion of why the Freedom Group is buying up a notoriously and chronically unsettled industry like firearms manufacture and distribution. Perhaps they think they can somehow rid the owned companies of production costs (typical of equity outfits), then sell the companies to the next fool who hasn't read Finance 202. And even this would put them up against Ruger, which may be the largest single firearms manufacturer with the best balance sheet in this country. Maybe they think they can do better?

Running one of its own for the NRA board is a curious move, however. And it would seem, a bad one.

[burf]

7. Maybe the NYT went long on tin foil. N/T :)