Officials at Marlin and the company's owner, Madison, N.C.-based Remington Arms Co. Inc., didn't immediately return phone messages Friday morning. Remington Arms bought Marlin for nearly $42 million in 2007.
Marlin's Web site says John Marlin opened the company in 1870 in New Haven after having worked at the Colt plant in Hartford during the Civil War. The company says its lever action 22 repeater was a favorite gun of Annie Oakley.