Thread: Firearms manufacturers flee Northeast for states that love guns and hate taxes

Firearms manufacturers flee Northeast for states that love guns and hate taxes

Zachary Halaschak 3 hrs ago

The announced departure this past week of Remington, the country’s oldest gun manufacturer, from a blue state to a red state is just one of several instances of firearm companies relocating to friendlier jurisdictions in recent years.



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Remington, founded more than 200 years ago, will soon be headquartered in LaGrange, Georgia, hundreds of miles away from its current base of operations in New York, where the business was founded. The move is evidence of a shift in the gun industry in which companies are moving to new states — typically Republican-led states with lower taxes and more politically accommodating environments for gunmakers.

“It has been a trend, and it’s been continuing over time,” said Mark Oliva, director of public affairs at National Shooting Sports Foundation. The NSSF is a trade group for the $63 billion industry of firearms manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
Oliva provided the Washington Examiner with a list that shows that companies have been relocating or expanding operations in red states for at least a decade, although the biggest two, Remington and Smith & Wesson, happened this year.

REMINGTON RELOCATES TO GEORGIA, LATEST GUNMAKER TO FLEE TO SOUTH

Smith & Wesson, founded in 1856, announced in September that after more than a century, it will move its headquarters from Springfield, Massachusetts, to Maryville, Tennessee. CEO Mark Smith said at the time that certain gun policies under consideration in Massachusetts would hamper the company’s ability to manufacture guns.
Last year, gunmaker Kimber Manufacturing also announced that it will move its corporate headquarters from New York to Alabama, Olin relocated its Winchester Centerfire Operations from Illinois to Mississippi, and Stag Arms moved from Connecticut to Wyoming, among several other company moves.
In addition to gun laws, other regulations have played a role in companies relocating. Several businesses, not just in the gunmaking space, have moved from states like New York and California since the pandemic began because of burdensome restrictions.
“I think you see that there are states that are certainly hungry to bring in gun companies,” Oliva said. “They’re moving to places where it’s going to be easier to do business and their business is going to be appreciated by the local governments.”
While some gun companies are leaving blue states as a reaction to policy, other states are actively courting their business. For example, a committee in the Oklahoma Legislature held a hearing last month to discuss ways to lure more gun business to the Sooner State.
“Several of the surrounding states, Texas and Arkansas specifically, have made a lot of moves in the last 10 years or so to attract those types of businesses, and it’s been a boom for their economy,” said GOP state Rep. Kevin West, according to KWTV. “These are good-paying jobs, stuff that Oklahomans can just move right into.”
Kevin Elder is the communications manager at Dark Storm Industries, a retailer of firearms, ammunition, parts, and accessories that announced its plans to move to Titusville, Florida, earlier this year. He told the Washington Examiner that it made sense for his company to move to Florida for a variety of reasons, both for business reasons and the fact that the political climate for gun manufacturers is better in the Sunshine State than in New York.
“We had a lot of stuff in New York that we’re having a hard time even just getting credit card processors and insurers and everything else,” he said. “Everything is through the roof. Because we’re guns, people don’t want to take us on. … Our premiums are absolutely crazy.”
Florida was a draw for Dark Storm Industries because of good tax incentives, its manufacturing-friendly environment, and the fact that there are a lot of other gun manufacturers already in that area of the country.
Elder said there has been a noticeable shift for gun manufacturers over the past few years away from blue states and into red states.
“This is a multimillion business, and you don’t want to leave it up to which way the wind blows or the political climate becomes in your state,” he said.

SMITH & WESSON LEAVES NORTHEAST AFTER 150 YEARS FOR TENNESSEE

While the wave of relocations might be disappointing for the communities from which the gun manufacturers are departing, their new cities are largely welcoming them with open arms.
Jim Thornton, the mayor of LaGrange, where Remington is moving, told the Washington Examiner that his city has been a manufacturing community for many years, a factor that might have driven Remington’s interest in the locality. He said that while the manufacturing base started out largely in the textile industry, they are enthusiastic for the opportunity to welcome gun manufacturing.
“Over the years, we have been trying to diversify that manufacturing base, but we are still a manufacturing city,” he said. “We’re a city of 31,000 people, but our daytime population doubles to over 60,000 because so many people drive into the city for manufacturing jobs.”
Thornton, a lifelong resident of LaGrange and a three-term mayor, said the appeal of Georgia, and LaGrange in particular, is a welcoming environment for business. He said a lot of people in the community have deep experience in manufacturing because it’s what they’ve done their whole life, a factor that was likely an added draw for Remington.
“In addition, Georgia is a much friendlier place for a gun manufacturer to locate than New York is," Thornton said. "So we recognize that that’s part of it.”
As various blue states look to expand their gun laws, and given labor shortages that are driving up costs for companies, the trend of firearm businesses moving to new states will likely continue. The cost of manufacturing could be less in some Republican-led states than in blue states as well, said Joel Griffith, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Griffith told the Washington Examiner that factors like energy costs at factories being cheaper in some red states than blue states could make a difference of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually. He said there has been “a flow of people and capital and tax dollars” in recent years that has only accelerated since the start of the pandemic.
Relocating can be a symbiotic relationship for a major company like Remington and a city like LaGrange — one that Thornton said his city is looking forward to.
“At the end of the day, Remington made a business decision that they felt like their future for their business was probably best served by relocating,” he said.

Firearms manufacturers flee Northeast for states that love guns and hate taxes (msn.com)

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