Last week, I intimated (OK, I hinted) that several gun companies were talking about changes that ranged from outright acquisitions to new funding. We'd hoped to have details to report during SHOT Show. Those deals couldn't be confirmed because everyone seemed to busy doing business to talk about their businesses.

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But the deals were progressing. Now, the first of those deals, involving Savage Sports Corporation (Savage Arms, Savage Range Systems and BowTech Archery) has been announced. Norwest Equity Partners has announced a "significant investment" in Savage.

The deal closed on January 24, and the investment, according to Norwest's Erik Torgerson, "will help advance market expansion and the continued development of an innovative, diversified products platform." Torgerson says there are significant opportunities for consolidation through "add-on acquisitions."

My interpretation: we have money and there are companies out there that would be good fits, so we may go shopping.

Norwest's Torgerson and Tim DeVries have both joined the Savage board of directors, and longtime Savage CEO Ron Coburn will be staying. Coburn says the new investment means "exploring new business opportunities". The Westfield, Massachusetts based company has more than 600 employees at facilities in Westfield, Lakefield, Ontario, and Eugene, Oregon.

The mergers, acquisitions and investments far from over. The industry's going to see some significant consolidation over the next few weeks.

Not everyone is crowing about big deals.

Aliant Techsystems (ATK) has lost its appeal over a 10-year $850-million ammunition contract awarded to a British company. Last May, ATK lost the contract for the Army's government-owned, 6,900 acre Radford, Virginia ammunition plant to BAE Systems Plc. Radford is the only United States plant that actually makes a key material used in explosives.

The worst might not yet have happened for ATK. With BAE running Radford, investment analysts say they're concerned that ATK might lose the even-larger Army contract to manage Lake City, Missouri's ammunition manufacturing facility when that contract comes up for review in 2013.

Radford was good for about five percent of ATK's sales ($250 million), but losing the Lake City contract would be an even harder hit.

ATK's stock dropped sixty-eight cents per share (1.10%) on news of the failure to win the appeal.

Last week, Cabela's quietly informed its affiliate partners that changes in the Google Advertising Network (GAN) would have a real impact on both Cabela's and the affiliates. Seems Google is "implementing and aligning their search policies within their affiliate network".

The net/net on that "alignment" is the carrying over of Google's editorial ban on advertising of weapons or related items to their advertising policies. So....no commissions collected or paid for any products that fall into those categories. As Cabela's said in their note "this will have a significant impact on Cabela's and its affiliate partners who promote and sell these products."

As my source explained, "Google's affiliate network isn't the only one out there, but for the small business owner, it is one of the easier ones to get involved with and is very easy to use. Now Google isn't going to allow commissions on firearms and firearms-related sales. This is a big blow to small business owners such as myself."

With the proliferation of all sorts of internet commerce, it's only reasonable that businesses in the firearms space would want to participate.

Unfortunately, with major facilitators like Google and PayPal both refusing any firearms-related transactions, it's considerably more difficult than it should be.

Despite the fact the shooting industry remains one of the bright spots in our still-faltering economy, some companies simply will not do business with companies selling products related to firearms. After all, guns do cause violence, right?

It is business discrimination in its purest form, but the discrimination is aimed at guns and gun owners, making it "politically correct" - and that makes it acceptable.

We might not like what we're reporting, but we'll keep you posted.

--Jim Shepherd