WINDHAM – Bushmaster Firearms, which once called Windham home and employed dozens of local residents, is back up for sale as the hedge fund that purchased the brand in 2006, Cerberus Capital Management, aims to exit the gun-manufacturing business.

(For more on Bushmaster’s history in Windham, as well as the shooting in Newtown, Conn., see the attached articles.)

Cerberus announced its intentions in a press release issued Tuesday, four days after the Connecticut school massacre in which police say 20-year-old Adam Lanza used three guns – including a Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifle – to kill 20 children, six adults and himself at the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Cerberus, a multi-billion-dollar hedge fund investment group named after the mythical three-headed beast that guards the gates of Hades, announced it would sell Freedom Group, which comprises Bushmaster, Remington, Marlin and other arms and ammunition makers.

“It is apparent that the Sandy Hook tragedy was a watershed event that has raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level,” the company issued in its release.

While Cerberus officials said they are “investors, not statesmen or policy makers,” the company, despite its claims to the contrary, seemed to be sending a political message by divesting itself of weapon manufacturers.

“It is not our role to take positions, or attempt to shape or influence the gun control policy debate. That is the job of our federal and state legislators,” the company said in its release. “There are, however, actions that we as a firm can take … We will retain a financial advisor to design and execute a process to sell our interests in Freedom Group, and we will then return that capital to our investors. We believe that this decision allows us to meet our obligations to the investors whose interests we are entrusted to protect without being drawn into the national debate that is more properly pursued by those with the formal charter and public responsibility to do so.”

Former Bushmaster owner Dick Dyke, who lives in Naples, sold Bushmaster to Cerberus in 2006. Dyke acquired it in 1976 and grew the brand into an industry leader providing rifles for military, law enforcement and civilian use. In the process, the town of Windham became synonymous with the Bushmaster brand. Once Freedom Group pulled up its Windham stakes in 2010 and moved manufacturing to New York, laying off its Windham employees in the process, Dyke reemerged in 2011 by rehiring many former Bushmaster employees and founding a new company, Windham Weaponry, with his son Jeff Dyke.

When asked about Cerberus’ divestiture, Dyke said Wednesday that he would have no interest buying Bushmaster adding, “We started Windham Weaponry to put Maine people back to work who had been laid off.”

Dyke refrained from further comment on the developing situation regarding gun control citing, “families everywhere are trying to make sense of this senseless killing.” A Windham Weaponry press release issued Monday echoed the same sentiment:

“All of Windham Weaponry’s owners and employees are sickened and shocked by the senseless tragedy at Newtown, Connecticut. Many of us have small children and find it impossible to make sense of such a horrific act by a very sick individual,” the statement read. “Our hearts are also broken for the victims and their grieving families. We sincerely hope that our country can come together to find solutions to the very complex issues of preventing these very disturbed and unstable people from ever getting to the point where they act out in this way.”