Friday, March 03, 2017

Black Beauty Is Dead: Part II

BREAKING: Colt Lays Off Custom Shop Director, Other Employees, Company Rumored Gutted - The Firearm BlogThe Firearm Blog:
What is happening at Colt? That’s the question on many people’s minds as news of layoffs in the company began to trickle out starting on Tuesday. Rumors of massive layoffs at Colt began with a post at Pistol-Forum by member “misanthropist”, who wrote: Sounds like a big mess down there and a whole lot of pink slips, including my favourite division, the custom shop.

I predicted this in September, 2006;  in the original "Black Beauty Is Dead" article I wrote:
Colt!
The very name evokes imagery. A new-born stallion racing with the wind, Ferrari's rampant horse icon, and that of the Colt Firearms Company of Hartford, Connecticut!
Well, nobody has read "Black Beauty" for 20 years. Enzo Ferarri is dead, and so is Colt Firearms Company of Hartford, Connecticut.
As it turns out, Colt managed to find new financing (see the article for details) and new management and new .... almost everything.   They held out for over ten years.

Now it appears that (for reasons which are not yet clear) Colt finds itself once again between a rock and a hard place.

In the words of Dear Leader:   "sad".

We'll probably be reading about the details of the problems which lead to this; fiscal, market share, technology, societal changes ... or some combination of all the above.    Will Colt manage to dodge the bullet once again?

For comparison, I reference "Remington Has Been Sold" from 2007.

But as I review my own "arsenal", I realize that I don't have a single firearm with that Prancing Stallion logo, and I haven't for years.

Okay, so it's my fault.

I'm sorry!

Wednesday, March 01, 2017

Deregulation of the Regulations. (Oh, I LIKE this!)

New Army policy OKs soldiers to wear hijabs, turbans and religious beards:
(January 05, 2017)
Observant Sikhs and conservative Muslim women are now able to wear religious head coverings, thanks to a directive issued Tuesday that updates the Army's grooming and appearance regulation. Sikh soldiers also are allowed to maintain their beards, according to the update. Soldiers will still have to submit their requests for brigade-level approval, but the move opens up service to people who otherwise would have had to abandon cherished religious practices to serve. Since 2009, religious accommodation requests received by the Army have largely been from soldiers wanting to wear a hijab or a Sikh turban or patka with uncut beard and hair, according to the directive.
When I was in the service, we were told we could not have beard or moustache because "it doesn't match your official ID card".   Which meant, of course, it was because some 'suit' had a stick up his butt.

When I got back from Viet Nam two years later, with three stripes and a rocker and a CIB, nobody even mentioned my handlebar moustache.   I didn't look like my Military ID Card (which I had lost in a swamp somewhere) and I still wasn't strack;  but I was "colorful".

Check the picture .   Do all these people look "Strack"?  
I think they do.