Gun maker SCCY Industries (pronounced “sky”) of Daytona, Florida, has reportedly shut down amid growing financial and legal troubles. The company was known for producing small $200 pistols that are easy to conceal — and that frequently showed up at crime scenes.
According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), SCCY Industries manufactured 987,075 pistols between 2017 and 2023,1ATF, Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Reports (AFMERs), 2017-2023. compared to the millions made by larger companies like Glock, Smith & Wesson, and Ruger. But police also recovered a disproportionate number of SCCY 9mm pistols — 51,096 — from crime scenes during those years.2See ATF, National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA), Vol. II, “Part III: Crime Guns Recovered and Traced Within the United States and Its Territories,” March 27, 2024, 21, https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/report/nfcta-volume-ii-part-iii-crime-guns-recovered-and-traced-us/download; and ATF, NFCTA, Vol. IV, “Part III: Crime Gun Tracing Updates and New Analysis,” January 8, 2025, 22, https://www.atf.gov/firearms/docs/report/nfcta-volume-iv-part-iii-%E2%80%93-crime-gun-tracing-updates-and-new-analysis/download.
The company was also known for having a novel warranty policy in which it would replace customers’ lost or stolen pistols. But in March 2016, SCCY told customers it was changing the policy after being notified by the ATF that its “theft warranty” led to an “unusual amount” of SCCY pistols “being used in criminal activity” shortly after being purchased. In its letter to customers, SCCY blamed its decision on “a few bad apples” who “spoiled it for honest citizens.”
SCCY’s FINANCIAL WOES
Although SCCY has not made an official statement regarding its closure, a “pending levy and seizure” notice was posted on the door to its headquarters on April 11, 2025. The SCCY website is still functional, but its social media accounts have been deleted.
According to the notice, Volusia County seized SCCY’s assets to cover nearly $250,000 in unpaid property and state taxes. Since the notice was posted, all of the company’s manufacturing and office equipment has been listed on an auction website for a two-day sale scheduled for late June.
County tax officials reportedly posted the notice after SCCY stopped communicating with their office regarding an “active payment plan” and could no longer be reached. They last heard from SCCY in January 2025, when the company made its last tax payment. Additionally, a search of Florida’s court records revealed that SCCY resolved cases with four different creditors in the past year.
After it was reported that SCCY had laid off several employees and suspended operations indefinitely in August 2024, the company’s owner, Joe Roebuck, said that SCCY had “strategically downsized” to “address the current challenging economic environment.”
Two years earlier, in November 2022, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) filed a lien against SCCY for unpaid excise taxes, which the government collects on all firearms and ammunition entering commerce and uses to fund hunting, wildlife, and conservation programs. According to the still-active notice, SCCY owes $490,778.
SCCY is also one of the many gun makers that received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans at the onset of the pandemic, despite record-breaking gun sales across the industry at the time.
NEW YORK LAWSUITS
In 2022, the Cities of Rochester and Buffalo, New York, filed lawsuits against SCCY and several other gun companies alleging that their business practices contributed to gun violence in their respective cities, with “marketing that emphasizes firearm characteristics such as their high capacity and ease of concealment, which appeals to prospective purchasers with criminal intent,” and by “purposely supplying more firearms than the legitimate market can bear in order to induce sales in the secondary market…not training dealers to avoid straw sales and other illegal transactions,” and “refusing to terminate contracts with distributors who sell to dealers with disproportionately high volumes of guns traced to crime scenes.”
On May 2, 2025, SCCY settled a lawsuit filed by its insurance provider, which argued that its policy did not cover Rochester and Buffalo’s lawsuits against SCCY. Details of the settlement have not been made public.
more legal battles
At least five of the 21 cases found in Florida court records involve SCCY suing former employees — often executives — for alleged misconduct. Many of the cases were later dismissed or settled without resolution.
In October 2023, SCCY accused its former vice president of finance of taking financial records, “including information pertaining to SCCY’s sales, revenues, profits, and refinancing,” and sharing them on LinkedIn after he was terminated. SCCY voluntarily dismissed the case a year later.
In February 2021, SCCY sued its former chief operating officer, alleging that he had defrauded the company by lying about his ability to perform his duties and falsifying reimbursement receipts. SCCY asked for more than $500,000 in damages. In response, the former executive filed a counterclaim alleging breach of contract. However, both parties agreed to dismiss their cases in April 2025.
In September 2019, SCCY sued another former COO, accusing him of using proprietary information for personal gain and misrepresenting his marketing experience. The lawsuit argued that he pulled ad dollars away from print magazines and focused them on social media and internet marketing, a decision the company said resulted in annual sales dropping 61 percent, from $15.8 million to $6.2 million.
Additionally, SCCY argued that the former COO hurt the company’s reputation by providing a SCCY CPX-3 pistol to Recoil magazine in 2019 for a “stress test” — or testing the firearm until it failed — and the result was an unflattering review. Yet SCCY voluntarily dismissed the case in December 2023.
While Recoil later said that SCCY had fixed the CPX-3’s flaws, the National Rifle Association called the same model “an exceptionally well balanced defensive pistol” in 2017 and has recommended other SCCY pistols. As discussed here, NRA publications provide positive gun reviews but rarely, if ever, disclose their financial ties to advertisers.