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In December 2005, five groups of Wall Street investors flew in private jets to Portland, Maine, where they took waiting limousines to a warren of metal buildings that resembled a midsize lumberyard. They had come to Bushmaster Firearms in pursuit of a highly profitable product whose market was growing faster than any other in America’s stagnant gun industry. The product was the AR-15, and red-hot Bushmaster, the nation’s leading manufacturer of the rifle, had decided to auction itself to the highest bidder. Bushmaster’s owner Dick Dyke had once feared that he could never sell the company because so many people...

We have tons of empathy for any parent who loses a child, particularly a very young child and, more specifically, to a crazed person who comes to their elementary school and kills them. So we understand that the parents whose children were killed by a mentally disturbed Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook, Conn., in 2012 want to blame something, someone, for their losses. But surviving families have singled out the gun manufacturer to blame, and honestly, now it all just looks political because the company — Bushmaster Firearms — is the least responsible for those 26 deaths.

The state Supreme Court will hear arguments on Nov. 14 in the closely watched case involving the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre who are suing the gun manufacturer that makes the weapon used in the shootings. The families of 10 victims filed the lawsuit in January 2015, seeking to hold the Remington Outdoor Co. liable for the massacre because it marketed a gun to the public it knew was made for military use. Adam Lanza shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and fired 154 bullets in about five minutes from a Bushmaster...

HARTFORD, Conn. -- A judge on Friday dismissed a wrongful-death lawsuit by Newtown families against the maker of the rifle used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting massacre, citing an embattled federal law that shields gun manufacturers from most lawsuits over criminal use of their products. State Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis granted a motion by Remington Arms to strike the lawsuit by the families of nine children and adults killed and a teacher who survived the Dec. 14, 2012, school attack, in which a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators with a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle made by...

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. – A lawsuit can go forward against the maker of the rifle used in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, a judge ruled Thursday. Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis said that a 2005 federal law protecting gun-makers from lawsuits does not prevent lawyers for the victims' families from arguing that the semi-automatic rifle is a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians.

Australia will send technical details to India as early as next week on the indigenous Bushmaster armoured protection vehicle — or protected mobility vehicle — after the country’s most senior defence officials expressed interest in using them to police India’s restive borders. A defence procurement contract for the Australian-made armoured vehicle, which has an unblemished record of no casualties in a decade of use in the ­Afghan battle theatre, would be a significant export for Australia as it builds its trade and defence relationship with India. Defence Minister Kevin Andrews, at the end of a three-day visit to India, said...

Cerberus Capital Management LP told its investors Friday that it has created an avenue for them to sell their stakes in a gun maker that the private-equity firm has been under pressure to divest since the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012. Cerberus sent a letter to its investors, which include pension funds and endowments, telling them that it has separated Remington Outdoor Co., the maker of Remington and Bushmaster rifles formerly known as Freedom Group Inc., from its funds and will allow any investor wishing to cash out of the company to do so, according to a person familiar...

A “gun shop” that suddenly appeared in the heart of Manhattan last week only to close its doors after two days was actually an elaborate ruse by a pro-gun control group that sought to lure potential customers in order to make their anti-firearms case. States United to Prevent Gun Violence set up the “Guns with History Gun Shop” on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and pretended to offer for sale guns used in high-profile crimes. The phony sales pitches were really part of a “social experiment”—pretexts for telling customers about the dangers of gun proliferation in unconsummated transactions recorded by hidden...

An upstate New York lawmaker said the loss of manufacturing jobs in the state last month is due to an anti-gun administration that has ignored pleas from local officials to be involved in the negotiating process. “Remington talks have come to a halt,” said Assemblyman Marc W. Butler (R.-Newport), whose district includes the Village of Ilion, where the Remington Outdoor Company has been located for almost 200 years. “We are losing 105 jobs at the Ilion primary plant,” said Butler. In February he predicted long-term consequences of Remington’s decision to expand to Huntsville, Ala., instead of Ilion, N.Y. The small...

(Reuters) - Private equity mogul Stephen Feinberg is exploring a bid for Freedom Group, the Bushmaster rifle manufacturer that his firm, Cerberus Capital Management LP, put up for sale after one of its guns was used in a Connecticut school shooting late last year, three people familiar with the situation said on Tuesday. Feinberg, along with other senior Cerberus partners, is putting together a consortium to make a "stalking horse" offer, or the floor bid, for Freedom Group, the sources said. Feinberg has approached other wealthy individuals to join his group, the people said, who declined to be named because...

