Connecticut

Connecticut Politicians Hate Their Gun Makers
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This is a story about an industry so old that innovations in its factories are credited with helping ignite America’s industrial revolution. It’s about machine shops that are American icons. It’s about a blue-collar industry that has fallen so out of political favor in some parts of America its products are being made illegal. It’s about companies in an industry that still manufactures most of its products right here in America. It’s about gun companies in Connecticut that, though are still permitted to make the most popular gun type in America in Connecticut, they can’t sell those guns to citizens who live in the state.

This latest chapter in the fight over the right to keep and bear arms began when a madman destroyed all those lives at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut last December. After that horror everyone agreed we need to find better solutions to stop such a thing from ever happening again. Nevertheless, instead of seizing this moment to find the best solutions, Connecticut’s governor and his task force wrote an ideological law while excluding input from the state’s three firearms manufacturers and its gun owners. They then passed the 139-page law in haste before anyone could read it.

Now the state’s three gun companies say they’re deciding whether to stay or go.

“We exhausted ourselves testifying during public sessions at the state capital, reaching out to journalists, busing our employees to Hartford and more, but in the end it didn’t matter. They wrote the bill in secret,” said Stag Arms President Mark Malkowski, whose company is located in New Britain, Conn., and employs 200 people.

After writing behind closed doors Connecticut’s gun-control bill was placed on legislators’ desks around 9 a.m. on April 3. At about 12:30 p.m. that same day the Senate started debating the legislation as gun owners chanted outside, “Read the bill.” Maybe they’re all accomplished speed readers and so did in fact read all the bill’s legal language and saw the 43 times the bill uses the word “felony,” mostly as threats to gun owners. But whether they’d read or not, the Senate passed the bill 26-10 that same day. Soon thereafter the House passed it 105-44. At noon the next day (April 4) Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed the bill.

The Sunday after signing the bill Malloy went on CNN’s show “State of the Union” and made it clear that as far as he was concerned gun makers in the state never had a chance. He said, “What this is about is the ability of the gun industry to sell as many guns to as many people as possible—even if they are deranged, even if they are mentally ill, even if they have a criminal background. They don’t care. They want to sell guns.”

Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, replied to Malloy’s accusations of criminality in an opinion piece in The Hartford Courant. He wrote, “We are not the enemy, not in Connecticut, not anywhere else. We have families, too. We do not want to see firearms misused. We represent responsible companies and thousands of employees. We know what works and what is illusory.”

After the bill passed, Malkowski said, “Some companies have seen brand damage because they operate in a state consumers see as unfriendly. We have to take this into account. We have to consider all our options. Tomorrow, for example, I have a meeting on the schedule with officials from Texas. They and other states would like us to take our business to them.”

To put this in context it should be noted that Connecticut isn’t just another “blue state.” Connecticut is where Samuel Colt set up shop in 1847. It’s part of what used to be referred to as “gun alley.” Samuel Colt’s original factory in Patterson, New Jersey, went out of business in 1842. Nevertheless, the guns Colt produced made it to the frontier where Texas Rangers found that Colt’s revolver finally gave them a way to defeat Comanches, warriors who fought from horseback. This is why, when the Mexican War began in 1846, U.S. Army Captain Samuel H. Walker traveled east and looked up Sam Colt. They collaborated on the design of a new, more powerful revolver. The U.S. Ordnance Department subsequently ordered a thousand of them. To get them made, Colt turned to Eli Whitney, Jr., son of the famous inventor of the cotton gin. Whitney helped Colt get started in Connecticut. It was there that the order was manufactured and shipped by mid-1847.

Colt’s revolvers would later be credited with helping to win to the West, but less well known is the fact that historians also credit Colt’s factory with helping to advance manufacturing techniques in America, changes that helped stimulate America’s industrial revolution. After Samuel Colt’s death in 1862, the company famously used the slogan “Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal” to highlight the fact that guns are an instrumental part of freedom and true equality.

Colt first started making AR-15s in 1960 and prospered. Later its labor union was yanked into a strike by the United Automobile Workers Union in the late 1980s. After the dispute was settled and some military contracts were lost, Colt found itself in Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992. The company has since recovered with new contracts and a lot of new products.

Today, Colt Manufacturing Company LLC has 670 employees in West Hartford, Conn. According to Joyce M. Rubino, vice president & CFO of Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC, “Colt has spent the last four years rebuilding its consumer products division and is doing very well financially.” Colt still makes revolvers in Connecticut as well as a lot of semi-automatic rifles now banned in the state as “assault weapons.”

