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Henry Shuns NJ for WI, ATI Leaves NY for SC

Robert Farago - comments No comments

 Henry Repeating Arms .30/30 lever gun (courtesy henryrepeating.com)

Last November TTAG reported that Hurricane Sandy hammered Henry Repeating Arms’ New Jersey factory; the natural disaster ripped the roof off their Garden State digs and flooded their factory floor. The following April, TTAG reported that Henry was back in a big way. Production returned to normal. Guns were going out the door in record numbers. Even as Henry recovered its economic equilibrium, lever gun impresario Anthony Imperato shared his resolve to build guns in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. Et voila! jsonline.com reports that Henry’s ready to start production in the Eat Cheese or Die State come the New Year . . .

Henry has added “several million dollars of new computerized machining equipment” to its Wisconsin facility to support the manufacturing of .30-30 and .45-70 caliber rifles as well as to increase the volume of parts produced for its rifles, the company said in a statement announcing the changes.

Henry Repeating Arms purchased the 138,000-square-foot Rice Lake facility in 2006 from Wright Products, a subsidiary of FKI Industries, which manufactured storm door hardware. Wright ceased manufacturing due to price pressure in the hardware industry.

Today, the plant employs more than 100 people and continues to hire to support its continued growth, Henry said in the statement.

“I am proud of what we’ve accomplished in Wisconsin by saving jobs, adding jobs, and creating a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility,” Anthony Imperato, president and owner of the company said in the statement. “I decided to expand our operations here because of the outstanding job our employees do to help us meet increased demand.”

And New Jersey’s high taxes, regulatory burden, union stranglehold and anti-gun gestalt. Henry’s strategy is nothing new for gunmakers behind enemy lines. Beretta, Smith & Wesson and other large companies are ramping-up new production from northeastern climes to gun-friendly tax-break bonanza giving right-to-work states.

Make no mistake: if things get too bad in the gun averse states even the big ‘uns will follow American Tactical Imports’ lead and blow town. In fact, what’s the bet that they’re making contingency plans right now; that Colt, The Freedom Group (including Remington) and others have explored alternative locations? Why wouldn’t they?

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Robert Farago

Robert Farago is the former publisher of The Truth About Guns (TTAG). He started the site to explore the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns.

0 thoughts on “Henry Shuns NJ for WI, ATI Leaves NY for SC”

    • “…New Jersey Pols will trumpet this move as a good thing for the residents.”

      …while they move the State of NJ ever closer to socialist, statist Armageddon.

      Great move by Henry, and what better place for repeating rifles than the midwest.

      Reply
  1. Yeah, yeah, the 2A community is all paranoid and shit. That doesn’t make us wrong when it comes to the government. For example, the price of bullets is going up . . . way up!

    Doe Run to shut Herculaneum lead plant at 2013 end
    Fri Jun 29, 2012 3:13pm GMT

    NEW YORK, June 29 (Reuters) – The only primary lead smelter in the United States will close, and its owner, Doe Run Co said o n F riday, and the company will not build another plant to replace the one it is closing at Herculaneum, Missouri.

    The company, which the U.S. government had ordered to either shut the smelter or install cleaner technology, said the electro winning technology developed to process lead at Herculaneum did not make financial sense for that site.

    “Doe Run has decided not to build its proposed, lead electro winning plant to process its Missouri mineral resources. We concluded that building a plant here would generate an unacceptable financial risk to the company,” Jerry Pyatt, vice president and chief operating officer, said in a press release.

    . . .

    __________________

    “We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion:
    the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases,
    while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage
    of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”
    – Ayn Rand

    Reply
  2. El Paso could really good jobs. Willing plentiful work force, major freeway and railway access, easy for BATF to give guns to Mexican drug gangs, mostly Zetas in Juarez. What’s not to like?

    Reply
  3. Whoa they reviewed more than a dozen comments on this situation. I wonder if it was a bakers dozen and if so moms demand something stupid again better watch out or they will get shown up by appleton as the grassroots poster child for gun control.

    Reply
  4. Yet another reason SBRs should be taken off the NFA list. If they had shorter barrels, they wouldn’t be as big and scary!

    And like it or not lady, this country IS our fortress. If you don’t want to take your turn at post, then maybe you should f*ck away off home and go about hoping/praying you never get taken to task for your lack of personal accountability where your safety is concerned.
    Guns don’t “stop and frisk” people. They don’t make you empty your purse before you walk in. They don’t charge you a cover to pay their lazy security, and they certainly don’t advertise “SOFT TARGET” like your precious metal detectors and GFZ signs do. In fact, they might be the simplest, least intrusive, and least expensive way to make public places safer. So, by extension, that makes the people carrying them around pretty damn smart, doesn’t it? In fact, I guess the only idiot would be someone who thinks that some “security” guards or a cellphone that can call up help in mere minutes is sufficient to protect themselves….

    Reply
    • +1.

