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NEW HAVEN, Conn. — U.S. Repeating Arms Co. Inc. said Tuesday that it will close its Winchester firearms factory, threatening the future of a rifle that was once called "the Gun that Won the West."

"It's part of who we are as a nation, just like it's part of who we are as a city," Mayor John DeStefano said.

The announcement touched off a lobbying effort by city officials and union leaders who hoped to find a buyer for the plant before it closes on March 31. If no buyer comes forward, it could spell the end for nearly all commercially produced Winchesters, said Everett Corey, a representative of the International Association of Machinists District 26.

"Winchester would be pretty much defunct," he said. "They're not going to produce them, other than a couple custom-type models."

The company has been plagued by slumping firearms sales. More than 19,000 people worked there during World War II, but the plant employs fewer than 200 now.

The Winchester model 1873 lever-action rifle was popular among American frontiersmen at the end of the 19th century because of its reliability. John Wayne made the Winchester rifle a signature of his movies, and Chuck Connors posed menacingly with his Winchester on the poster for the television series "The Rifleman."

"Marlin made lever-action rifles, but nobody ever had a Marlin in films or TV series. They were always Winchesters," said Ned Schwing, a firearms historian.

Perhaps the company's greatest unofficial spokesman was President Teddy Roosevelt, who used the 1895 model on his famous 1909 African safari, which historians credited with boosting the sales of Winchester sporting rifles.

Since the plant opened in 1866, tens of millions of Winchester rifles have been produced, the bulk of which came between the late 1800s and the end of World War II, said firearms historian R.L. Wilson. More than 6 million copies of the Winchester Model 94, the company's most popular rifle, have been produced.