June 09, 2011
Picking up where we left off with the Insider’s trip to Hartford, Conn., to visit Colt, we come to the storied company’s most distinguishing product. It’s not the legendary Single Action Army nor the venerable Government Model—those are so last century. It’s the M4A1, the U.S. military’s official issue-rifle.
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June 07, 2011
Little did I suspect this past February that the Insider had momentarily become some sort of unknowing psychic—more accuratey an idiot savant in my case. I was hunting in the Central African Republic with my favorite rifle, a .375 H&H Magnum custom built on a Winchester Model 70 by noted gunsmith Sterling Davenport, and also shooting a handload featuring my nominee for the single-best, all-around, big-game bullet—Swift A-Frame. I had no clue that I held in my hands two entities that soon would merge in a business deal.
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June 02, 2011
Wall Street executives are scrutinized for their compensation packages, stock option plans and other bonuses. Personally, the Insider doesn’t have a problem with a free market exchange of services for compensation, especially when the paychecks are approved by a board of directors representing share holders.
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May 31, 2011
Colt’s landmark factory in Hartford, referred to as the Colt Armory, was called “the greatest individual enterprise ever attempted in this country” when it opened in 1855. Heated by steam and lit by gas lamps, the factory was topped by a sapphire blue-onion dome in the style of the Byzantine churches Sam Colt had seen in Russia. Atop the dome pranced a gold-plated rampant Colt holding a broken spear, Colt’s distinctive trademark that continues to this day.
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May 25, 2011
It’s been at least 15 years since I last visited the Colt factory, but it might as well have been a lifetime. Three (or is it four?) presidents came in and out in the interim before a stellar Marine grabbed the reins of Colt and put his spurs into the faltering stallion.
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May 19, 2011
The Holy Grail of tactical-grade M4 rifles (including the military’s M4) is a chalice of electrons, a way to power any and all accessories from a single battery source—wirelessly. Wilcox Industries, a New Hampshire-based producer of a wide range of military and commercial products, has finally found the sacred cup and solved this age-old problem.
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May 16, 2011
The U.S. military is soon to field a new projectile in its standard issue 5.56 mm NATO cartridge. There are two purposes to the new projectile: increased performance and less toxicity in the environment (i.e., lead-free).
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May 02, 2011
Could it be the sleeping giant is stirring? Colt is sporting a prominent sign in its nicely appointed booth here at the NRA Annual Meeting in a vast exhibit hall. The sign says: “If it’s not a Colt, it’s a copy.”
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April 22, 2011
With the announcement that Sturm, Ruger & Co. will be introducing an M1911 pistol at the upcoming NRA Annual Meetings in Pittsburgh, the American handgun industry is fully homogenized.
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April 19, 2011
Normal is a setting on a clothes drier. The Insider has never been accused of being “normal” and I hope you haven’t either. How boring. How bland.
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