Colt, however, isn’t the only prominent gun maker in the state. In 1919, O.F. Mossberg & Sons began producing firearms in New Haven, Conn. Now located in North Haven, Conn., Mossberg is currently America’s leading shotgun maker—in 2010 alone Mossberg made 393,284 shotguns. Mossberg’s plant in North Haven now employs 270 people. Its Connecticut plant also makes semi-automatic rifles that have been deemed “assault rifles” and banned in the state.

The third company is previously mentioned Stag Arms. It opened its shop in New Britain, Conn., in 2003. Stag Arms now employs 200 people in Connecticut. Stag Arms also makes AR-15-type rifles that state residents are banned from purchasing.

Today, Stag Arms, Mossberg and Colt all proudly point out that their firearms are made in the U.S. Actually, there a lot of guns still being made in America. In 2011, for example, 66 percent of the new firearms made available for sale in America were made in America. This figure is even more astounding when you look at the raw numbers behind it. Using Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) annual firearms manufacturing and export reports and U.S. International Trade Commission data we know annual U.S. firearm production as well as firearm import and export figures. For example, in 2011 there were approximately 6,216,000 firearms produced in the U.S. Subtract the 683,000 guns exported and you get a total of about 5,533,000 guns made in the U.S. that are available for U.S. consumers. Meanwhile, there were also approximately 2,892,000 firearms imported into the U.S. in 2011. So there were a total of 8,425,000 guns made available in 2011. About 5,533,000 (66 percent) of these were made in America.

Also, according to NSSF, as gun sales have surged over the last few years the firearms industry has created over 26,325 new, well-paying jobs in the U.S. Some of these jobs were created in Connecticut. According to the NSSF, gun manufacturers and associated business in Connecticut generate $1.75 billion in economic activity annually and employ over 7,300 people.

Given all this one would think politicians in Connecticut would its state’s experts in firearms and Second Amendment law to weigh on in the legislation before it as voted on.

Stag Arms, Colt and Mossberg certainly tried to help state lawmakers understand what guns mean to individual freedom, personal safety and the state’s economy. For example, they invited the state’s politicians to visit their factories. After being invited in by Stag Arms, for example, State Rep. Mark Sanchez and Rep. Terry Gerratana, both Democrats, told Stag Arms President Mark Malkowski the visit “opened their eyes.” (Despite this both would later vote along party lines for the gun-control bill.)

Right now the NSSF is in the process of making sense of the state’s new 139-page gun-control bill. After an initial read, the NSSF pointed that language in the new law specifies a procedure for licensed firearms retailers to perform mandatory “universal” background checks on private party transactions that isn’t permissible based on federal laws and regulations governing the National Instant Criminal Background Checks (NICS) system. “As we read it,” reports the NSSF, “this mistake in lawmaking means that all private party transactions in the state now cannot be accomplished legally.”

Basically, the bill creates a “dangerous weapon offender registry;” it requires residents to obtain a state-issued “eligibility certificate” before they can purchase a rifle, shotgun or ammunition; it requires universal background checks for all firearm sales; it bans an additional 100 or so semi-automatic rifles and uses language to ban the sale of firearms that meet some design specifications; it bans magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds; it expands safe storage laws with rules that could punish gun owners if their firearms are stolen or misused by someone else and much more.

Given all of the law’s bans, threats of felonies and more, the state’s gun companies are worried consumers will punish them because they don’t want some of their money going to companies that are paying taxes in Connecticut. Keane said, “As we can see from social media chatter already well under way, many retail customers in other states will not buy products made in this state.”

Joe Bartozzi, senior vice president & general counsel for O. F. Mossberg & Sons, Inc., and Joyce M. Rubino, vice president & CFO of Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC, said they’re both being courted by numerous states, but added that their companies haven’t yet made a decision. Rubino said, “Colt has been here for about 175 years, so this won’t be a decision we make in haste.”

Bartozzi said, “We’re the oldest family-owned firearms manufacturer in America and we have people at our plant in North Haven who have been with us 30, even 40 years. They are a resource of expertise we can’t just move away from. They’re our family and friends.”

Keane, who is a Connecticut resident, says this misguided and ideological attack on an individual right and on manufacturers wasn’t necessary and won’t solve the problem. He explained, “If they’d only let us sit at the table we could have done a lot of good. For example, we need to start by fixing NICS to include all relevant mental health and other disqualifying records from the states. Second, we need to strictly enforce existing laws to prosecute those who illegally purchase, possess or use firearms in crimes. Third, we must build on programs, such as my organization’s Project ChildSafe, that we know work to prevent access to firearms by criminals, the young or at-risk individuals.”

Whether Colt, Mossberg and Stag Arms will stay or go seems to depend on the outcomes of court challenges and how consumers respond. Leaving is conceding ground in a battle for freedom. Staying means the state won’t pay an economic price for infringing on the constitutionally protected rights of its law-abiding citizens.
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Kill the goose that lays the golden egg then see what happens.