Remington Firearms relocates to Georgia!
America's oldest gunmaker, recently re-established following its bankruptcy and breakup in 2020, announced plans to relocate their headquarters and a new advanced manufacturing facility and state-of-the-art research and development facility to LaGrange (Georgia)
The American gun industry keeps walking away from north-eastern States: after Smith & Wesson's announcement of their relocation plan to Tennessee, and after the American subsidiaries of major European gunmakers leaving their historical headquarters on the eastern seaboard in the past years, now it's tome for Remington, America's oldest gunmaker, to pack up and move down south.
In a press release dated November 8th, 2021, the Company – freshly re-established as "RemArms" following the 2020 bankruptcy and subsequent breakup of the Remington Outdoor Group – officially announced that the next five years will see a relocation of their global headquarters from its historical seat of Ilion (New York), where it has been since 1816, to a new facility in LaGrange, Troup County, Georgia.
The current Remington Firearms main facility in Ilion, NY: America's oldest gunmaker has been headquartered in NY State for 205 years
RemArms will invest up to 100 million dollars in LaGrange. The new Remington facility in Troup County will include a new advanced manufacturing operation as well as a world-class research and development center, and create up to 856 jobs in the planned five-years timespan.
«We are very excited to come to Georgia, a state that not only welcomes business but enthusiastically supports and welcomes companies in the firearms industry», said Remington CEO Ken D'Arcy.
Similarly enthusiastic reactions to the news have been recorded from LaGrange Mayor Jim Thornton and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, all more than happy to welcome RemArms in the Peach State.
According to Associated Press, Remington could claim various state tax breaks, including an income tax credit allowing it to annually deduct $3,000 per job from State income taxes, up to $12.8 million over five years, as long as workers make at least $28,000 a year.
The State will also pay to train workers, but the entire incentive package hasn't been made public yet, as it is allegedly not yet complete.
The relocation of the Remington Firearms headquarters to Georgia is part of a trend that sees an increasing number of American firearms manufacturers moving from the historical Connecticut "Gun Valley" – and from the north-eastern portion of the Country at large, abandoning States such as New York, Massachusets and Connecticut that saw American gunmaking grow and flourish since the early 1800s.
The reason for such a massive flight is very simple: for decades, now, the northern portion of the eastern seaboard has been governed by politicians and political forces that took a strong anti-gun stance, and as the years went by numerous pieces of legislation have been passed in the former heartland of America's gun industry that severely restricted the 2nd Amendment rights of their citizens and made life a living hell for firearms manufacturers, distributors, and retailers.
Needless to say, the implementation of said politics wasn't followed by an improvement in public safety: their most immediate consequence was a sharp slump in jobs and tax income for the local governments.
According to Associated Press, the local government in New York offered 10 years of tax breaks to Remington in exchange for the restart and upgrades; the legal situation in NY State for gun manufacturers and gun owners must really be a disaster for the Company to turn down such a generous offer. But until the citizens of those States will realize that they must use their vote in the right way to impose a change, the situation is unlikely to improve.