The acquisition of so much of the firearms industry by Cerberus is a potentially good news/bad news story for those of us concerned about the firearms industry and 2ndA rights.
Good news:
The guy who started/runs Cerberus, Steve Feinberg, is an avid hunter and is purportedly something of a gun nut himself.
His management philosophy is (in general) not to screw with what works. If a company is profitable or shows strong potential (which is why he buys them), he basically leaves them alone as long as they continue to make money. He has a strong record of NOT replacing management and even requiring that management stay in place for a period as a condition of the sale.
In general he doesn't buy what needs fixing, he buys what's already working.
Bad news:
He's not a wizard, he's made some bad calls, and the bottom line is profit for his investors. He bought a significant percentage of Chrysler, gave up equity with the bailout, but retained Chrysler Financial, declared that Chrysler Financial would be bankrupt by the end of 2011, blah blah blah. End result Cerberus may have lost ~7% of it's assets under management.
Not a good thing at all, though some pretty adroit moves were made to mitigate the losses.
Being a private equity investment firm, no one knows just how much Mr Feinberg owns, but in a publicly traded corporation that might be enough to get him removed as CEO.
My take on it is to wait and see. It's likely that Steve Fienburg owns at least a controlling, if not a majority interest in Cerberus and there will likely be increased profitability in the firearms industry as a result of his purchases, which will be good news for you and me.
On the other hand, one owner having control of so much of the industry is a little scary. If any one of a number of things went wrong, particularly now in the new age of government intervention, the industry as a whole could take a big hit.
