Tag Archives: Ruger Marlin

Shooting Sports Showcase?

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This week, I had a chance to be on the ground in Northern Alabama for the annual Shooting Sports Showcase.

The Showcase is hosted by the National Association of Sporting Goods Wholesalers, the Professional Outdoor Media Association, and the Southeastern Outdoor Press Association. Held on the ranges of the massive CMP Marksmanship Park in Talladega, this year’s event was the second of its kind, following up on last year’s inaugural show.

Photo dump ensues:

More here, after the jump. 

The Ruger M1895 Does Exist

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Ruger last week made good on its promise to start making new Marlin rifles before the year was out, releasing the M1895 Stainless Big Loop variant to the market.

The company, which purchased the historic Marlin Firearms assets for $30 million during Remington Outdoors’ federal bankruptcy auction last summer, has been teasing the return of the familiar line under new management. Christopher Killoy, Ruger’s CEO and president, this October said the company will begin deliveries of the Marlin Model 1895 in December and, true to form, Ruger showed off the first production model shortly after.

Now the 1895 SBL, chambered in .45-70 Govt, is shipping to distributors.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Ruger: 1895 Stainless Big Loop will be the first Marlin in reboot

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Christopher Killoy, Ruger’s CEO and president, recently said the company will begin deliveries of the Marlin Model 1895 in December.

Killoy confirmed the vaunted 1895 lever gun, chambered in .45-70 Government, is inbound with production now underway at the company’s Mayodan, North Carolina, factory. The Ruger head said they are concentrating on center-fire lever-action models at first.

“Number one priority that you’ll see coming out – and it will probably be mid-December when we launch it and begin shipping those guns, again I gotta caution folks it will be slow to start – but we’ll focus initially on the 1895,” said Killoy. “Likely the SBL model, the Stainless Big Loop, in .45 Government.”

Famously billed as being able to take everything from bear and deer to moose and velociraptors, Remington-Marlin’s M1895SBL in 45-70 Gov’t. featured a 6-shot tubular magazine, an 18.5-inch Ballard-cut stainless steel barrel, laminated pistol grip stock with a fluted comb, and an XS Lever Rail with a Ghost ring rear sight. It is unclear how the rifle will appear in Ruger’s upcoming offering. (Photo: Marlin 2020 internet archive).

Perhaps we can set up a factory tour at Mayoden before Christmas.

More in my column at Guns.com.

Looks like the 870 may be Back in Production, After a Brief Hiatus

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Remington had been involved in shotguns for over a century, marketing various single and double-barreled models in the 19th Century before moving into the pump-action game in 1908 with the Remington Repeating Shotgun, a bottom-ejector based on two of John Browning’s “magazine gun” patents. Then came the Model 31, which clocked in for riot gun use with Uncle Sam, among others, in addition to its use by sportsmen from coast to coast.

To replace the Model 31, a team that included L. Ray Crittendon, Phillip Haskell, Ellis Hailston, and G.E. Pinckney, worked across the late 1940s to craft Remington’s new Model 870AP Wingmaster, which debuted in 1950.

An easy take-down, side-ejecting, bottom-loading pump-action shotgun with dual (rather than single) action arms on the slide, the 870 had a receiver that was machined from a solid block of steel and marketed at first in just a 2.75-inch chamber with choices of 12-, 16- and 20-gauge, retailing for $69.95 on a standard-grade and $79.95 for a more deluxe model.

Remaining in constant production for 70 years, some 11 million Model 870s were produced by Big Green, making it one of the most popular shotguns in firearms history.

Then came the big bankruptcy last year, and Remington’s flagship factory in Ilion New York was shuttered on October 26, 2020, with 585 unionized employees laid off just two months shy of Christmas– with zero benefits or severance.

Oof.

Now, with the factory acquired by a new holding group and under the RemArms banner, a deal with the union has reopened the Ilion works this week, and reportedly over 200 furloughed workers have been called back. Their first order of business: make more 870s.

More in my column at Guns.com.

And in the biggest gun news of the year…

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Poor old Remington. The ghosts of the Freedom Group have come home to roost and you deserved better.

Founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, the company (for now) has locations in Alabama (where I did an extensive tour of their mega factory in Huntsville), Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Utah, South Dakota, and North Carolina. Once upon a time I even worked for Remington, doing articles for their 1816 lifestyle blog for a couple of years.

The current company grew several times between 2005 and 2007 when the Freedom Group, an offshoot of Cerberus Capital Management, aimed to buy up a ton of smaller companies under the FG umbrella, cut costs (see= mega factory), then (try to) sell the reinvented 80-foot gorilla for lots of profit.

This saw Remington gobble up AR-15 makers Panther Arms, DPMS, and Bushmaster; suppressor maker AAC, Para-Ordnance pistols, premium rifle maker Dakota Arms, accessory maker TAPCO (the horror), lever-gun icon Marlin (which came with budget shotgun/rifle brands H&R and New England Firearms), shotgun maker Parker, and precision barrel company Stormlake. They even bought innovative designs from other companies such as the Masada rifle for Magpul, which they marketed (poorly) as the Adaptive Combat Rifle, or ACR.

The thing is, somehow they ran it all incredibly poorly and filed bankruptcy three times since 2015. While the first two saw the company emerge after restructuring more or less intact, this latest go-round will not go as smoothly. 

In short, Ruger, Sig Sauer, Vista Outdoors (Federal/CCI), Palmetto State Armory, Franklin Armory, Sierra bullets, and others are all fighting over the scraps, with the courts to decide who ultimately goes home with the choicest parts of the carcass.

More in my column at Guns.com.