Winchester rifles venerable plant will close

[locksly]

After 140 years of manufacturing iconic Winchester rifles in New Haven, Conn., the Belgian company that owns U.S. Repeating Arms and the Winchester brand, has announced that the venerable plant will close, and the classic Winchester lever-action models - credited with "winning the West" - will be discontinued.

The end-of-an-era closure has been blamed by The Herstal Group (FN Herstal), which purchased Winchester in 1981, on lagging sales and killer competition from cheaper foreign products. Yet, NewsMax has learned that the Winchester operation may have been tripped up by federal red tape that hampered its overseas sales.

An industry source told NewsMax, "Yes, there is a subtext to the whole sorry chapter - there was an export problem."

The source went on to explain how in the sporting arms business, there is a narrow profit margin, "and the ability to export is vital, but this has become harder and harder to do because of the Defense Trade Control directorate at the Department of State."

With overseas gun purchases accounting for a solid 10 to 12 percent of sales, there's not a lot of wriggle room, the source explained. But with delays and red tape, it may take months to procure an export license for a shipment of sporting rifles through State.

A distributor in Canada, for instance, might not be able to satisfy customers with that sort of delay in getting an order through from Winchester.

The federal law behind the rigorous export licensing procedure is The Arms Export Control Act (AECA) of 1976. In the regulations that have been promulgated under the law are the devilish details of how guns for export must be stipulated to the feds.

What's worse, noted the source, in 2001 - after 9/11 - there was an amendment to the AECA, sponsored by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., that further required that Congress also get formal notice of all arms exports in excess of $1 million.

No one in the industry disagrees that arms sales must be monitored to ensure that weapons are not being sold to terrorists, said the source, but what is hoped for is "better Congressional oversight," and a streamlining of procedures that would stem the loss of export revenues.

"Raising the million dollar threshold is another possible alternative," declared the source.

In any event, FN Herstal may have had to pull the plug on Winchester operations in the U.S., but business in general is booming. Herstal cranks out about 70 percent of the U.S. military's small arms -- including the ubiquitous M-16 semi-automatic rifle, as well as medium and heavy machine guns.

Curiously, in the 1960s when a successor to the M-14 rifle was being sought, Winchester offered a new weapon that lost out in the competition to Colt, which had served up the M-16, a lighter weapon with smaller rounds and a high muzzle velocity.

Years later, FN Herstal bought out the rights to the M-16 and has been manufacturing them ever since - in the U.S., employing U.S. workers.