The Column, No. 16:

The Rebirth of Winchester?

Much ado and ballyhoo has been made of the so-called demise of Winchester, with this year’s closing of the unprofitable New Haven, Connecticut plant in March, 2006. Things are rarely what they seem to be. It certainly makes little sense to scream over the loss of the comparatively paltry 186 union jobs that remained; has no one heard of General Motors?

Various news organizations have reported the end of the "Gun That Won the West." The Winchester Model 1894 was introduced after the west was won, and played no role. Apparently, the public has very little knowledge of what Winchester is, and what it has been. The original Winchester, founded by Oliver Winchester, disappeared in 1918 due to financial troubles.

After various reorganizations, 1931 brought the end when Western Cartridge Company bought what was left of the parent company, Mercantile Securities Company. It was also 1931 when the parent of Western Cartridge, Olin Corp., established the Winchester Arms Company of Maryland.

The Olin-piloted Winchester seemed to hold its own until the year many claimed Winchester really died, 1964. Winchester has been on shaky ground ever since. Sales dropped so severely after 1976 that by 1979 Olin had enjoyed all it could stand. There was a labor strike in 1979 that was the last straw for Olin, and no company owning the Winchester name has made a firearm since.

U.S. Repeating Arms Company was formed in 1981, acting as licensee of the Winchester logo from Olin. They did poorly, changing ownership in 1987. The new ownership apparently made little progress, and by 1990 it was "Browning" (the Herstal Group of Belgium) that kept Winchester from fading into oblivion, becoming the sole owners of USRAC.

There is no small sense of irony here, as it was the pig-headedness of Winchester itself that sent the great John Moses Browning steaming off to Belgium back in 1902. Now, in a huge twist of fate, the company that bears the name of the world’s greatest firearms designer, Browning, had picked up the remnants of what was once Winchester.

Back in the day, Winchester had made a nice chunk of change from John Browning. It was John Browning who invented the Winchester Model 1894 lever action rifle in the first place, along with the 1885 High Wall, 1886 rifle, 1895 "Big Medicine," and the Winchester 1897 pump shotgun. While the original Winchester faded in 1918, the converse was true for John Browning. He invented the Colt 1911, M1919 machine gun (that replaced Browning’s own Colt 1895 machine gun), Browning Automatic Rifle, Automatic-Five shotgun, Hi-Power pistol, and the Superposed O/U shotgun, among the over 100 guns that he designed.

The demise of Winchester is hardly that. The fact of the matter is that a Belgium company, one of the world’s greatest firearms manufacturers, merely closed its most unprofitable plant, after trying for a decade to turn them into a profit center and losing a small fortune in the process. The shooting public has voted loudly for this with their dollars over the last decade. They have voted to cease production of the Model 94, 9422 rimfire, Model 1300 pump, and even the Model 70 rifle. We have all voted the New Haven plant out of existence, because we have not purchased the specific models they have produced.

The city of New Haven itself has been clearly anti-gun, with the Second Amendment Foundation funding successful litigation against it. A city that has no respect for Second Amendment rights loses a gun plant; it seems absolutely proper as far as I’m concerned.

Olin has made a few comedic remarks about the situation, considering they dumped the New Haven plant themselves long ago, and license the "Winchester" logo they own to a variety of dubious companies, including the Spanish-owned parent company of CVA. Olin’s own commitment to the American firearms industry does not bear close scrutiny.

Actually, the Winchester name hasn’t had better prospects in firearms in decades, so long as it stays in the hands of Browning-FN-Herstal Group. The 2006 Winchester line-up is more exciting than it has been in years. It includes the Super X2 shotgun, 1885 single shot rifle, 1895 lever action rifle, Belgium made Select Over/Under, new Super-X semi-auto rifle, Super-X 3 shotgun, the .22 Wildcat bolt-action rimfire, and even a reintroduction of the Japanese Winchester 101 shotgun. Perhaps one day we will wonder what all the fuss was about?