A little while ago, I wrote about my observations on the gun and ammo issue from my perspective as someone who sells them for a living. This post is a continuation with updated information.
Ammo supply seems to be loosening up some. And there’s some very good news on the ammo production front, but first some history.
Last June, Big Green declared bankruptcy. This came on the heels of several months of WuFlu related closures. Just before the bankruptcy filing, the company fired all the employees at the Lonoke Arkansas ammo plant. All of Remington’s ammo had been produced there since the closure of the Bridgeport CT plant in the mid 1980’s.
Vista Outdoors Group, the parent company of Federal, Speer, CCI and a couple of other smaller ammo producers, bought the Remington ammo name and facility during the bankruptcy auction. About 2 months ago, Vista restarted production at the Lonoke facility. They have already started shipping new production ammunition.
Why .35 Rem? Beats me, but I’m glad to see any new Remington ammo. They produced 15% to 20% of the domestic ammo in this country.
The new owners of the firearms part of Remington had announced they were reopening the Ilion NY factory, the historic home of Remington since Eliphalet Remington, on 1 March. That did not happen. The United Mine Workers took umbrage at the new owner’s reopening plans. I will keep an eye on that situation, seeing as Ilion is only about an hour from me.
While we’re on the subject of the Remington bankruptcy and subsequent parting-out, Marlin had been aquired by Remington in 2017. As part of the asset sale, Sturm, Ruger inc. bought Marlin. I don’t have any word about whether they have restarted production at the Madison NC plant, but anecdotally, I haven’t seen a new Marlin of any kind since last spring.
NICS checks havent slowed much. February was down from the 4.3 million checks in January, with 3.4 million background checks run. That is up about 600,000 from the previous year. March however set yet another new record at 4.69 million checks. That’s just shy of a million more checks than March 2020.
We are three months into 2021 and there have been more checks run than there were in each of the first 10 years of NICS checks.
Whats more, 8 of the top 10 days and 9 of the top ten weeks have been in the last 52 weeks.
Before you get carried away, there isn’t a one to one correlation between checks and firearms sold. A good percentage are run for other purposes than firearms purchases like pistol permit applications and recertifications, some people change their minds, and then there are the delay/denies. The NSSF figures a bit more than half are for actual purchases. Even that half is somewhat misleading, as you can put multiple firearms on a single 4473.