      She took little if any interest in Trayvon’s upbringing when he was alive. She kicked him out of the house after he got his final suspension. Trayvon was a punk because Mr and Ms. Trayvon didn’t care enough about him to try to keep him straight. Does anybody think that someone like LCOL Alan West would let his children run wild without parental correction? What Ms. Fulton is feeling is guilt. I bet deep down inside she knows she failed her son and is now engaged in self justification. It’s not going to work. All she is doing is leading other kids down the same path as her son because she insists on reinforcing the Saint Trayvon image. Eventually someone will write a book detailing how Trayvon set his own path for self destruciton.

      Reply
  5. I just plopped down some green for a Henry 30-30.
    I had heard that Henry had incurred some damage in Sandy and, afterwards, restarted with some new machinery/tooling.
    It struck me that this may present some issues in production:
    New tooling needs break-in time and fine tuning of calibration. I know Henry takes pride in their work but as in other guns following the rush to catch up to recent demand, would there be issues with function?
    How affected were pre-Sandy components if used in post-Sandy productuion?

    I looked at two guns in two separate LGSes.

    The first gun had an inspection tag dated post-Sandy. There were small blemishes on both sided of the brass receiver – just in front of the receiver. At first I thought the receiver may have been held too tightly in a vice, but on closer inspection it seemed there was some small pitting in those affected spots. The guy behind the counter of this venerable gun store suggested it may be “a plating problem”.
    I noticed similar but larger area of pitting on what I think was either part of the extractor or some sort of cover.

    I decided to go to another LGS and the guy at the first one said he’d either sell or send back the one I’d looked at.

    The second gun had no dated inspection tag and, while it’s box was beat up, the gun’s cosmetics were pristine.

    I suppose I could call Henry and find out the production date based on the serial number.

    I am curious, though, if others have seen issues with post-Sandy Henry rifles or if I am making Marlin-shaped mountain out of a molehill.

    Reply
  6. That’s it, Mrs. Fulton. You’re doing a great job. Your Democrat “massas” will be very happy with your work on their plantation.
    May your chains rest lightly on your wrists, ma’am.

    Reply
  7. Meh… All done through the anonmity of the internet. It’s not like she infiltrated an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell or the Hell’s Angels.

    Reply
  8. I would be a very happy person if I lived in a world where interpersonal violence didn’t exist. The sheer amount of time and money I wouldn’t have invested in the skills and tools needed to deal effectively with violence could be spent on something pleasant, like learning to play guitar. Likewise all the resources we’ve expended as a society on police and military could be used for something else, such as education and space exploration and life saving research.

    My back would not hurt from lugging a pistol and ammo around all day, then again my nose would never have been broken so badly that I still have serious sinus problems, my jaw bone would never have penetrated my ear canal, my shoulder wouldn’t have this catch . . .well, you get the idea.

    The problem is that violence is a reality. A daily, real life, not so remote problem that can become my problem or your problem at anytime without notice. You can’t make it go away by pretending it doesn’t exist. It’s not a childhood boogie man that you can hide from simply by staying under the blanket. It’s real, in your face, without regard for who you are as a person, aggressive, sudden, painful and terrifying, perhaps for the rest of your life, which might be many years or only moments.

    Whether you’re a commando or a pacifist violence can come to you. I’ll leave it to you to figure out who has the better chance coming out alive and well when it comes to them.

    Reply
  9. One of the terrible laser companies already makes this except all the lasers are the same color on the other one. This version seems more useful in a world where both are still useless.

    Reply
  10. Very cool toy and I’d love to have one to play with. However I’m not sure what it actually does for the shot gunner. If you pattern your weapon/load combination at various distances you already pretty much know what you’re going to get, and more accurately that the laser could possibly predict (every load and gun being different).

    I happened to have been patterning a new load over the weekend and found that my latest favorite is much tighter than what I’d been using in my gun, so tight in fact that it’s sub-optimal under 30 feet.

    With so many variables I can’t imagine how this device could predict the spread with anything other than a wild guess, but I’m interested in seeing what they have come up with.

    I like to use an adjustable flashlight as a pattern gauge for low light work. If you sync the focus of the flashlight to your pattern spread you end up with a beam that presents a rough estimate of the spread of a given load/gun combo. Using a sharpie to mark the pattern limits on the lens will provide a shadow that can be used as a reference point for spread as well. It takes a little doing but it’s low cost and fairly effective at household distances.

    Reply
  11. The messed up thing is, if the tables were turned and Trayvon had killed Zimmerman during their altercation, I would have been 100% behind him using the stand your ground law as a defense.

    Unfortunately we had a situation where two morons ran across each other and one didn’t survive a violent altercation.

    Our government allowing this woman to be trotted out as some kind of postergirl for anti-gun legislation is disgusting. Then again they had no problem dragging Newtown parents (the ones who agreed with their agenda anyway) on a publicity stunt tour either…

    Reply
  12. What? Shoot someone for pointing a gun at you?
    Shouldn’t you show some restraint like the New Haven cop you praised over the weekend?

    Reply

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