Connecticut’s Hartford Courant reports:
Bristol firearms manufacturer PTR Industries is moving to South Carolina, a company executive confirmed Tuesday.
The company — which said two months ago it would be relocating once it found a suitable location — will move to Aynor, S.C., near Myrtle Beach, said John McNamara, vice president of sales at PTR.
…
Andrew Doba, spokesman for Gov. Dannel Malloy, said of the news: “They announced this several months ago, so it’s not a surprise. We compete for jobs every day of the week, but on this issue the governor is prioritizing public safety and the gun violence prevention law he signed will improve public safety.”
According to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, 47 percent of Connecticut voters approve of Malloy’s policy on gun control, while 44 percent disapprove of his gun policy.
PTR Industries is one of two Connecticut firearms manufacturers that have said they are being courted by Horry County. The other, Stag Arms, said it is interested in the area, according to Mark Malkowski, Stag Arms CEO.
Malkowski said he plans to visit Horry County on Thursday and is familiar with the area because he plays golf there when he visits a customer in Columbia, S.C.
I spoke to Stag Arms’s CEO, Mark Malkowski, a fortnight ago, when he was kind enough to show me around their facility in New Britain. Malkowski told me that he’d received “about one hundred” offers to move the facility out of state, but that “although tempting,” it was “difficult” to flee a “high-tax, high-regulation” state like Connecticut when you make such a specialized product. “We lose three days if we move a single machine three feet to the left,” he said. Still, now that PTR has taken the lead, one wonders who will follow.