Resurrected, Then Sold Out
Ruger bought Marlin out of bankruptcy for $28.3 million and relaunched it with this stainless .45-70 flagship — five years on, the big retailers still can't keep one on the shelf.
The strangest empty slot in the American gun case right now belongs to a lever gun. Not a new design, not a limited edition, not a celebrity collaboration — a stainless lever-action rifle whose name dates to 1895, chambered for a cartridge from 1873. It is the Marlin Model 1895 SBL, and on November 3, 2026, this desk went looking for one at the big counters. KYGunCo: out of stock. Bud's Gun Shop: out of stock at all three of its stores. Guns.com, for a new one: out of stock.
Marlin's own product page still carries the wording it launched with — “Now Shipping with Limited Availability” — along with a remarkable piece of maker honesty: the company advises shoppers not to leave deposits with retailers who do not have confirmed shipments. And the trade is saying the quiet part in print. SHOT Business, the industry's dealer magazine, published its November/December 2026 “What's Selling Where” survey on October 29: a large Illinois retailer names Marlin 1895 SBLs among the guns in high demand, a Pennsylvania outfitter reports that “getting consistent inventory from Ruger and Marlin has been challenging” while the new rifles sell well, and an Alaska shop lists Marlin .45-70s among its high-demand rifles, in any format, new or used. Five years after this rifle came back from the dead, the shelf still cannot hold it.
Dead once already
To understand the empty slot, you have to understand that Marlin died. The company John Marlin founded in 1870 passed to Remington in 2007, and when Remington went through its second bankruptcy in 2020, Marlin was sold off with the furniture. Ruger — a competitor — bought the entire brand for $28.3 million, trucked the machinery to its Mayodan, North Carolina plant, and rebuilt the line inside a single manufacturing cell: 105 by 180 feet, 53 steps from raw steel to rifle, holding CNC tolerances of two thousandths of an inch on a design drawn in the age of the steam locomotive.
The first fruit of that cell, in December 2021, was this rifle — the 1895 SBL, chosen as the relaunch flagship. Ruger's CEO Chris Killoy had warned ahead of time that, based on the overwhelming demand, the first guns would be fewer than the market wants. He was right in a way that stopped being funny quickly: Outdoor Life counted about a thousand rifles in the first shipment, Guns.com's reviewers reported guns selling for as much as a grand over retail, and the suggested price has since climbed from $1,399 to $1,479 — a raise the market absorbed without blinking, because the market was mostly reading about the rifle rather than buying one. There were none to buy.
The machine
SBL decodes as Stainless Big Loop, and both halves show. The receiver, lever and trigger-guard plate are machined from 416 stainless forgings; the 19.1-inch barrel is cold hammer-forged 410 stainless, threaded at the muzzle for a brake or a suppressor — an 1873 cartridge in a rifle that arrives suppressor-ready. Six rounds ride in the tube under the barrel, a seventh in the chamber. On top sits a full-length rail over an adjustable ghost-ring rear sight, with a tritium-and-fiber-optic front post that works at noon and at dusk.
The details are where the resurrection shows its care. The bolt is nickel-plated and spiral-fluted, a flourish that also slicks the stroke. The oversized lever loop swallows a gloved hand whole — this is a cold-country rifle, built for the Alaska and northern-tier buyers who keep asking their dealers for .45-70s. The furniture is gray laminate, slimmed at the forend, checkered in the old diamond pattern, and indifferent to weather in a way walnut never learned to be. Seven point three pounds, thirty-seven and a quarter inches long: a guide gun in the original sense — the rifle a professional carries so that other people come home.
The tells
Ruger, to its credit, did not stamp its own name across the gun. A Ruger-made Marlin announces itself in whispers. The serial numbers begin with a new RM prefix. The proof mark on the barrel reads RP where pre-bankruptcy guns wore the revered JM. The barrel is stamped Mayodan, NC. And at the base of the grip, where a grip cap used to sit, a laser engraves Marlin's horse-and-rider — an image John Marlin asked the artist Frederic Remington for, first printed on the cover of Marlin's 1900 catalog. A Remington hangs on every new Marlin grip: the painter, that is. Not the arms company that used to own the place.
None of it is hidden, exactly. It is simply sized for owners — the people who will live with the rifle long enough to learn its small print. Which, given the state of the shelf, remains a smaller club than the waiting list outside it.
The honest footnote
Fairness, as always on this desk, requires the footnote. The scarcity is this model's, not the whole family's: on the same day KYGunCo showed the SBL out of stock, it had the shorter 1895 Trapper and the blacked-out 1894 Dark on the shelf, ready to ship. A lever-gun buyer willing to compromise can buy a fine Marlin today. It is specifically the flagship — the stainless, railed, big-loop gun from the movie — that the supply cannot catch.
And note what kind of shortage this is. KYGunCo lists the SBL at $1,223.99, comfortably under the $1,479 suggested retail — this is not a price being bid up by a greedy shelf. It is a small, careful production line, building a design from 1895 to two-thousandths of an inch, being outrun by the oldest forces in the business: a famous name, a famous movie, and word of mouth. Ruger is not flooding the channel to cash in, and five years on, that restraint is itself the story. The rifle sells out at a discount. Think about that.
Why it endures
Every era gets the lever gun it deserves. This one is stainless because the weather is real, railed because optics won, threaded because suppressors went mainstream, and chambered in .45-70 because some problems are still best solved the way they were solved in 1873. It is a dinosaur gun — literally, thanks to a film career — built by a company that bought a rival back from the grave and then refused to rush the resurrection.
So the slot stays empty, and the deposits the maker begged people not to leave keep being offered anyway. Some guns fly off the shelf because they are new. This one flies off because it came back — and because everyone who missed the first shipment, in 2021, has been standing in line, patiently, ever since.
