Via reader David, Ruger is laying off employees.

Newport — Sturm, Ruger & Co. is in the process of laying off about 50 workers, or about 2.7 percent, of the company’s workforce, a top executive for the gunmaker said on Friday.

Ruger Vice President and General Counsel Kevin Reid Sr. said the layoffs are happening companywide, and he isn’t sure how many of the roughly 1,300 workers at the Newport location would be affected.

“It was for the needs of the business and tied to employee performance,” Reid said of the layoffs. “At Ruger, we routinely adjust our workforce.”

Reid, who is based in Ruger headquarters in Southport, Conn., said the company focused most of the layoffs on “indirect labor positions” such as marketing, sales and engineering, and not on employees directly involved in production.

Ruger employs between 1,800 and 1,900 people around the country.

He declined to comment on the timeline for the layoffs.

Ruger has three manufacturing locations: in Newport; Prescott, Ariz.; and Mayodan, N.C.

It also has a precision metals branch in Earth City, Mo., according to Ruger’s website.

Reid shied away from commenting on whether a third-quarter sales decrease impacted the layoffs, but noted that the company has “been in a fluctuating market, which I don’t think is lost on anybody.”

Well this isn’t a good report.  The gun market is soft right now for obvious reasons and so the work force is a little bloated compared to the purchase frenzy prior to the election.  But if anyone thinks that the softer market will continue they’re badly mistaken.

Let’s say it another way.  If you believe that the election of a pro-gun president is anything but a brief respite, you’re dense.  We need to remember that half of the country voted for gun controllers, and the other half is comprised of a lot of people who don’t care about our rights.

Florida will become a reliable blue state because of immigration from Puerto Rico, and Texas will be in play within a decade due to immigration South of the border.  Alabama just elected a democrat Senator, and Soros and Bloomberg are still dumping money into their candidates.  Except for a few outliers such as Texas open carry, gun rights hasn’t had a victory in a very long time (and no, Heller wasn’t a victory, and Texas open carry is still permitted carry).

This is going to turn around for firearms manufacturers within the next year or two, perhaps right after the 2018 elections, perhaps not, but certainly the year before the next presidential election.  Firearms manufacturers must do what they need to survive until then, but layoffs in marketing, sales, HR and support is one thing.  Layoffs in engineering is quite another.

Layoffs in engineering means that development slows down and competition gets harder to match.  It means that plant problems don’t get addressed as expeditiously as they otherwise might, and it means that just a single unaddressed problem like the Walker Fire Control that almost ruined Remington may end up ruining the next company that doesn’t have the resources to study problems and design remediation.

I think this is all around a very bad idea, and layoffs need to happen elsewhere, or otherwise all employees should take no raise (or even pay cuts) in order to ensure the health of the company.