This Times story about Cerberus and Bushmaster seems very relevant
According to reports, the gun used in the shooting was a Bushmaster. That makes this story from a year ago particularly telling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/business/how-freedom-group-became-the-gun-industrys-giant.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
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 American commercial gun industry today. . . .
From its headquarters on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, Cerberus has assembled a remarkable arsenal. It began with Bushmaster, which until recently was based here in Maine. Unlike military counterparts like automatic M-16’s, rifles like those from Bushmaster don’t spray bullets with one trigger pull. But, with gas-powered mechanisms, semiautomatics can fire rapid follow-up shots as fast as the trigger can be squeezed. They are often called “black guns” because of their color. The police tied a Bushmaster XM15 rifle to shootings in the Washington sniper case in 2002. . . .
Bushmaster was among the first to sell ordinary people on weapons that look and feel like the ones carried by soldiers. Today many gun makers have embraced military-style weapons, a major but controversial source of growth for the commercial gun market, says Tom Diaz, a senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, a research group that backs gun control. . . .
The issue is whether the Freedom Group, and Cerberus, can persuade more Americans to buy more guns.
= new reply since forum marked as read
