(AP) — Gun-maker Colt is suspending its production of rifles for the civilian market including the popular AR-15, the company said Thursday in a shift it attributed to changes in consumer demand and a market already saturated with similar weapons. The company said it will focus instead on fulfilling contracts with military and police customers for rifles. “The fact of the matter is that over the last few years, the market for modern sporting rifles has experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity,”
Colt’s chief executive officer, Dennis Veilleux, said in a written statement. “Given this level of manufacturing capacity, we believe there is an adequate supply for modern sporting rifles for the foreseeable future,” Veilleux said the company, which emerged from bankruptcy in 2016, remains committed to the Second Amendment. He said the company is expanding its lines of pistols and revolvers. Despite a national debate on gun control, Colt’s decision seems driven by business considerations rather than politics, said Adam Winkler, a gun policy expert at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. READ MORE
Colt has been lowering quality and making “unstandard” black firearms for the civilian market for decades now, people are sick of paying exorbitant prices for sub par products; one supposes Colt finally figured this out. Why would somebody buy something you have to use special parts to add options to when other makers products use off the shelf components to do the same thing?