CT gun trade slips but still wields economic impact
NEWTOWN — Connecticut’s firearms industry slipped slightly during the coronavirus crisis in 2020, losing 100 jobs and seeing its economic production decrease nominally by 0.2 percent.
But Connecticut kept its place as a top 10 state in the economic impact of its firearms industry, according to a new report by the Newtown-based trade association for the firearms industry.
“Connecticut is known for its very strict gun laws, but the historical roots of the gun industry are right there along the Connecticut River where they still have a presence and where they are obviously doing well and continue to add to the economy,” said Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, whose annual report on the health of the firearms industry was released in March. “It’s not just the firearms industry’s economic activity, but all the state business taxes and local taxes that are being pumped into Connecticut, which has had significant budget issues for years.”
Oliva is referring to new data in the NSSF report showing Connecticut’s $1.5
billion gun industry outperformed 44 other states when the numbers are adjusted for population. Connecticut also leads New England in the average wage for a gun industry worker at $89,000 and in the $6 million in federal excise tax paid in 2020.
Connecticut’s gun and ammunition companies are part of a larger firearms industry that grew 6 percent nationally in 2020,
adding 10,000 jobs, for an overall economic impact of $65 billion, the NSSF report says.
NSSF President and CEO Joe Bartozzi said the firearms industry “has demonstrated amazing resilience” and is one of the bright spots in the economy, growing 230 percent since the Great Recession in 2008.
Critics disagree, blaming growth in the firearms industry for mass shootings
and an increase in gun violence. Homegrown nonprofits born after the 2012 shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook School, such as Newtown Action Alliance, have urged President Joe Biden and the Democrat-controlled Congress to pass gun-reform legislation.
After two mass shootings in Colorado and the Atlanta area left 18 people dead in mid-to-late March and another mass shooting that left four dead, including a 9-year-old boy, Wednesday in Orange, California, Biden urged Congress to close loopholes in the background check system and ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, the Associated Press reported.
The NSSF’s Oliva said such decisions should not be made in isolation.
“It is important to remember that this is a lawful and constitutionally protected industry,” Oliva said. “These are real jobs, real wages and real workers who bring home paychecks to feed their family and put clothes on their kids, and when you make a decision about gun control based on ideology, that has a real effect on workers that could cost them their jobs.”
In Connecticut, firearms and ammunition businesses were responsible for 2,146 direct industry jobs in 2020, a loss of 107 jobs or 4.7 percent from 2019, the NSSF report says. Counting industry suppliers and other related jobs, Connecticut’s firearms companies were responsible for 5,339 jobs, a loss of 3.5 percent, according to the report.
Ballasting those loses were strong performances by industry leaders such as
Fairfield-based Sturm Ruger, which bought Remington’s Marlin firearms business for $30 million at a bankruptcy auction in September.
Ruger, an 1,800-employee company, finished 2020 with net sales of $570 million — a 38 percent increase over 2019, due to what its CEO called “a historic surge in consumer demand.”
The uncertainty of the coronavirus crisis, the unsettling civil disobedience over the police-related death of George Floyd and the November elections combined to make 2020 an unprecedented year for gun sales, smashing the previous national record by 40 percent.
“Our workforce has been strengthened by 250 folks since the middle of 2020, which drove a 30 percent increase in production during the latter half of the year,” Ruger CEO Christopher Killoy said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to launching new products that are sure to create excitement among shooters and we are hard at work getting the Marlin manufacturing cells established.”