Eight days before Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to kill 26 children and women on Dec. 14 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, state officials offered the manufacturer of the gun a development deal to move its corporate headquarters to Connecticut. On Dec. 6, a top state economic development official sent the Freedom Group an offer for a $1 million loan at the low annual interest rate of 2 percent for 10 years — plus other incentives for the company to move its headquarters, with 25 top executives, from Madison, N.C., to Stamford. The department withdrew...

Gun shop owner to auction off Bushmaster rifle for charity A local gun shop owner is auctioning off one of his guns to help out one of his employees in need. "Buy a gun, annoy a liberal." That's a T-shirt you can buy at Central Texas Gun Works in Austin. The owner, Michael Cargill is pro-gun but what he is not...is a conservative. "Hey, I'm a Democrat and I support the second amendment. If someone wants to come in here and buy a gun, annoy a liberal, that's fine. They can do that!" Cargill said. That's what makes the following...

Walmart, the world's largest retailer, announced it will not be pulling the type of weapon used in the Newtown school massacre off its shelves, while another major retailer announced it would. Walmart confirmed Tuesday that it does sell the Bushmaster Sporting Rifle at its stores and plans to continue to do so. "We have made no changes to the assortment of guns we sell in our stores," Walmart spokesperson Kory Lundberg said in a written statement.

Today, ABC News finally reported the blindingly obvious fact that Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s beloved assault weapons ban – a piece of legislation now favored by President Obama – would not have prevented the Sandy Hook shootings. Here’s what they said: Could a Ban Have Prevented the Connecticut Shootings? It's impossible to say for sure, but it seems unlikely that if the law were still in place, as it was written, it could have done much to prevent Friday's tragedy. Lanza's primary weapon, the Bushmaster .223 rifle, is a type of AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, certain models of which were prohibited from...

Following pressure from a major investor, U.S. private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management is selling gunmaker Freedom Group, whose Bushmaster AR-15 rifle was used in the Connecticut school massacre last week. The California State Teachers' Retirement System (CalSTRS) said on Monday it was reviewing its investment with Cerberus in the wake of Friday's shooting, in which a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School and then took his own life. Before going to the school, the gunman, Adam Lanza, 20, shot dead his mother in the home they shared, according to law enforcement officials. In...

An investment made by the California teachers pension fund is coming under scrutiny because of its link to the manufacturer of the assault rifle used in the Connecticut elementary school massacre. The fund pledged to invest $500 million in the private equity firm Cerberus, owner of the gun-making conglomerate known as the Freedom Group. One of the group's manufacturers is Bushmaster, which produced the rifle officials say was used to kill 20 schoolchildren and six adults in a Newtown, Conn., school Friday.

Reports that a mysterious company has been buying up U.S. gun manufacturers have been popping up on the internet for several months. When we first learned of the possibility that a single company was rapidly acquiring companies like Bushmaster, Remington, and Marlin Firearms we immediately suspected that something was amiss. Apparently, we were not alone, because others were thinking the same thing. One rumor that popped up was that global financier George Soros, historically an anti-gun advocate, was behind the moves, and that he was positioning the gun industry to reduce pro-gun lobbying efforts. This prompted the National Rifle Association...

Scarborough, Maine -- [...] 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 U.S. commercial gun industry today. Never heard of it? You're not alone. Even within gun circles, the Freedom Group is something of an enigma. Its rise has been so swift that it has become the subject of wild speculation and grassy-knoll conspiracy...

The company that owns Bushmaster Firearms in Windham is shutting the facility down, putting more than 70 people out of work. Freedom Group, Inc. which owns the Bushmaster brand, says it's closing the facility on Roosevelt Trail, effective March 31, 2011

A Virginia man who once spent eight years on the run from naval investigators was arrested in Somerset County early today with a trove of high-powered weapons, including a grenade-launcher and two assault rifles, along with maps of a U.S. military base and a civilian neighborhood, authorities said. The federal government’s Joint Terrorism Task Force quickly joined the investigation into Lloyd R. Woodson, 43, who had been staying at a Branchburg motel since last week. Woodson, whose last known address was in Reston, Va., was wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying one of the assault rifles — customized to shoot...