Just before Thanksgiving, the families of nine victims and one survivor of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting came closer to something like justice than they had in the nearly five years since 20 children and six educators were murdered at the Connecticut school. They had their day before the state’s Supreme Court, which agreed to consider their contention that the maker of the AR-15 rifle used in the tragedy could be held liable for the killings.

Whatever the justices decide, the market is already rendering its verdict. Remington Outdoor, which produced the Bushmaster used by the Sandy Hook killer, looks to be hurtling toward bankruptcy. It may have company: Though the firearms trade has never had a better friend in the White House than President Trump, the industry is in dismal shape. With bumper sales having already met years of future demand, inventories and capacity are unsustainably high.

The years since the Sandy Hook massacre, most of which coincided with Barack Obama’s second term as president, will go down as a golden era for the American consumer-arms complex. A series of mass shootings generated calls for enhanced federal gun-safety regulations. None materialized. What it did produce was an unprecedented stockpiling of weapons, bolstering sales for firms like Remington and expanding the budget of the National Rifle Association.

Consider some of the cumulative figures since the Newtown tragedy, whose five-year anniversary is Thursday. Start with data from the F.B.I.’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, generally considered the best proxy for gun sales. There have been 118 million of these since December 2012, suggesting that more than a third of all firearms in the United States have been purchased in just the past half decade.