Officials with firearms manufacturer Remington Arms announced Monday they are pulling out of update New York and relocating the company’s headquarters to Georgia, where they will invest $100 million in a new factory and research center.
The company will move to LaGrange, Ga., a city of around 30,000 which is located about 70 miles southwest of Atlanta. Officials said that the new factor and research facility will create about 850 jobs over the course of about five years, GOP Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp noted in a statement.
“Georgia’s firearms industry is responsible for thousands of jobs and millions of dollars of investment in our communities,” Kemp said in a statement. “I am a proud owner of some of Remington’s first-class product, and now, I am excited to welcome them to their new home in the Peach State.”
The Associated Press reported that it wasn’t clear what effect the company’s Monday announcement would have on operations in New York and Lenoir City, Tennesee. The company owns elements of the former Remington Outdoor Co., which manufactures rifles, shotguns, and handguns; the parent firm sold off its assets last year in Alabama during a bankruptcy case.
“Investors doing business as the Roundhill Group purchased the Remington-branded gun-making business, including operations in Ilion, New York, and Lenoir City, Tennessee for $13 million,” The AP noted.
Remington is the oldest firearms maker in the United States. The company began manufacturing flintlock rifles in 1816 and grew into a massive conglomerate before receding amid falling sales, complaints about quality, and legal fallout stemming from the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. After that shooting in 2012, in which 20 first-grade students and six educators were massacred, the company stopped making its Bushmaster AR-15-style rifles, one of which was used in the murders.
That said, Remington is the latest gunmaker to relocate from blue states in the Northeast to red ones in the South and West as political environments in the former turn increasingly anti-Second Amendment.
“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,” Remington CEO Ken D’Arcy said in a statement. “Everyone involved in this process has shown how important business is to the state and how welcoming they are to all business, including the firearms industry.”
LaGrange’s economic development director, Scott Malone, told The AP that the firearms maker has already obtained at least one building there and will launch its operations from a combination of renovated existing structures and new buildings. He added that local governments are offering tax deferrals in addition to improvements to infrastructure and utilities.
Additionally, Remington may be able to claim some state tax breaks to include an income tax credit that would allow the company to deduct $3,000 per job created from its state income taxes for a total of $12.8 million over the course of five years, so long as workers earn at least $28,000 per year. Georgia has also offered to pay for worker training, but officials did not provide all the details for the incentives packages because they were not finished yet.
Jon has over 30 years' worth of reporting experience, as well as an author and U.S. Army veteran. He has a BA in political science from Ashford University and an MA in national security studies/intelligence analysis from American Military University.
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