The downturn for Colt seems to have started after the company, which had relied on sales to the government, lost a multimillion dollar bid for to arm the military.

Following a drawn-out and contentious bidding war, Colt lost its contract to provide the Pentagon with M4 rifles in 2013. The $77 million contract went instead to a Belgian company, F.N. Herstal.

A source familiar with Colt’s financial situation characterized the 2013 loss of the contract to provide the military with M4s as “tough to quantify” but called it, “definitely the main contributing factor to the business being where it is.”

Problems had plagued Colt’s version of the M4 for years before it lost the bid.

Among soldiers who relied on it, the rifle was often criticized as being unreliable—good in sterile conditions but prone to malfunctioning once it got dirty, as it often did in Iraq and Afghanistan.