Conn.’s history as a gun manufacturing state clashes with tougher gun laws.
Despite regulations, manufacturing still strong
When Stag Arms announced in June it was leaving Connecticut for a place with “significant support for the firearms industry,” the message to Hartford couldn’t have been clearer.
It’s not the first time a gun maker has complained that the state’s tough stance on firearms hurts an industry with deep ties to Connecticut’s history.
And yet, while it may be a blow to Connecticut to lose its secondlargest rifle maker, no one expects more manufacturers to follow suit when Stag Arms leaves New Britain with its 18 jobs for a gunfriendly state.
The reason: Colt, Ruger and other Connecticut firearms manufacturers have nationwide markets, so the effect of tough regulations, such as Connecticut’s ban on semiautomatic weapons, is negligible.
“What’s more important is the corporate income tax rate and any potential incentives a company might get out of the state,” said Mark Gius, a professor of economics at Quinnipiac University and the author of “Guns and Crime: The Data Don’t Lie.” “A very small amount of a company’s decision to leave has to do with the general political conversation about gun control, or whether the state has a problem with what it is producing.”
Industry officials and gun company executives agree, although they were not comfortable saying so publicly last week as the nation continued to grapple with backtoback mass shootings in Texas and Ohio that left 31 dead and dozens injured.
What that means for the $1.2 billion gun industry in Connecticut is that the high cost of labor, utilities, and taxes in the state hurts the bottom line more than hostility from Hartford. At the same time, Connecticut’s highlyskilled labor force and proximity to New York City suppliers make the state a hard place to leave, especially when it’s been home for generations.
But since the 2012 massacre of 26 firstgraders and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the gun industry and its supporters have often felt persecuted as successive governors have assailed the lethality of assault weapons and legislators have enacted some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation.
The Newtownbased National Shooting Sports Foundation has defended Connecticut gun makers, producing a 2017 report arguing that Hartford’s tough regulations enacted after the Sandy Hook massacre cost the state 3,000 jobs and $50 million in taxes.
“Other states that did not pass adverse legislation to the 2nd Amendment did not see decreases in revenue,” said the NSSF, which represents 13,000 gun makers and retailers nationwide.
Last week, no one at the NSSF was willing to speak, with tension still raw after the mass murder of 22 people in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3, and 9 people in Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 4. Those shootings came just days after a gunman killed three and injured 13 at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California.
So how is the overall health of firearms manufacturing in Connecticut?
The latest numbers send a mixed message.
By the numbers
On the one hand, Connecticut companies cut 400 jobs in 2018 — a drop of 14 percent from the 2,680 gun manufacturing jobs in Stratford, Shelton, Southport and across the state.
In the process, the firearms manufacturing industry lost 10 percent in economic production, according to NSSF data.
On the other hand, those 2018 numbers were down from 2017 — a huge year for Connecticut gun manufacturing that saw jobs jump 26 percent and economic output rise by 9 percent.
Moreover, even after the industry’s losses in 2018, Connecticut was still ranked sixth in the nation in per capita economic output, and second in the nation in the average industry wage of $75,000.
A spokesman for Gov. Ned Lamont said the state remained committed to its tough gun policy, while the gun industry remained on solid footing in Connecticut.
“[D]ecisions on gun policies need to reflect the importance of protecting our communities from gun violence and accidental shootings,” said spokesman David Bednarz. “Connecticut is one of the top states in the nation in total economic output in this industry, and its economic impact has continued to remain steady over the last several years, even after our state adopted some of the most responsible and sensible gun laws in the nation.”
It was not clear Friday when Stag Arms would move or in what state it would choose to manufacture its AR15style rifles. In 2017, the company produced 10,900 rifles, according to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The last time a highprofile gun company chose another state over Connecticut was 2014, when Ruger built a 200,000squarefoot manufacturing plant in North Carolina. The year before, Colt had moved one of its rifle manufacturing productions to Texas.
The Connecticut companies have contributed to steady growth for the gun industry nationwide, which grew by 1 percent in 2018 to $52 billion, employing 149,000 directly in manufacturing, according to the NSSF.
Although there are no industrywide numbers for gun sales, the FBI has been publishing firearm background checks for 20 years, which experts use to track commercial firearms trends.
So far this year through July, nationwide background checks are about 16 million — up 5 percent over the same seven months of 2018. In Connecticut, background checks are up 2 percent over the same period in 2018.
Meanwhile, Connecticut gun makers continue to produce firearms at a nationleading pace.
Colt produced 32,000 pistols and 27,000 other firearms in 2017, for example, exporting 3,300 of them.